Table of contents:

• Nose problems affect a surprising amount of your life

• The diagnosis - triple threat

• The surgery experience

• Post-surgery

• Summary

Chances are you’ve had nose problems before. Many people experience seasonal allergies or sickness-related blocked noses, which usually subside after some time. However, some issues become more than just mild annoyances.

Can you breathe worse out of one nostril? Do you feel like you can’t smell? Are you a very light sleeper? If so, this post might be for you.

I’ve had problems with my nose for most of my life, but I never really realized it. I thought that one nostril being better than the other is normal, and to an extent, it is estimated that up to 80% of people have a deviated septum, which is when your nose is bent in the middle. This can result in a sizable amount of symptoms, including snoring, sleep apnea, and headaches.

As for me, I’ve always had problems with sleep: I would wake up multiple times in the night just to go back to sleep, and inevitably wake up tired in the morning. I also had a terrible sense of smell, and I could only ever breathe out of one nostril.

The problem is that nose problems are very impactful in many cases but come just short of completely ruining your life. Because of that, I spent the first 24 years of my life wanting to fix my nose but never actually did it. However, with covid changing our lives forever, I decided it was time to do something about this issue.

My journey of figuring out what’s wrong with my nose began in London. With covid making me realize how fleeting life can be, I decided to book an appointment with an ENT. I underwent a CT scan and was told I had a deviated septum. I decided to wait until covid had subsided to do the surgery, and so six months passed. Right when it was possible again to book surgeries, I would move to the US.

After settling into California, I went to another ENT in LA, who agreed with the deviated septum diagnosis and added that my turbinates looked large. Finally, I went to another ENT in Virginia who diagnosed me with three things:

• Deviated septum: the wall between my left and right nostrils was crooked.

• Enlarged turbinates: the structures in my nose that deal with airflow were blocking the airways

• Nasal valve collapse: my nose’s airways caved in, causing my nose to collapse rather than expand when I breathe in, along with a general feeling of blockage.

So after three visits to ENTs on two continents, I was given a triple threat of diagnoses. The ENT who gave me the final diagnosis is Dr. Blank from Fairfax ENT: I cannot recommend that place enough. In general, I learned from this to always get a second or third opinion before moving forward.

On to the surgery!

After getting my diagnosis, I waited about two weeks for the surgery. During that time, I was pretty nervous. What if something goes wrong? And on top of that, Google was not my friend. Lesson learned: Do not Google before your surgery :)

The surgery itself was actually very straightforward, mostly because I was completely knocked out during the entire duration. I think it took around 2 hours, but the general anesthesia definitely did its job. However, the actual experience began when I woke up.

When I woke up, I instantly felt like I got hit by a truck.

It felt like the worst hangover of my life: I was dizzy, tired, and could barely walk. On top of that, there was a massive piece of gauze on my nose, and I couldn’t breathe at all. You’d think a nose-fixing surgery would actually fix your nose, right? It turns out that it takes a bit longer: my nose had splints inside it to make sure it healed correctly, and they’d stay in for a week.

I was told to use a sinus rinse every 2 hours, to expect some bleeding, and never to blow my nose or sneeze.

What followed were quite possibly the longest seven days of my life.

Day 1-2 - Involuntary all-nighters

The first two days after my surgery felt like torture. I could only breathe through my mouth, and a steady stream of blood was coming out of my nose, so I had to have gauze at all times. It really isn’t possible to describe how vital your nose is until you lose it. The whole time, I wished I wouldn’t have done the surgery and considered calling the ENT to take out the splints. The days were bad enough, but the nights were excruciating.

I think I didn’t sleep a single minute for 48 hours. Every time I fell asleep, my body would go on autopilot and choke because I couldn’t breathe through my nose. I would walk up and down the house, and at some point, I wasn’t sure whether I was awake or asleep. Naturally, I couldn’t do anything for those two days.

Day 3-4 - The worst

All the discomfort came to a head around the 3rd and 4th days. I still couldn’t breathe out of my nose, and the blockage was even worse than during the first couple of days. I tried to feel anything in my nose, but it was blocked by a solid wall of gunk (not nice). I kept rinsing my nose, but it felt like nothing was changing. On the fourth day, I finally caved and called the ENT to take out the splints, but all I got was a confused disregard from the receptionist. That was probably one of the worst days of my life.

Day 5-7 - Light at the end of the tunnel

The third and fourth days were definitely the worst; by the 5th day, I felt like a light was at the end of the tunnel. I still couldn’t breathe through my nose, but I could feel my nose clearing itself and the scabs getting smaller. I was able to get a few hours of sleep, and I kept rinsing my nose. It still felt pretty bad, but at least I was more than halfway through.

Day 8 - The best feeling in the world

After seven long days of torture, I felt elated to drive to the ENT to finally finish the process and get the splints taken out. This was mixed with anxious anticipation for the result of my journey: would my nose actually work better, or would it be just as useless?

Thankfully, I wasn’t disappointed: the feeling immediately after taking the splints off was indescribable. Imagine the feeling after a cold subsides and your nose clears, except the cold lasted 24 years. There were too many things to count that I could now experience: I could breathe without thinking about it, smell the grass next to me, and I felt much lighter in general. I always thought I was a light sleeper; it turns out that was also because of my nose, and I now sleep better than ever.

In conclusion, my advice for anyone who thinks their nose might not be fully functioning is:

• Get it checked out as soon as possible. Not because it’s an emergency but because the feeling after fixing your nose will leave you wondering why you hadn’t done it sooner.

• Go to a quality ENT, and get multiple opinions. This whole experience really made me understand how powerful your nose is and how much it affects your daily life. As such, finding an ENT that you’re comfortable with and double-checking with multiple sources is crucial.

• Don’t google symptoms or worry too much. I have good experience diving into the WebMD rabbit hole, and it is not a productive place. The truth is that most of these procedures are carried out thousands of times daily, and as long as you trust your ENT, you will most likely be fine.

• Don’t give up during your recovery. If you want the best results, just suffer through the seven days. It will feel like an eternity, but that first moment when you can breathe freely is worth anything in the world.

Good luck, and here’s to having a nose that works!