re: Have any of y'all have experience with a deviated septum?

As others have said, the surgery to correct it can be a bad recovery. I think most of them are balloon now, but when I had it in 2000, they basically broke it, packed it full of gauze, and put a cast on the outside. They also lasered some of the sinus cavity to reduce tissue size. I had an ENT do the septum repair, and a plastic surgeon did the rest. I woke up in horrible, excruciating pain. The next thing I felt was a nurse stick a needle in my arm that knocked me back out. Woke up again feeling loopy.

My mom drove me home, and I had the passenger seat laid all the way back. She stopped at the pharmacy to get my medicine. We got home, and I made it inside ok, but when I got near the kitchen sink I felt nauseous and threw up blood all in the sink. I still don't know how I lunged and managed to get it all in the sink in my drugged up state, but I guess instincts kicked in. Slept in a recliner for a week with a squeeze bottle of water next to me. You'd wake up with the worst dry mouth and you couldn't sip on anything or use a straw, so I had to just blast the back of my mouth with water so I would quit gasping for air.

I had to do saline rinses several times a day. Alternating the Lortab and Ibuprofen, and the pain was manageable. After about 2-3 days I was just taking Ibuprofen. When they took the packing out a week later, it was both the worst and best feeling at the same time. Felt like a foot long slug was being pulled out of your brain, but right after you could breathe better than ever.

Also, if you end up with the cast like I did, you can't shower while it is on. They actually told me to take a long, like 20-30 minute, hot shower before I came back to the office to get it removed. The steam loosens it up some. I pretty much shaved my head before the surgery since I knew I couldn't shower for a week and didn't want to deal with greasy long hair.