I Need to Get Born, I Need to Get Dead; I’m Sick of the Forms, I’m Sick of Being Misread

Wednesday. I had a doctor's appointment this morning. Faithful readers will remember that I finally broke down and went to an Ear, Nose & Throat doctor last month to get checked out after a lifetime of not being able to breath through my nose. Ok, I shouldn't say, "can't" because I can, but it is extremely difficult. I mean I have to really try at it most of the time. Couple that with bad allergies that can't drain due to these structural problems, and you get one miserable Johnny every time the weather or season changes. Well, last month the doctor told me to take allergy meds for a month and to come back once all the swollen tissue/inflammation had gone down. Today was that return visit. The doctor said that now that the inflammation had been treated, it was time to address the structural issues. He poked, prodded, briefly went over all of the problems again that he told me I had last time, and then asked me how I felt about correcting them. I asked him if he meant surgery, and he said yes. I told him that I would be interested in doing anything possible in order to be able to breathe as long as my insurance covered it and/or the deductible was reasonable. He said "good" and then began telling me what he was going to do, which is in medical terms a septoplasty, nasal valve stenosis/repair, and turbinate reduction in both nostrils. Basically this means that he is going to break my nose, correct my deviated septum, and slice off some problematic nasal tissue restricting airflow. To do this he will have to implant some cartilage to do the restructuring. I jokingly asked him if he was going to take it from my ear. He said that in many cases, yes, but in mine, no, which was good because the recovery time for the ear was much worse than for the nose. Ok, then, that teaches me to ask those kinds of questions...

Anyway, the point of the story is (there's a point?) that I am tentatively scheduled for surgery at the end of June. I plan to take off work at least a week afterwards since I have been told from several sources that recovery is pretty harsh and to expect a lot of facial bruising. Sweet... However, everyone that I have talked to who has had this surgery done not only has praised its after effects, but has strongly urged me to do the same. My good friend Lampsidebriefcase reiterated to me again today that even though "it is not fun... I would do it over and over again to get the results." I trust Lampside. He would never try to deceive me. Well, except for EVERY SINGLE SHIFT we worked at that restaurant together ;-). But that's a different story from a different life, although those were definitely good times...

So, now I am trying to catch up from being out all morning getting medical instruments shoved up my nose. I'm barely caught up from being out two days at the end of last week. I resolved that whole lien issue that I had to scramble to deal with at the end of the day yesterday, and now I am trying to get some reports done.

I listened to Pavement's Brighten the Corners on the drive into work today. I didn't have any new music to review plus I had a hankering for some Pavement since their name came up during a Broken Social Scene discussion a few days ago. I've done several posts on Pavement, including this one here, so I'll stop now to avoid redundancy. I know, Sass, that I said I was going to list 56 detailed reasons why I love my staple remover today, but I'm sorry, I'm going to have to bump it to tomorrow's post. It's time to get back to work. I hope you understand...