OK, now I should finally get caught up. As I said yesterday afternoon…Writing has been hard since I couldn’t see well, and speech-to-text was having trouble understanding me with my nose packed so tightly before. Even my voice has been affected due to throat irritation from the breathing tube.

Turns out I have either an eye infection or some kind of allergic reaction to whatever shit they put in my eyes during surgery. Usually, they put some stuff in your eyes to keep them moist and tape them shut while you're in surgery. I think this is an infection given how teary, red, and crusty they are, along with how weird and raw the skin feels around them. Even my eyelashes are stiff and feel wiry. I had to wash my eyes when I got up with a washcloth because I could barely open them. They feel like a cat scratched them. I just can't get a fucking break! So we'll be picking up the eye drops the doctor called in on the way home.

I asked Tom, do you really think these 12 years of suffering are suddenly going to end? And why now? I just can't believe there won't be another 4- to 8-year problem, but if it's that debilitating, I'm gone. Like I said before, if I'd known I'd suffer so much for so long, I'd have ended it then.

In better news, the packing is out, and it didn't hurt much at all—just pressure and irritation in the back of my throat for a while. My nose is still very stuffy, like when you have a cold, which is to be expected. Doubt I'll be able to taste or smell much for another week or so. Eating very little has lost me about 5 lb, but there's no way I could sustain a diet of under a thousand calories a day, and it will definitely come right back as soon as I feel a little more human and can taste again.

The doctor said I could lie flat anytime I wanted to, but due to the congestion, I'm unable to. Also, being elevated helps keep me from resisting the urge to roll onto my stomach. He said give my nose two more weeks before I go back on the CPAP. I'm amazed I've been able to breathe out of my mouth. I was really worried about that at first. At least I haven't woken up feeling winded. I'd love to know what my AHI score has been since surgery!

The only other thing the doctor said back at the hospital that I didn't like was that if this procedure doesn't work, my only other option would be nasal valve surgery, but no fucking way! I meant every word of it when I said no more debilitating problems. I'm done with surgery, and I'm done with health issues. Minor shit we all go through is one thing, but things that literally rob me of my life are another. I'm gone when the next debilitating problem hits—or he goes. Whichever comes first.

This procedure does have a huge success rate, though, from what I read, of up to 85%. He didn't just shrink the turbinates; he tweaked my septum as well, and I think he filed some of the bone, if I'm understanding everything correctly. He was more aggressive on the left side, which was giving me more trouble, but of course, they can't shrink them away completely because they're still necessary for humidity and other things.

The doctor said to wait two days before switching from Tylenol back to ibuprofen, which is way easier for me to swallow. I'll have the splints pulled out closer to home on the 4th, and he said that wouldn't hurt. Because I could only get a morning appointment, I may have to cut my sleep short. My whole life is health issues and the schedule game. I can't wait until I no longer have to worry about when I crash and get up, at least for a few weeks.

At least the next appointment will be closer, so we won't have to spend hours driving this old piece of shit, and the doctor shouldn't be 45 minutes late if I'm seeing him that early. I have to rinse my nose with saline, but he says it's healing nicely.

We're just about ready to hit the road again. It's sunnier now and warm and humid, but not unbearably so. It's so frustrating how things are closer to us here than they were when we lived in Maricopa, but take so much longer to get to because of the traffic and long lights.

Written this morning…

Although they called the three prescriptions into the right Walgreens after surgery, they fucked up and called the eye drops to the wrong one so we had to wait another hour before they were transferred over. They’re like miracle drops, though! I noticed a difference after just the first drop in each eye and even more so after the second. I’m to put one drop in each eye every 4 hours for a week.

Just took my mustache bandage off and put a new one on, and yay, the bleeding has finally stopped. Just a little bit of dried blood after doing a saline rinse. No pain or anything. I just feel like I have the head cold from hell, and worry I may be getting a yeast infection due to the antibiotic. Still tired and still not able to get much air through my nose. I can just barely taste anything.

Another thing I didn't like was when he said not to thank him yet until we see if I get any benefit from this procedure. I would be so fucking pissed to have spent all this time and money and gone through all this shit for nothing. So let's hope Tom's assessment of the before-and-after photos he was shown and what I researched is right, and that I have a good chance of breathing much better.

I'm also hoping that what AI told me is going to end up being the case, and that’s that I may not have air escaping through my mouth when I go back to the CPAP. Again, being the pessimist that I am, I have my doubts, but it said that if the nose is blocked, it's only natural that air would take the path of least resistance, which was my mouth. So we'll just see what happens over the next few weeks. It could take weeks and even months to fully heal.

Ugh, just checked the weather and it’s going to storm well past when I need to sleep. Yeah, Tom, because there really isn’t any curse on my sleep, and it’s not that I’m not meant to sleep or anything. Naw, I’ll be sleeping just great soon enough, right?