Little-Stitious, Obligatory, Accidentally Historic, Educational, and Slightly Emo Pre-Op Post

WARNING: Growny-Uppy Language. Kind of. Deal.

Also, long, but do I really need to warn you of that anymore?

I'm not superstitious, but, but I am a  little sticious. 

Therefore, if I write a boring, Great-Aunt-Madge-Recount-Of-Medical-Who-the-Hell-Cares-Ness in advance of my surgery tomorrow, the worst part will be either missing my IV on the first try or requesting my ENT's research fellow's hand in marriage while woodstock high  sedated in pre-op. 

Ergo, without further adieu... 

Part/Procedure Un > When I was a senior in high school with a stacked bob and affinity for gangster rap, I had a twofer procedure called a "Septoplasty and Turbinectomy". Regarding the deviated septum, I did not, in fact, have a coke habit, as was briefly rumored, nor did I have a nose job (all due respect, nose, and I really don't have a problem with you, but if I had *paid and been anethesized* to have you restructured, my ski slope and football humps would not have survived the sculpting). 

Essentially, your sinuses (there are four sets, and yes I mean you, normal person) are split up into little prison cells of snot. When you have CF, and the abundance and viscosity of snot it entails, these little prison cells can quickly become jammed up and painful - and also render your sinuses useless.  So, a skilled professional knocks you so far beyond concious you forget to breathe for yourself, and goes to town throwing the baby out with the bathwater - or, more specifically, the cartilage cell walls with the caulk-like vulgarity gunking them up. 

When you wake up, you feel air on the back of your throat breathing through your nose with your mouth closed, freak out that your nose is missing, are reassured this is how breathing feels to normal people, and are elated. You then accidentally tell your ENT he's really hot, and everybody giggles because he's married with kids and  you're 17, cute enough yourself, and that's what people do in such awkward but innocent situations.  You then begin to feel like significant portions of almost-bone have been scraped out of your face skull with a dull ice cream scoop, are sufficiently drugged again, and repeat this pattern for the next week or so, wearing a hilarious and fugly strap over your ears and under your nose to keep from ruining all your shirts. 

Once recovery is over, you're basically normal, except that all of your sinuses are just giant empty caverns on the inside instead of daintily bifurcated little hollows. Which means snot the consistency of rubber cement "crusts" can be sneezed or rinsed out, instead of hiding out like Pakistanis in the hills waiting to make your entire immune system explode. Or give your really bad headaches.

Part/Procedure Deux > Moving on. You go to college, you learn things, you screw things up, you spend too much money (but still don't regret most of the specific items purchased, when analyzed in isolation - here's looking at you, J.Crew madras jacket with the peter pan collar), you make friends, you lose frieds, you become even more of a grammar snob than you were before, you learn that you certifiably see and think about the world differently than >98% of the population, you vascilate between   feelings of superiority and isolation in accordance with this fact,  you grow to love sushi, quit driving with your breaks, never quite fall for coffee and never shake your thing for tall/dark/handsome. For a few years (in my case, anyway), you feel like a nose-breathing rock star. Sure, pollen smacks you around a little in the spring, and fall with it's blooming and mold spores can kind of be a suckerpunch, but you're basically a normal allergy brat rather than a mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, everything-tastes-bland neanderthal. CF is a sneaky, insatiable little wench, however, and will eventually find ways to make your life a living hell on the sly.  In ways that look and feel like viruses, or normal exacerbations, or term papers and finals stress (since we liberal arts and social science folks have to, ya know, write things) or various and sundry combinations of the above. 

Until you wake up the day of your graduation ceremony with a sky-high fever, a headache that feels like 87 pick-axe wielding gnomes are going to town on what's left of your sinuses from the inside; until you end your New Year's Day lunch with your best friend early because you honest-to-god can't focus to carry on a conversation, despite consuming advil and migraine medications like Pez. Until, after a month of clawing around the medical system like that creepy, androgynous, lightly fuzzy Lord of the Rings creature begging someone, anyone to figure out what-in-the-name-of-science-is-wrong-with-my-head-and-will-you-get-me-another-hit-of-whatever-that-is-to-keep-me-from-chopping-off-digits-as-a-tactile-distraction, "They" do figure it out, and med students clamor around, feigning compassion while attempting to hide fascination and excitement that they get to see THIS (which totally doesn't offend me, because I was in the worst pain I think I'll ever experience and I was also one of them from my adjustable wheely bed). 

So in a matter of hours, you're prepped, drugged, hitting on people and debating the best of NPR with the anesthesiologists and praying to every God you can think of that your carotid artery doesn't blow while you're asleep, or that if it does, you live to talk about it on The Diane Rhem Show. (*note: not a common, CF-specific hazard. My anatomy just really likes to fly that freak flag high any time it gets the chance, so if you are a CFer who has stumbled across this trying to assuage your fears about your upcoming procedure, none of this crazy carotid shit applies to you and you'll be in, out, and on with your life in no time.) Thankfully, carotid stays intact, though the same can't be said about the bone protecting it from it's neighboring sinus, and all sorts of secondary and tertiary, um....bullshit? ensues, none attributable to my ENT himself, all conspiring to scare me out of law school, but giving me back that whole nose-throat-breathing thing again, and a wickedly specific, Nancy-Drew-like palate (no, it doesn't smell like "pizza" - it smells like "dried oregano" Duh) . 

Part/Procedure...um, Three >  More of the same from Part Deux, only without the structure, guidance, and artificial sense of purposeful accomplishment of being in college. Bounce around paralegaling (enjoying the grownup-jobbyness, but resenting I'm not doing legal research instead of typing and filing) dog training (um, ha), shopping yet more (with yet more isolated spectacular choices) and continuing  to follow and work on my undergrad thesis about traumatic brain injury and voting capacity (spoiler alert: no less competent than college kids that stroll on into the polls unquestioned). Try my hand/brain at grad school, decide if I'm going to be broke and exhausted I want to teach and inspire, write for masses not data snobs, and tackle actual problems with real-world models that sometimes involve statistics rather than try to find those pesky "issues" with which to blanket my super-special-stats-model; leave grad school, have a crisis of confidence, move back, and start selling clothes. Months-long nagging headaches and fatigue are attributed to lack of structure and abundant self-loathing, and are subsequently ignored. Sneaky bitch disease shows up again, in subtle, murky ways; insecurities regarding failure to have it all together at 24 punch back, screams at my monkey mind that I'm simply being a weak little bitch and simply need to suck.it.up., DIG DEEP, blah blah blah; monkey mind screeches back that I'm in leopard print, not the military, and ENT discovers it's time for yet another cavern scraping. 

So here we are.  Tomorrow around 11:30, I'm going to show up and cross my toes that the incredibly smart, nice, personable and attractive research fellow does not giggle or gasp in horror that the girl he saw and talked with at lengths today is, in fact, the same jammie-clad bespectacled mascara-less troll that stands before him now. I will deliver him my study-material scratch-and-sniffs and hope he swings by pre-op once I'm loopy so I can "accidentally" tell him he's hot. In the meantime, I will hang out on a little cot, shaking my left foot maniacally without even realizing it, go over my Mesopotamian scroll of medications, allergies, and procedural histories with myriad medical professionals, and do it all kindly, because they're asking to keep me safe, and because they are treated worse than retailers more often than we should collectively be comfortable admitting. I will make the same jokes, get the same surprised laughs, and be happy I can make someone feel appreciated and relaxed while also reminding them that their patients are human. I'll be given a sedative, and begin to feel more light, relaxed, optomistic and hopeful than I can ever really muster under normal circumstances, and as I get less euphoric and more sleepy, I will reflect on how very, very lucky I am in many ways, but mostly that my parents are both there, both love me, and that their presence in such situations allows me to psychically, metaphorically, relax back into a hammock and know that even if everything turns out horribly, everything will be just fine.

I will hug them both, panic momentarily that they have no idea how much I love and appreciate them and never will if I don't come back, calm myself down, come back for one more hug, answer "Amy Winehouse" or "Grace Potter & the Nocturnals" when asked my choice of music, confess I'm just as good with NPR, go to sleep, and with any luck, wake up on the other side - breathing through my nose to the back of my throat, a little groggy and a little more sore, and a lot grateful to start the cycle all over again.

See you on the other side, fabulous ones!