nose correction
When I was 16 I had to get my nose straightened , as it had become broken when I was 10 in a swimming pool accident (trying to swim up behind a friend underwater, when he kicked off to swim away and got me square in the face).

So they take me in to hospital and I ask, innocently, how they can straighten it now it had set? Does the surgeon just whack it with a big green surgical claw-happer, I asked (in mirth)?

My mirth rapidly faded away as I saw the nurse bite her lip and say RATHER TOO LOUD that the surgeon was very experienced with his tools and I shuldn't worry myself about it. My god, I thought, they ARE going to hammer my juvenile face back into shape with a rusty crowbar.

Anyway, they knock me out (count backwards from 100, he said- I made it to 97) and I wake up a bit later with my sinuses packed with cotton and a dull ache- to be expected, and am wheeled back into the ward. Awake and dopey, I can feel warm dripping blood going down the back of my nose and into my throat(it can't get out the front through the packing) so I had to swallow, hoping it would stop soon.

Three hours later of continuously swallowing snotty blood the surgeon came around for a post-op consult. Immediately he tutted and said- that packing is soaked through, we better replace it. Come to the treatment room and we'll tidy that up, ok?

Obediently I did while they started to unpack what looked like yards and yards of cotton tape, pulling it out of my nasal cavity like a magician's scarf trick. At one point though, a scab must have come off with the packing and the steady drip suddenly became a rapid stream, like a ketchup bottle had been squeezed hard.

The surgeon's movements took on a sudden burst of speed and he called a nurse in, then inserted a bulb on a tube up my nose and inflated it with air from a large syringe, applying direct presure to the source of the bleed - where the cauterisation had obviously failed - and it gave me an instant headache behind my eyes.

Probably only lost half a pint of blood but it does go a long way and looks like the aftermath of a slasher movie. Unsteadily I was led back to my bed in the ward, tube up my nose, streams of sticky blood all over my chest and dressing gown. They put me back to bed and sent for a technician to put in a line for a glucose drip.

Unortunately the chap that came put the needle in the vein in the back of my hand and managed to chuck it straight through a bundle of nerves which made my hand feel like it was being burned and electrocuted at the same time- I yelled and the guy quickly pulled it out and tried somewhere else. Exhausted, I passed out. Then they woke me up to give me an injection of valium to calm me down (calm me down? I was asleep!) which let me doped up to the eyeballs and oblivious to everything going on around me.

My folks turned up and were told the stock post-op blather about 'they may be slightly groggy and will have a bandage across the operation wound' except they came in to me covered in dried blood, a tube up my nose, a drip in my arm and me unable to be woken up.

My nose isn't properly straight either. Fucking excellent!
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Thu 7 Aug 2008, 19:40, Reply)