Surgery

3 days. In case you were wondering what the answer to the question: How long before this whole blog thing becomes more troublesome than you thought? Its 3 days. Why troublesome? Because suddenly your thoughts are out there and you have to keep adding to them like a deranged loon somewhat capable of coherent sentences. Jokes on you though I don’t actually think anything I write on here. That’s right, this is just a complete waste of my time and yours. It is Saturday though so I’m feeling Ultra-Crabby today. I should probably take the weekends off from blogging, I quite like the sound of that. But I signed off yesterdays with ‘More on that tomorrow’, so to not post today would make me less than honorable and I do not want that. On to our previous topic.

2 minutes. That’s the amount of time it takes to go from relief to have found the correct doctor and course of action, to absolute fear that you have to have surgery. In 2 minutes all the doubts I had about my needing surgery come flooding back. ‘You don’t actually have sleep apnea, you’re just really lazy’. ‘You made it all up, you’re crazy, you know this’. Suddenly it was all in my head again, every single part of me that was so sure I had a problem that needed fixing, evaporated. Gone. Just like that. That’s the power of fear. It can make you think the most ridiculous things, not matter how much evidence you have in front of you. Even my mother (a fantastic woman by the way #top5alltime) had to confirm with Dr. Ashraf that I actually need this surgery. To which he replied ‘yes’. Unfortunately for her, and me I suppose, there is still the possibility that he himself is a super demon with infinitely better acting skills than the one that preceded him. He could have realized the minute I walked through the door that he was going to play into my delusional sleep apnea narrative to make his money. I guess we will never know.

It was not the post-surgery process I was dreading, although that was very weird. And it wasn’t the amount of people who would undoubtedly see my penis under the flimsy hospital gown. Which was 2 by the way, I’m pretty sure my father and the nurse who was readying me before the operation got a look. It was all very awkward. But my fear came from the knowledge that I would be put under. Under with the possibility of staying there forever.

I’m not being melodramatic, it’s really how I think. Everything in life is down to probabilities. And I do NOT like increasing the risk of any harm to myself unless I really need to. And so the probability of dying during surgery is quite naturally higher than that probability when not undergoing surgery. That is a fact my brain does not and will not ever accept in a calm way. Even though I knew my chances of dying from the anesthetic or from sudden catastrophic nose trauma were pretty slim, they were still higher than 0%.

On top of all that, the thought of being made unconscious really did not sit well with me. By all means if you’re going to slice my nose open and break it apart just to put it back together again, put me under. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to like it. The anesthesia they gave me began to kick in just as I entered the surgery room, where a nurse flirted with me in some vague way, to which I replied ‘No, I’m married unfortunately‘.

After the surgery all the pain is in your throat. It’s basically all filled up with blood and mucus, which prompted me to start hurling up buckets of the stuff while my wife rushed to the bathroom to do more of the same. I don’t remember much of the post surgery period which lasted around 2/3 weeks. All I know is the first few days were the hardest on my wife especially. But she pulled me through and got through it herself god bless her.

The funniest moment after surgery was the first time I took the bandages off my nose and looked in the mirror. Dr. Ashraf was smiling and repeating the word swollen. I was barely registering that though and when I saw myself in the mirror it was quite a shock. I looked like a cartoon character because my face had no depth. My face was very swollen on either side of my nose so I looked like a character straight out of Bobs Burgers. Couple that with the psychological thunderstorm of suddenly having a different face and it all made for pretty fun times.

Thankfully though, I made it through the whole process and had a shiny new nose for all my troubles. Although my nose had been severely crooked for most of my life, it was now straight. A side effect that I was expecting, but was not as important as restoring its ability to inhale and exhale air at a relatively lively rate. And after taking off all the bandages and finally being able to breathe through both nostrils properly, I can tell you it was one of the best feelings I had ever had.

It was not nearly as good however, as that first night of REM sleep. Something I had not realized, or had forgotten, was that a side effect of my sleep apnea was a severe and constant lack of dreams. Every night was silent and every morning was anxious. The day I woke up feeling more rested than I can remember and with the first dream in years still fresh on my mind, is probably going to be in my top 10 days ever for the rest of my life. Right now it’s in my top 5 for sure, but I’m accounting for a whole lifetime here so I had to be realistic.

Anyway, that’s enough from me today. Time to watch Arsenal hopefully mutilate Man UTD (no jinx intended). Tomorrow is Sunday, which is still a weekend where I currently am. Still unsure if I will be blogging tomorrow. So I guess I’ll sign off like this:

More on that tomorrow?

Good Morning Internet

How’s it going? You all right? Glad to hear it. I’m fine by the way, thanks for asking. For those of you who do not know me, I am a 20 something Egyptian Male with a degree in Political Science from our very own American University in Cairo. Why political science you ask? At the time it was because I liked reading history and the one course I had taken in that subject offered plenty of that, so I thought why not just major in the damn thing, I’ve got nothing better to do. Fast forward 4 years and I’m still kicking myself that AUC had a FILM MAJOR  I knew nothing about. But in any case, there’s no point crying over spilt milk, although I do love me some milk so spilling it isn’t something I go around doing on the regular, that would be a tremendous waste that would surely get me a slap from the wife. Oh yeah, I’m also married. And yes, she is VERY abusive, it’s probably the reason I’ve started this blog, to try and seek help because there’s nowhere else for the pain to go. More on that later. But in all seriousness, the real reason I decided to start this daily blog is to get my god damn life on track. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a twitter-less hobo, I get shit done from time to time, it’s just the length of time between the first ‘time’ and the second ‘time’ that are an issue at the moment. Although trust me, it used to be much worse back in the old sleep apnea days.

Sleep apnea is terrible, if you have never had it, it basically feels like suffocating every night before you go to bed, sometimes for hours, before waking up having achieved little to no measurable rest whatsoever. Your brain never resets because you get negligible REM sleep and you continue a zombie-ish existence until you finally become so tired one day you sleep the biologically required 12(!) hours your body actually needs of sleep while breathing through one nostril. For over a year, maybe two (its tough to remember when things like this START), I persisted in this hellish existence, before finally thinking to myself, maybe there’s something not quite right. But I’m not one to rush into things, so I naturally took 6 months of self examination and assessment of my sleeping situation before I confirmed that there was indeed something quite wrong. The first dead giveaway is the super-breaths I found myself taking every night during my attempted sleep. Basically because my nose was incapable of filling up my lungs with a serviceable quantity of air, my mouth would have to step in, usually when I’m in Stage 1 of sleep (the one where it feels like you’re still awake), with a monstrous, alarming, yet ultimately life-saving gasp for air. This always had the helpful side-effect of pulling me right out of sleep and back to the realms of the very, very much awake. But it doesn’t stop there! If by some miracle, you actually succeed and fall asleep, the gasps just keep on coming, this time preventing you from reaching REM sleep during the night. I knew this was happening because I also had the charming side effect of finding myself falling asleep at strange times during the day (as well as being generally fatigued ALL the time). But the question was, how do I monitor this?

I had two options, one was to go to a sleep clinic. The second (and the one I chose) was to rely on a Smartphone app that supposedly measures your sleep and what stages of sleep you are in. Now I know what you are thinking, why not just go to a sleep clinic and have it properly tested, why rely on an app when you could have a definitive answer in one night. Well I’m glad you asked. The quick and simple answer is that the idea of going to a sleep clinic freaked me out to no end. I had developed over the years a distinct and measurable paranoia towards my fellow man (more on that later), and the thought of going to bed in a strange room where I would be monitored throughout the night was too creepy for my taste. Also I couldn’t escape the feeling that on that one night, my nose would for some reason decide to function properly, and I would be doomed to live a sleep apnea filled existence having been given a less than certain ‘all clear’ from Cairo Sleep Center. I realize the cynics among you must be thinking what a fool I am, rest assured I am with you on this one. I learned from a young age that my foolishness is not in my control, I was born with it, I live with it and I will die with it, so I have learnt to accept it. The App (Sleep Cycle on IOS) told me the following consistently in a 2 week period: For the first 7 hours of my sleep I would be in stages 1-4, and I would reach REM sleep at the 7th hour. This made immeasurable sense to me, because I had attempted to sleep 8 hours and overslept several times over the past year, so much so that it became something of a traumatic experience for me, waking up to find myself already late for whatever it was I was supposed to be doing, or whomever it was I was supposed to be meeting. So while the app was not a doctor, or a sleep center or an omniscient being from the 7th(!) dimension, it made sense. Alot of sense. Enough sense for me to embark on my next course of action.

More on that tomorrow!