So went with my followup with the ENT this morning. I am out of work for another week! :-O I thought it was crazy! But they said for a broken nose, it takes around nine months to a year for it to completely heal. This means, I will be having to go back periodically for the next year to ensure that the bones are settling correctly, no infection, etc. What UNsettled me was, she said in some cases, they have to do additional surgery!! :-O Oh my word! She said of course it would be if the way it was healing was interfering with my breathing. Lets pray I won't have to do that again. I'd rather get pregnant and do another c/s before I have surgery on my nose again.
But conclusion is, it's healing, however slowly ... it IS healing. For that I'm thankful. Even though we don't physically see the swelling outwardly, inside there's still a lot of swelling ... oh and I have to keep snorting Afrin every few hours (uhg). What else. Oh I will be finishing my oxy codone Rx this weekend according to the number I have left, so that will lead me to the eventual weaning off the narcotics by the time I get back to work. The plan will be run out of oxy codone, go down to vicotin, and eventually work myself down to ibuprofen. I actually giggle at the thought of ibuprofen helping with this pain I have right now ....
She did explain it well. She said that you can basically say, I've had two injuries in two weeks. The initial break, injury one. Then the reset was an injury in that they actually went in, and moved my bones around. FTR, it felt like they moved my bones around, too. So my nose has been "interrupted" twice ;o) It just amazes me, cause when Jackson broke his arm, there weren't near as many concerns when they set the bones back together. But I guess dealing with the face it's completely different because there are SO many areas that can be affected around the nose verses any other bone.
My next appointment is May 30th and I have "homework" for that appointment. They want Jay to watch me sleep, and look at how much I actually snore, the sound of the snore, if it appears I stop breathing for any amount of time, how much I jerk in my sleep (I know I do, at times I feel like I'm coming off the bed), how long I sleep and how quickly I become tired again .. you know, that kind of stuff. Then at the next appointment he will look at what we've recorded, do his examination, and possibly refer me for a sleep study. They said it could be possible that my septum was deviated before the break and has contributed to my lack of quality of sleep. So since they've corrected the deviation, it's possible I might be sleeping better than I was before the break- that is, after the swelling goes down more.
I felt so bad calling my boss this afternoon. I know it's put them in a bind staff wise but what am I supposed to do? Worker's Comp is not going to pay out anything if my recovery is hindered because of going back to work too soon. They said NO bending my head over, at all. They said if I worked in an office on a computer all day, it would be fine. But I work with people that are two feet tall. Just a few weeks ago my boss and I were discussing the amount of migraines I have had since I started working. The angle I keep my head at most of the time has GOT to have a LOT to do with it, holding my head down at an angle, putting tension in my neck, which puts tension in the nerves going up to my head, which triggers pain signals in my brain, thus causing headaches. That's my theory, anyway. Oh but lets not forget about the teeth grinding theory, along with the TMJ we know I have thanks to Dr Cedric from the ER.
Such is my life. I've been working on this post for almost 2 hours now, and I got some GREAT news in the process! So I shall make another post for that *g*
No comments:
Post a Comment