After my mom and best friend left last night, I started the futile attempts to get some sleep. My sleep pattern went like this: for 45 minutes I would wake up every 5 minutes, and then I would sleep for 15 minutes. I keep having apnea episodes that felt like my throat was closing up, and this is what would wake me up.

The night nurse was not that great.

I guess I fell asleep at about 4am after watching The 3 Stooges and slept until 6am when the nurse came in to give me breakfast. Breakfast was some chicken broth, jello, lemon icee, apple juice, and decaf coffee. I only had the broth and the jello. I didn’t want the lemon icee because I wanted to avoid any citrus on my throat and I took a sip of the decaf. This was my first time eating since Monday night before the surgery.

The day nurse was back, and she was a delight. She said she was happy to see us because apparently her other patients were not as nice. She gave me some antibiotics through my IV, cleaned up my nose, and started processing my discharge. Dr. Prasad had actually done everything in advance.

I was happy to get out of bed and get dressed and at about 11am I was on my way out. I was having problems with my nose getting stuffed up and difficulties breathing through my mouth, but everything else was ok.

On the way home, we stopped to get my medication, hydrocodone and amoxicillin. I was having a really hard time breathing and I asked my doctor if there was anything I could do. He said it would be difficult while I had the splints, but I told him I couldn’t breathe out of my mouth either because it felt like my throat was clogged up. I asked if I could get some mucinex to stop the runny nose, or do some sinus rinses to clear everything out. I expressed my desperation and he finally prescribed some steroids to cut the swelling down in my throat so that it would be easier to breathe through my mouth. I decided not to go with the mucinex because I was already taking too many medications, but I did swap the saline spray’s he originally prescribed in favor of doing the saline sinus rinses. It helped clear out the mucous and the little bit of blood that was drying up. He said if I needed to I could come in tomorrow and get the splints removed, instead of waiting until Friday. He said the extra day would mean better healing.

After a few hours, I was able to breathe through my nose and I was feeling fine. In the evening, I finally had some chicken and vegetable soup that my mom liquified, and some chocolate pudding.

Now we are just watching TV in bed, and I feel good. My throat feels fine and it’s not closing up at all. I think tonight I will be able to sleep ok.