It has been a while for us to update or post here because we couldn’t travel to Japan or go to a leather workshop. We still made to update our Instagram account with a few rare heavy snow views from Texas two weeks ago in the US. We had 9 inch snow in our backyard and the last history record of 6.5 inch was in 1949 for our area. Global warming is real and hopefully more people are willing to be educated and do their parts for sustaining our environment.
Since March last year, we only did a few short road trips within the state. We haven’t got on plane yet and have been missing Japan a lot recently. The remedies we have are cooking Japanese food following simple recipes from Japanese Cooking 101 and watch Saturday Night Live by ARASHI at bilibili. The food and culture are what we miss the most. Really hope we could go back soon.
AupairToes didn’t ever do any surgery growing up. Recently due to years of allergies and chronicle sinus issues, she had to go through this first ever surgery with full-body anesthesia. It sounded terrifying. However, the doctor mentioned it’s really a simple procedure like pulling out a wisdom tooth and it will be done in a clinic rather than the outpatient operation room at a hospital. It’s also necessary for AupairToes as several of her sinus areas are fully closed and only the balloon dilation surgery could reopen and restore the pathways. Check out this simply animation video shared by the doctor. It helped to calm down AupairToes a lot before she was too afraid of the big word ‘surgery’
3 days before the surgery, the doctor prescribed two medicines to help make the sinus area at the best condition for surgery. On the surgery day, just wear casual clothes and short sleeve to the clinic. The check in process was super easy for AupairToes and her friend (who is required to be at the waiting area during the whole time). The anesthesia was done via IV sedation placed in a vein on top of the right hand. It didn’t take long for AupairToes to totally fall to sleep while chit-chatting with the nurses. When she woke up, she was already on a wheel chair and saw her friend in the waiting room.
The whole process took only about 45 minutes. AupairToes didn’t feel any pain or discomfort afterwards. According to her own words after she woke up 80%, ‘I had a really solid sleep and didn’t dream at all’. She was having a huge smile like she just got a little tipsy with a glass of champagne, haha. She had a light layer of drain gauze underneath the nostril and above the mouth, nothing that different from a half-size mask and can be easily covered by a normal mask so no one would ever tell that she just had a surgery.
Her friend took her to drop by her favorite fast food chain Chick-fil-a to grab some food but she was required to fast 8 hours without any water or food before the surgery. That was one of the best meals although AupairToes couldn’t really smell anything. 2 hours after surgery, she could already function normal, go and pick up medicines from pharmacy on her own (still no driving or heavy lifting though and for another week, so that bleeding is fully controlled for recovery).
It did bleed a little (a few drops) every hour right after the surgery and gradually (after about 3 hours, only a few drops once every 3-4 hours). She only used Afrin spray once at night when some more bleeding happened. She leveled up the cushions on the bed and half-sat sleeping pretty well for the whole night. The next day, which is actually today, she started rinsing the nostril with saline formulas to get rid of bleeding residuals.
What a blessing for first surgery ever as such a smooth and easy process! AupairToes is super grateful to have a friend living in the same neighborhood to give her the rides, and she didn’t have any pains, numbness of mouth/face areas like some other patients could. She is just lying on the couch, watching TV and blogging here to record all her appreciation and peace in the heart here.
