I PASSED OUT!!!!

I'm not a wuss. I swear. Its not my fault......Its the Vagal Response - basically stimulating certain nerves or blood vessels causes my blood pressure to plummet and me to pass out. Not too fun - but after my first episode (I was donating blood in high school) I learned out to read how my body reacts as to avoid passing out cold and donkin' my head on something. So at least I know its coming and I can sit or lay down :) It also happened when I got a shot for my teeth surgery (I thought the anesthetic was just working quickly), when I got the wisdom teeth stitches out, various times giving blood samples, get IV's......and apparently when exposed to large implements of torture.

Items such as this.......

You can't see the scale, but the long, evil, pokey thing is about 12 inches long. HUGE. It looks like a needle, but its actually a fiber optic telescope. I had an appointment with the ENT specialist today, and he squirted some lidocane/ephedrine mix up my nose. Tasted HEINOUS. And he's like "Oh, this won't hurt at all". Then proceeded to shove 8 out of the 12 inches up INTO MY BRAIN. It didn't hurt, really, but the whole tickling my brain thing was weird. It might have just been my throat, but I swear it was my brain.

After he took the Torturous Tool of Doom out of the 2nd nostril - I started feeling a little woozy. I let him know, and he promptly laid me back in the chair, and then doused my head, neck, chest and arms with a cold, sopping wet cloth. Made my shirt pretty wet, but definitely brought be back pretty quick. He thought I was out for a couple seconds, and I may have been...I felt all the blood rush out of my head - and I couldn't respond to him when he was talking "Stay with me, stay with me!" but I still could see and hear everything.

He also made me feel better by saying it wasn't an uncommon response :) And, while he rarely talks surgery during the initial visit of a patient, my case was pretty severe......

So, the good news is that I'm recovered just fine, the bad news is he confirmed I could really, really benefit from surgery. The doctor in Mexico told me the same thing, I just didn't want to do it down there (although it probably would have been cheaper). I also brought the doc my CT scans that I had done in Mexico (check them out at an older post HERE) - I've got a severely deviated septum, and enlarged turbinates. So, I'll get the septum straightened and the turbinates reduced, and maybe, just maybe I'll be able to breathe like a normal person again. Its been so long since I've been able to breathe well, I really can't remember life being any other way.