Looking back on my contemporaneous blogs a year or so later,
it amazed me that I'd managed to forget just how bad my knee had become and how
limited my range of movement was. That's not surprising; human beings tend to process
memories through a filter of subjectivity, and sometimes we selectively forget
things. Remembering this, I'm going to record in this blog all the problems
that I'm having that I ascribe to my deviated septum, in order to better
ascertain in the future if the septoplasty was a success.
My diagnosis was somewhat unusual for me. I'm quite possibly a hypochondriac, so sometimes I collate physical symptoms and then convince myself that I have all manner horrific illnesses that match those symptoms. With my nose however, I received a formal diagnosis
before I became aware of all the associated potential symptoms. I've always felt that my nose isn't right, but the two most annoying aspects about it have been that I can't
breathe through it very well, and that it constantly feels like there's something stuck
up there. My visiting the doctor was the result of finally becoming fed up with
the two sensations noted above.
Since receiving a formal diagnosis, I've done a bit more
reading into the symptoms of a deviated septum, and some of them are pretty
familiar. According to Wikipedia, the symptoms of a deviated septum
include the following:
Infections of the
sinus - This I don't think I suffer from, but I am aware that my nose gets
bunged up a hell of a lot.
Sleep apnoea -
Potentially. Sleep apnoea is a condition where an individual stops breathing
during the night, the brain notices a build-up of carbon dioxide, and signals
the body to wake up. Generally sufferers don't know this has happened, but they
do notice that they suffer from daytime tiredness. I've been using a sleep app
for the last few years. It records how much I move in bed, and from that infers
how much time I've spent in deep sleep, light sleep and awake. Without fail, I
seem to wake up 2-3 times a night. However, sufferers of sleep apnoea wake a
lot more than that – generally 5 to 10 times an hour.
Snoring - Yup.
Repetitive sneezing
- I actually do this a lot. Apropos of nothing, in the office, I will suddenly
start sneezing away. I had attributed it to my nose being interrupted by paper
motes floating about the office, but in retrospect perhaps not.
Facial pain - In
line with the infections of the sinus, I do regularly experience pain at either
side of my nose and behind my eyes. Again, this might be related to spending
all day staring at a computer screen.
Nosebleeds - Don't
experience this at all.
Difficulty with
breathing - This is certainly true. I can't breathe through my nose much;
while my nostril is okay, I think it gets overloaded from having to do the work
of two. I struggled to walk and eat at the same time, and I noticed that
playing football the other night I found it really difficult to breathe at all.
Of course, this may have been due to the cold.
Mild to severe loss
of the ability to smell - This is certainly a concern.
I've also developed a mild case of gingivitis between my two
front teeth, and apparently this can be caused by breathing predominantly
through the mouth at night, which I do. The nose is far better at filtering
bacteria from air than the mouth is, and so at night this can all fester in
your gub. On top of all that, whenever I'm outside, my nose is running. Always.
It’s ludicrous.
That’s everything I can think of for now. I’ll add anything
else I can think of in later posts, to try and get the fullest picture I can of just how conked out my conk is.
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