oh nose! - Friday 24 October
I told lots of people this in person but I haven't posted it here yet: I have an appointment on Friday 24th October to get my nose fixed.

This isn't cosmetic, contrary to a very lovely recent email - it's a nasal polypectomy. Compared to many things this is a very minor health complaint, but it's bugging me now and I'm looking forward to the results of the surgery. I was born with unilateral choanal atresia which was fixed with a series of operations from birth to age 3 or so, but my nose has never worked all that well, and I think it's got worse over the years. It took me a while to get a proper diagnosis of what was wrong with it not least because it wasn't quite bothering me enough to want to look into what the options were, but I finally got sick of it in December and got a referral to an ENT specialist from my GP. The ENT person looked up my nose and said "goodness me, what enormous polyps you have up there!", and booked me for a CT scan.

I still don't have the data from the scan to show you, I'm afraid, but Jess came with me to the hospital when I went to discuss the results and the consultant showed the scans to me. I hadn't quite realised what I've been putting up with all these years 'till I saw that scan! It's black where there's air, white where there's bone, and gray for flesh or brains. A normal nose would show gray, then white, then a invisibly thin line of gray where the bone is protected by skin, then black for the airway. My nose is gray, then white, then gray, with a small circle of black in the middle which is what's left of my airway. What do you all do with all that space up there? Once it's all cleared out there will practically be room for a small party actually inside my nose!

So I'm booked in for surgery with Mr Hinton at 1200 on Friday 24 October. I should be under general anaesthetic for an hour or less, during which they will suck at bits of the polyps with a sucky thing and snip them off. I'll then wait in recovery for a few hours (on my own sadly) before Jess takes me home in a taxi, and I'll be taking about a week of work to recover, for some of which I'll have a thingy attached to my head to protect my nose. It'll be uncomfortable for a while, but it's going to be so worth it. I thought to post this now because I'm not having a great nose day right at the moment, and I cannot wait to find out what it's like not to have to put up with this.