Tonsil Log

Ah, in reading the material about UPPPs and risks of surgery I just flashed to a memory I had from the surgery. One of the things that my most helpful Anaesthesiological team person told me was that one of the things he would do when he was taking me off of anaesthesia - bringing me back to consciousness - would be tell me to take deep breaths. He said it was really important to get oxygen going again because everything had been handled automatically. He said I probably wouldn't consciously remember the instructions because of the meds, but that sometimes it helped to mention to a patient before they were put under as it sometimes seemed to lodge in the subconscious. Anyways as I was lying (with eyes closed) in a foggy semi-euphoric yet completely dazed and confused bliss I remember hearing a chime, repeating a few times sounding fairly nearby. I then remember a voice saying "Breathe real deeply, just take a deep breath". I did several times and the chime and voice went

Found a description of a UPPP operation that I had put aside before the operation, it might be interesting to someone. It is long and boring for the rest of us. -------------------------------------- Some background: What does UPPP stand for? It refers to Uvulopalatopharyngoplasty (UPPP) surgery [see further below for full description]. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why did I have a UPPP operation? The primary health reason is because I have sleep apnea which gets worse as people age and can become a health threat and operations are easier the younger one is. [I am not getting any younger] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Part of a UPPP is removal of the Uvula - that little (in most people's cases) dangly thing in the back of (most people's) throats. This of course begs the question : Why do we have a Uvula? From http://www.interchange.

Yesterday and this morning it felt like something was in the back of my throat. Hmmm... maybe I am suffering from that phantom limb phenomenon where people who have lost limbs feel an itch where they no longer have a limb... I could be having some phantom uvula itches, cause there sure isn't anything back there anymore. Continued on until mid-morning when I was gagging so bad I had to run into the bathroom to cough and hack and clear my throat. Ewww. Finally took a look in the mirror to see if I could see anything and sure enough there definately IS something hanging down back there on one side of my throat. The lights weren't bright enough to let me see exactly what is going on back there - must be some stitch-related material coming lose, right? I can't think of anything else it could be. at least I don't want to think about anything else it could be. I will try to remember to get a photo this evening, but as it's Halloween I will probably forget.

Tuesday - My 4 week anniversary. My throat still feels "funny". Not funny haha, just funny odd. It gets dried out often and I sometimes feel like I am gagging on the back of my throat. I keep water with me at ALL times. Commuting, going to meetings, etc lest I end up with that parched gaggy feeling. Unpleasant. I am hoping it will go away, but I don't know what would cause it to - unless there is just some side effect of my throat healing that dries it out this will be it. Another odd thing, I have sneezed a couple of times the past week, but no really large ones. well, I can no longer hold sneezes in - I used to be able to pinch my nose and close my mouth and contain a sneeze. This afternoon the sneezes felt like they were exploding up from my throat into my nose - very odd feeling.

Monday, must be day 27. H&J were over this weekend, and after M's accounts of how "Alien" my throat looked, H took a look as well. She agreed that it did NOT look human - definately alien, or plastic, said it looked kind of like a mechanical covering for a valve or something. I guess that would explain the clicking sound I make when I drink. Another odd thing H related is that her brother (a professional rock musician - singer) chose to have his tonsils removed because his vocal teacher at the time told him that it was holding him back vocally. Maybe this is it, maybe this will be my big break! THAT is what has been holding me back all these years.. and I never even knew. I am getting frustrated at the clicking sound my throat makes when I drink a large gulp of liquid. It sounds _so_ loud in my head. I haven't seen anyone turn and look at me yet when I make the sound, but it is hard to imagine that no one can hear it. Maybe it's like that Tell Tale hear

Thursday, day 23 I think. M said that I still "pop" in my sleep, though not as loudly or with as much force. That sucks. While I knew there are no *cures* for sleep apnea and that even a solution as radical as the surgery had no guarantees and would at best significantly *reduce* the occurences or the severity it's still awfully disheartening. That was one of the large reasons I had the surgery - so I would stop waking M up at night - or at least so that I would stop waking her up so she would stop waking me up and asking me to roll over. bleh. I am discouraged. What a lot of pain and discomfort for nothing. I give up.

Cola products taste absolutely hideous. Since I used to drink a LOT of cola in the course of a day, this is a significant change to my diet. I have not had cola (other than a sip about once a week to check the taste) since before the operation - 22 days ago. Actually no coffee either. Other than being really tired in the late afternoons and late evenings I don't notice any other changes. I posted some new pictures from a few days ago. Nice shots of new internal architectural features of my mouth/throat.

Wednesday - Day 22 My throat bothered me a lot yesterday. Not painful exactly, just kind of a closed-in feeling, like I had to keep swallowing as if there was something stuck there (what could anything possibly stick to? There's nothing left there). Also my throat was very dry most of the day. Wow, is this the most exciting journal ever written or what? Anne Frank, move over. Meat is still the largest category of things that still tastes pretty bad. Not a great loss. Most other things are returning to normal. Sweet and salt taste buds are making a return appearance - chocolate and chips and popcorn taste pretty "Normal" now, at least as I remember them. [ugh] had to take a break there, I was practically gagging on air. This is not very pleasant. I still need to post recent photos and scan the take-home medication fact sheets I got from the hospital. Some interesting info there I hadn't noticed.

Thursday - October 18. Have a doctor's appointment in the middle of this afternoon so ended up taking a vacation day rather than fight the commute. I like my doctor, even if he can be a bit disconcerting at times. When I asked him about my sense of taste he said "Oh that will come back". He gave the brief talk about how simple phsyiologically taste is (sweet,sour,salty,bitter) and how MOST of what we consider "taste" is really smell, and since they did nothing with nose it should all come back. I mentioned that everything tasted kind of "burned and stale and flat" and he replied to the effect of "Oh, that might be because of all the cauterization". I said "What?" he said "Oh yeah, we did a lot of cauterization all around in there, LOTS of cauterization". So, maybe what I am tasting isn't the food itself, and maybe it isn't that my taste buds are out of whack due to narcotics or sensory deprivation, maybe things

Wednesday - Oct, 17. Day 15, first day back at work. Nothing much to report in the AM, but by the time I got to work (after making S's lunch and dropping her off at the Y, then returning home for a coat (too cold) and stopping for gas I was ready for a nap by the time I got to work. Day passed relatively uneventfully. Evening was another story entirely. ON the drive home, mind on the part of the drive home that I have been doing for over 6 years now, I suddenly had no idea where I was. I was driving on the highway at 65 mph and I didn't recognize one single thing about the road I was on or the buildings or exits or routes I was passing. Not a thing. The exit numbers were getting lower, which usually means one is getting near the border of a state, and the highway said North so I had a several minute panic where I thought I must have got on the main highway home going North instead of South and that I had driven almost into New Hampshire. That is a really long way from where I

Monday Monday. First day with no pain medication at all. Probably explains why I crashed and slept for 3 hours this afternoon (4-7). Still, only two days till I am supposed to be back at work - right now I can't imagine sitting at a desk for 7 hours straight without a nap or diversion of some type. My throat still hurts like heck, though if I can keep from swallowing (which I can do more and more of late) it is barely noticeable most times, Drinking hurts. Eating hurts more. Everything still tastes really crappy - I realized in trying to eat some of the horrid leftover pizza that it doesn't just taste bad it actually _hurts_ to taste it. Some things, like sliced turkey just taste horrible - almost like they are burnt and stale at the same tiome. Coca Cola has nothing but the flat burnt taste you get after drinking a 2-liter bottle in 2 hours nothing of the enjoyment. NOTHING to date has actually tasted "good" just somethings are less bad then others. This sucks. I don

Sunday - 10/15/01 4:06 AM (actually 10/16) Day 13 Another difficult day. Woke from the demon sleep with raw throat pain about 11:30, took some lortab so I could concentrate enough to drive (there's irony for you) and Z and I moved the air conditioner to the basement (per M's request) then I took Z to work. Another difficult dynamic day - withdrawal from pain meds is not fun. I am still having no fun eating beyond the novelty. During the process of eating most things at one point or another kick up that "burn" feeling in the top of my throat that feels like heartburn or reflux on an open gaping wound that lingers for several minutes. Hard to enjoy eating when your throat feels it is being skewered with a knife. Taste buds seem to still be on vacation as well. Nothing tastes all that great. Food yesterday was ok. Homemade applecrisp J & I ate was "ok", smooth and cool so that was good, but no great taste. The frozen pizzas I picked up for supper wer

Saturday - 10/14/01 Day 12 Not much to report. Woke up with a raw throat. Checked to make sure the girls were getting ready for swimming lessons than crawled back into bed. M took girls to lessons then tried to wake me sporadically as she got everyone ready to go to mom and dad's for mom's bday party. I was less then enthusiastic. Surly in fact. Ate my first "meal" for lunch, meat, vegies (squash), potatos(mashed), applesauce, felt kind of nice being pampered. Dad even pounded the heck out of one small piece of steak in case I wanted to try some. Very thoughtful. Had a nice time hanging out, and managed to reinstall their software and internet connections so that their machine would work. Felt nice to accomplish something for someone else. Tough day dynamic wise, I am sure my emotions are a bit out of kilter from being on heavy pain medications for a week and a half - coming down is not much fun. Throat hurts much less in general than it has in days, but the pain h

Friday, wow it's been well over a week since my operation. Yesterday was the first low medication day, as I finished up the amoxycillan and used the lortab more sparingly than in the past. Skipped the oxycontin last night as it was the last pill and thought I might not need it - woke this morning and wished I hadn't skipped it. Still pretty severe throat pain. Different and getting lighter, but still mighty painful. Took the last oxy this morning along with some lortab. I am hoping that I come no where near close to using up all of this latest refill. Last night I had my first "solid food", a peanut butter and jelly on a hamburg roll of all things. Was kind of painful going down, not sure how much was due to actual pain of surgery wound and how much was due to just having an unused throat. Was good to know I can eat food when I need to.

Have added a series of "Sick portraits" I took the other night when I couldn't get to sleep. I was basically just goofing around with the settings on the Snappy still video digitizer attachment I bought for the kid's PC ($7.95). Kind of fun. I know I could have gotten the same or more artistically acheived effects using a $700 software package like photoshop, but I like getting interesting results just playing with settings on scanners and the like. Reminds of the the good old days and "copying machine art" projects. Photos are at www.geocities.com/vinylrake/tonsils/sickphotos.html .

Thursday Oct 11th - 8:08AM M's headache from last night carried over into this morning so I got S ready for school and drove her to the Y. I wouldn't have felt confident doing so had I not already driven last night when I drove myself to Z's open house. Last night took a lot out of me, but I think it was as much the environment (dry, warm), my difficulty talking (environment combined with dangly feelings in throat), and being packed in with swarms of humanity. On the way home last night I stopped to pick up some more of my sole food source for the past 10 days - fruit sorbet. I got the last - ice encased - carton of strawberry sorbet in the store. Odd thing about walking through the store, at no time was there _any_ food that sounded appealing to me. Usually I see something or another and think "Oh that looks good" last night I was thinking "That would sure hurt to swallow". As I was walking out I was struck by how "unnecessarily" large o

Another late night/late morning combo didn't drag out of bed until almost 1:30 - and then only because M told me what time it is. She had been letting me know periodically - either that or I saw the clock occassionally while sleeping - I can't remember for sure which. 1:30 just seemed so late. I am sure the backdrop of a snoring sick man whilst trying to do productive things like make phone calls and the like isn't the most pleasant of background sounds for her either. The good thing is that the pain wasn't so intense when I woke this morning - it hurt, but I woke up several times before actually getting up and didn't feel the _need_ to get loredal. So that is a good thing. Monday when we went to the library I started to talk at one point and couldn't because it felt like my throat was closing up on me, and a couple of times since I have felt like something was blocking my throat - like I just needed to clear it really well (which post-op instructions say on

Yesterday I had some more of those odd dreams that occur in between waking and sleeping states. This time it was characters (like character actors) who would pop in to answer some idle question or thought I was thinking. It was quite interesting to hear them (in voice) make a particular point or argue a particular side of an issue - they seemed to most often play devil's advocate, though sometimes one would take one stance and one another as they debated the merits of a particular point of view or opinion. It was definately interesting to watch my brain go through it's reasoning process live and in front of me.

Tuesday? My one week anniversary, "already"? My how time flies. LaSt night I solved the "How to wake up 8 hours after you went to sleep without having your throat hurt like hades?" question. Answer? Bring Loredol into the bedside table and take it when I wake up at the 4-5 hour point so I won't be way into the red when I wake up. Another tought night getting to sleep, although I stayed up so long I feel asleep in my chair and only woke because my neck hurt from supporting the weight of my head. The combo of long hours alone in theory is a good one because it gives me lots of times to think, but in practice it ends up being kind of disconcerting. In the wee hours of the morning, when the house is quite and I am on my 6th day of heavy medications, ice water and sorbet I find that I ask myself all kinds of questions about life, about myself, about situations - and I don't like the thoughts that come back to me. Perhaps drug induced, or nutrition deprivatio

Not so much hot and clammy or itchy feelings today. this is good. After I got back from the library S and I went for a walk in the woods. I thought it would be good to get out, and it was but it was also a little scary - I think I was definately pushing the limits of what I can handle. After a bit of really slow walking I realized that I was fairly woozy and things weren't quite right visually, just a bit off around the edges of my vision. that kind of horror movie feeling that phillip k. dick wrote about so well, you know, the one where you you don't want to turn your head too quick because you might see the reality that is REALLY there? that you might see through the illusion that passes for perception on a regular basis? We got back home ok, collected acorns and caps along the way.[note: The reality of course about the walk is that we were "literally" right across the street, walking on well marked trails and never more than about a 1/4 mile from home. The "wo

One thing I forgot to mention on yesterday's note: On Friday I had some more really odd 'waking' dreams. This time it was dreaming while sitting up (S had been reading to M&I and she had stopped and we had both dozed off). I started dreaming dreams that were like watching the TV with the sound turned off. Colorful, dramatic, I could tell _sometghing_ was going on in the exchanges of conversations/dramas I was watching, but I couldn't tell _what_. It was so realistic that I thought maybe S or M had turned on the TV and I was hearing it in my sleep and my brain was filling in the missing pictures, or perhaps my eyes were open a crack and I was watching the TV really on but muted. Of course when I opened my eyes the TV was not on at all. Very strange. This evening more of the dozing off to sleep so deep that I couldn't force my body to get up. Conscious of the fact that I was lying on the floor, that the game (Tribond) was over and everyone else had left the ro

Monday - Columbus Day. 6 days after the operation. Woke late again (11am) to excruciating throat pain - just about on time for oxy though. Had trouble getting to sleep last night drifted in and out of sleep until around 4-4:30 - maybe longer and I just stopped looking at the clock. Took the triple dose of meds (all three at once) and within a half hour that (and a bowl of sorbet to chill the throat) helped enough to make the world a much less painful place. At least it stopped feeling like someone was drilling a large hole in the back of my throat. I am at the library now - we are out to run errands. I wandered around for about a half hour looking for map books or the like - only thing I found was a History of Medieval times in the reference "Not to be removed from this room" section. There was also a ancient builders book in the non-fiction by NAtional Geographic that looked kind of kewl but not something I need in the short term. Gonna run family is checking out books

Sunday - a low day Not much to report today. Woke up late and didn't get out of bed until about 1pm - finally the pain was so intense I had to drag myself out of bed to get some medication. By then I was several hours over the 12 hour oxycontin limit and probably should have taken Lortab when I first woke up around 10. Because I didn't things just kept getting worse - ended up getting up to more pain than I think I have felt since operation day. More localized, not the complete body system pain and discomfort I had after the operation but just as intense. I found it kind of disheartening after yesterday - which while I was feeling less then stellar much of the day I managed to go along to watch the girls at swimming lessons and drop Z off at work and run a couple of errands and have some reasonably civil interactions with family members, and not only prepared but put away food and cleaned up after dinner as well. Today I did nothing, other than feel like shit and piss off t

Finally it is Saturday, this must have been the longest week in history - at least in my own personal history. Well, ok, maybe not but time sure seemed to go sideways and in odd elliptical loops more often than it did forward. The Med's really mess up my sleep schedule - which has in turn been messing up my sleep schedule. Ok, that sounds redundant - what I meant was that the med's mess up my daytime sleep schedule and that in turn messes up my nighttime sleep schedule. I have definately been in a different state these past couple of days = here but not completely here. I drift a lot - in conversations, thoughts and in walking. Fall asleep sitting up and wake dreaming, things in dreams carryover into wakeful state. Last night late as I was zoning out at the computer trying to debug a program that wasn't working right and I was thinking that the whine and whirr of the computer and fan sounded almost like a monotone voice, the next thing I knew I could actually "hear&

Friday, Still the 5th of October. The aforementioned “Door Guys” (Carpenters) arrived at 8AM this morning and installed our new bedroom door(s) - the doors look great (and they are French style so they are “less filling” too) Took them until about 1pm though which resulted in me dozing off while sitting up. I could blame it on the software tutorial I was trying to wade through, but I think it was more likely the sleep deprivation and medication. I did finally get to sleep around 2pm and slept mostly through until about 4:30. Sleeping under medication is such an odd thing because I will wake up think about something I want to get up to do (or something I need to do) then wake up an hour later in exactly the same position thinking pretty much the same thing. I have gotten to a certain realistic acceptance now though of my difficulties - when M asked me if I wanted to go shopping with her and said we would need to leave in about 10 minutes I told her that if were leaving now I would h

Hot News Item! (No not related to my clammy sweaty spells). I now have some documentary photos available for your viewing "pleasure". Because they might not be everyone's "cup of tea" I am not including the photos themselves here, just links to them over in the side bar on the right. If you don't like pictures of stitches and the inside of people's mouths you should probably pass on these.

Thursday, Day 3, two whole days after the operation. First thing I had to do when I came to post my notes for today was fix all the references to what day was what. Seems I have been more confused about basic things like the passage of time than I realized. I think my day references are ok now, today is at least Thursday - that much I am sure of. Time has been passing at an odd pace for me. When I drop off for a couple of hours it consistently feels like I have been asleep for 12 hours or more. Yesterday I nodded off around 4:30 and woke at 6:30 and couldn't understand why it was still light out and why I could still hear S's voice - I thought it had to be at least midnite. [note: When I reread these notes I sure have the oddest typos. In the previous sentence I had written "and why I could steal S's voice"] Since the bulk of my day is spent unconscious it makes a day seem to last forever. Coupled with a sense of not accomplishing anything in a day that las

Wednesday, Day 2, one day after the operation. Slept ok last night on and off but _felt_ reasonably ok, even skipped the hurling painkiller completely which worked ok since the Oxycontin seems to take the edge of the majority of pain, the other is just there to help kill the pain on those rare occassions - like when I have to swallow or something equally uncommon. Recovering from surgery is such an odd thing, I act like I am sick - sleeping, shambling around the house, whining, etc, but if my throat didn't hurt so much I would be pretty much ok. I have the sore limbs and body parts from sleeping in the same position for hours on end but other than that and the excruciating pain whenever I try to swallow even liquid medicine or water (and we can forget about the pills cause my throat feels so swollen and unfamiliar that I can't even tell if the pills are going down or not) I really don't feel that bad. The throat is a killer though. I find that whenever I sleep for an ho