Sinus Surgery for the WIN!

This is a bit of a complicated story, so I am going to try to keep it simple! Feel free to ask questions in the comments! I HATE posting photos of me without lippy and mascara, but in order to be completely open, there I am in the car post-op. I DID put a clean drip catcher on my nose before the photo!

As those who have read Multimorbid Co-ordination will know, I recently had sinus surgery. It turns out this problem was decades (I am quoting a specialist) in the making.

I’d always been a great sleeper. About five years ago I found I was waking several times a night and it was driving me nuts. I was referred to a sleep specialist, did a sleep study, trialed a CPAP machine. Nothing really worked. And it kept getting worse. Earlier this year my right nostril started blocking completely if I was lying down. My GP referred me to an ENT specialist. He used a fancy camera to look up my nostrils and sent me to hospital immediately. As in, that day. “Go home and pack now, go straight to the hospital”. Bit worrying. His concern was I might have a fungal infection in my sinuses and that needed to be determined ASAP. Off to hospital I went. Thankfully it was a bacterial infection. Everyone agreed I needed sinus surgery. I had enlarged turbinates. I also needed my five sinus cavities on each side reduced to one cavity. Effectively I had two surgeries in one. Functional Endoscopic Sinus Surgery (FESS) and Bilateral Inferior Turbinate Reduction (with removal of bone).

Panadol was all the pain management needed and it was day surgery. So nothing like having a total knee replacement! Both my GP and my rheumatologist were a bit wary about the pain levels I should expect, but it was really not a problem. That may not apply to everyone, but for me it was a breeze.

The important bit here is THE RESULTS!!! It is like I am a new person, honestly. These images are from my Garmin watch. Now, no, a Garmin watch is NOT a medical device, however I couldn’t understand why my watch was looking so orange all the time. Here it is measuring physiological stress (orange) and rest (blue). The left is before surgery and most days looked that that. What was I doing at midnight? Climbing Mt Everest? Of course not! The image on the right is yesterday. Massive difference. Now, Garmin does not know I have any health issues, but clearly something wasn’t right. Since the surgery it has gradually become bluer and at night I am showing as resting, as I should be when I’m asleep! Compare the Rest hours i the two shots: 2 h 47 m on July 1, 14 h 24 m yesterday, BIG difference.

Another aspect Garmin looks at is Body Battery. I had actually written about internal battery in Personal Energy Use before I knew Garmin used Body Battery! For consistency, I’m going to use the same two days as I used above.

As you can see there is a vast difference. My Body Battery only reached a top of 33 on July 1, while yesterday I topped 87. I also wasn’t so flat at the end of the day.

This morning I woke up to a top of 95! Was sitting at 83 when I took the screen shot. I have not woken up to a Body Battery THAT charged for years!

So many other health aspects have improved since the surgery.

• My O² Sat has improved – not surprised, I can breathe properly now!
• VO² Max has improved
• Sleeping has obviously improved
• My BP has dropped & stabilised – not perfect just yet, but getting there
• My walking pace is back closer to normal for me (it had got slower before the surgery)

I am yet to find out of my strength has improved or will improve as following the recovery from the sinus surgery I then had cataract surgery on the left eye and right at this time I am battling a kidney stone and waiting for the right eye surgery. I am meeting with my exercise physiologist in a week to plan a come back approach after so many weeks off.

I am SO HAPPY! It is just the best!