Jeremy Parker's Blog

Ok, after surgery on 11/30, things still seem to be going pretty good. Taste, sleeping, breathing have improved, however, still have a good bit of mucous and blood, especially in the morning.

Might sound gross but last night Tabitha had to help me with tweezer pull this massive thing out of my nose, it was dried blood and mucous. Strange thing though, when I went to the doctor last Wednesday, he pulled out a ton of stuff from my left nostril, and I could breath better than I ever have in my entire life. A few days later, it seemed it was clogged up again pretty bad, and last night, that cleaned it up again very well.

On Wednesday the doctor tried to pull some of the scabs and blood out of my right nostril like he did the left, but after a single tug, he said that it’ll have to wait until my next appoint (a month from Wednesday) to get it cleared out. I assume it hasn’t finished healing, and Tabitha looked at the nostril last night and wanted to try to pull some stuff out, but I wouldn’t let her because I’m worried it will cause problems.

Also, for anyone else who reads this with similar surgery, I have a white thread like strand in my right nostril. I asked the doctor about that and it turns out its just wear the sewed up, it should be absorbed and fall out on its own. My original problem with it was, the dried blood would attach its self to the thread and so when I would pull something out, it would feel very weird, it would get stuck to that thread and if I tried to pull it out, it hurt a lot. So, what I ended up doing is using nose hair clippers and just cutting the thread enough to get the dried stuff out, and so far, it hasn’t happened again.

Welp, that’s it for now.

I was originally going to post this in my About page, but I figured it’s probably better here as a blog entry.

Over the past few years I’ve been having a lot of health issues, which hopefully will come to an end. I’ve been to more doctors than I care to remember and they’ve done everything from put me on countless mediciations (nasal sprays, decongestants, inflamatory medication) to medical devices such as a CPAP machine, and nothing has helped. In November, I went to see Dr. James S. Barna at Countryside (Palm Harbor/Clearwater, FL area) and he took a quick look at my nose and sent me for a CT scan of the area.

This was the first time that any doctor I’d been to about my problems, which I should probably mention were sleep issues, feeling exhausted, always congested, severe snoring, and many more. (I might list them all here later for reference if anyone else has the problems). So, after getting the CT scan, which I’ll try to post pictures after I get them scanned, I went back in about a week later to look over the scans with the doctor. It showed that my left nasal passage, which is deep deep inside my nose, was extremely smaller than my right side. He said this was either from an accident involving an impact to my nose, perhaps something when I was much younger, or I believe he said I could have been born with it.

Either way, every other doctor I went to said I did have a deviated septum but that wasn’t the cause of my problems. One doctor I went to a couple of months before said I needed allergy shots, but I didn’t believe him and I felt it was the wrong approach. He wanted me to have shots for a minimum of 6 months, 2-3 times a week, which I thought was crazy, but apparently people do.

So, we schedule my surgery for Nov. 30th 2009, and everything went relatively well. I think there were two absolute worst parts, which were 1) the day I had the surgery, right after surgery, I woke up and freaked out. I couldn’t breath, my throat was killing me because they shoved a breathing tube down my throat, and possibly because of the blood/whatever else that was draining into the back of my throat. This eased up after becoming more alert after the anesthesia, however, I still had a sore throat for 1-2 days after. 2) The packing. My surgeon used packing, which I think is a better choice than the plastic stints that some doctors use, however, with it in your nose you obviously can’t breath out the nose. I still had blood coming out both ways, my nose and my throat, but they gave me a face mask type item that held a piece of gauze under my nose to catch any blood while I was sitting up or sleeping. This worked pretty well, but had to be changed frequently at first. Luckily, my surgery was on a Monday, and my appointment to see the doctor again was on a Wednesday, so I went that Wednesday and he removed the packing, and they made me sit there for what seemed like an hour to make sure the bleeding stopped.

If you search YouTube (I may post some links to the videos later), you’ll find some that show the removal of the packing. It is very uncomortable, but hopefully your doctor will do what mine did. Dr. Barna had me 1) take my pain medication before I came and 2) when he pulled the packing out, he didn’t really give me a chance to register what was going on. He just started pulling the packing and within maybe 5 seconds the packing was out. If they take their time pulling it out, it’s going to be a lot worse. It did hurt at first, but it was more of an uncomfortable feeling, because of the packing sliding out and it’s so thick, it would probably almost tickle if it weren’t for the pain. If you’ve ever had them scope your nose, it’s a similar feeling.

After that day I was feeling a bit better, good bit more comfortable, and like they said, 7-10 days, give or take, you start to feel a lot better. The only complication I had was, I did get an infection in the first day or two, and ended up with a high fever and the doctor ended up calling in an anti-biotic, and it’s been about two weeks and I still feel a little sick even after taking the anti-biotics, but it’s mainly just the large amount of mucus that’s coming out. I called the doctor on Friday and they said it is normal with this surgery, and I have another appointment to see the doctor on Wednesday I think, so we’ll see how everything is going.

So, after all this, once my nose is completely healed, I hope that things will be a lot better. So far, I’ve noticed that I sleep a good bit better, even without using the CPAP machine, and I can taste foods/drinks more, and my wife Tabitha says that I am no longer snoring at all. Overall, things are looking good, but again, we’ll find out more on Wednesday.

From now on, I think I’m going to try to update daily (some may be private, some may be public, so if there are days missing, there are most likely private entries), mainly for my reference so I can keep track of when events happen, what happened when, etc.

Since the embeded video below uses QuickTime, some Windows users may have trouble viewing it. You’ll probably get sound but no video. I haven’t found a fix for this yet.

Update: I changed the plugin WP was using and it seems to be working now.

embedded by Embedded Video

I have to say, I really like the new Coca-Cola bottle design/sizes, however, the new 2-liter seems to dislike my refrigerator, as it won’t fit in the same place I’ve kept my bottles for many years.

The smaller bottles are perfect for the mini-fridge upstairs, while the 2-liter doesn’t seem to add any convenience, infact it adds inconvenience, but it’s so aesthetically appealing it’s almost worth the trouble of relocating shelves

Years ago, my parents bought our cats a cat tree, similar if not exactly like the one Tabitha and I have now. Back then, our cat’s wouldn’t touch the thing, it was like beneath them to even consider looking at the thing.

Now, a while back, Tabitha and I purchased a cat tree, and I hoped our current cats Darla and Cricket would actually use it, and sure enough, as soon as I brought it home, Darla was all over it, and hangs out on it many times during the day. Our other cat, Cricket, has taken months to even jump up on the first level, at least in front of us. We’ve come home and seen her up on the top level, and she freaks as soon as she sees us and dives off.

I don’t know why Cricket feels the need to run when we see her on it, it’s meant for the cats and we’ve done everything we can to show her it is ok to get on it. At least one cat is using it, but that brings me to my original thought, why my parents failed to get their cats to play on the cat tree?

I know the main differences are:

• Our cats are female, and my parents cats were both male
• Both of our cats are fixed, they came that way. Parents cats were not
• Our cats have always been inside cats, parents cats were outside at one point and brought in

Who knows, could be personality as well :0

Several times now, recently, I’ve woken up, or come home from doing something and my wife’s cat, Cricket, has been found sleeping on top of our cable box downstairs. Now mind you, this cable box is located on a large wall unit entertainment system, and this cat does not like to be picked up, and if we are *watching* her, she refuses to climb on the cat tree we purchased.

I’ve attached some of the pictures I’ve taken of this cat. Feel free to reply, anyone who reads, though I regret most of my friends are a bunch of anti-social people who would probably never comment on a blog to save their life