It's not always easy street...

Soooo after almost a week of healing perfectly and not having any complications or discomfort or pain, I had an appointment with my surgeon to take a look at my healing and to start my expanding. He wanted to do the first turns just to make sure that everything was expanding correctly... and of course, I had to brag about how well I was healing and how little swelling I was having.. blah blah blah....

And then came Wednesday morning.....

At 9:00am Wednesday April 13th, I was pleasantly awaken by a dripping from my nose, which to my delight just happened to be blood. I didn't really freak out at the start as I have read and was told by my surgeon that nosebleeds are an all too common occurance after this surgery. So I go to the bathroom and clean myself up, get some tissues, google how to stop a nose bleed, do what they say and it isnt really stopping all that much. It slows down a couple times but doesnt stop.

Fast forward a couple hours and its about noon and my nose is still bleeding (not 100% the entire time, but a good percentage) so I give my surgeon a call. Im getting a little nervous because at this time, it is really coming out of my nose heavy and there is a pretty large amount of blood mixing with my spit as good amount of blood is going not only out my nose, but down my throat. Surgeon tells me to just relax, stuff some tissues in my nose, lay back at a 45* angle and relax and that he will call me back in an hour. I fell asleep and his phone call wakes me up, and to my surprise the bleeding has stopped! Awesome!

.....45 minutes later, here we go again. So it is back to bleeding and is on and of and on and off. The disgusting thing is that right before it would start bleeding again, I would feel something slide into the back of my throat, something thick, something gooey... something... like a blood clot. :(

Flash forward to aprox 7:30pm and my nose is still going back and forth between bleeding and not. I finally decide that I can't allow this to happen all night because I wont be able to sleep and make it though the night with this going on, so I called my surgeon. He finally decided that I should come into his office so he can get a grasp of this nosebleed.

At 9:00 I arrived at his office and he started to do what he could do to stop the bleeding. His thought is that I have a nosebleed towards the back of my nasal cavity which I guess is pretty uncommon, but it can happen from time to time. He attempts to stop this by sliding some gel'd up tubes down my nose (very uncomfortable), but unfortunately it doesnt stop. His next plan of attack is inserting something called a Nasal Pack. A Nasal Pack is basically about a 2" foam tampoon that is inserted into the nose. Let me tell you this is pretty painful and creates an insane amount of discomfort. Unfortunately these don't stop the bleeding, as they don't reach the area in my nasal cavity that the bleeding is coming from...

.....Off to the ER we go!

Once at the ER, my surgeon removes the Nasal Packs (PAINFUL!) and preps me for insertion of an even longer nasal pack. He does this my dripping Likocane (sp?) down my nose which numbs things up a bit, but still hurts in the process. The new nasal packs are Posterior Nasal Packs and are about 4" long and have two balloons in them which can be inflated once inside to add a desired amount of pressure. Once these are in, the bleeding stops and I am happy! Its quite a relief not to be bleeding anymore, even though I have tubes hanging out of my face (See picture below, and can't you tell how miserable I am?)

So yea... these beautiful things had to stay in my face for at least 24 hours. The time they were in wasn't terrible but it wasn't a great experience. Having anything like that which isn't a normal part of your body will take a toll and it definitely did. I was pretty exhausted the entire time and just didn't feel my best.

Luckily, they were taken out about a day and a half later, the bleeding had stopped and I havent looked back since!! :)