Andy and I spent most of Tuesday at the hospital. Earlier this year Andy was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea, a deviated septum and enlarged blood vessels in his nose. He has been working with three different doctors, they all seemed surprised by the findings. Andy has been using a CPAP machine for his sleep apnea for several weeks now and it has been making a world of a difference. The dark bags and circles under his eyes are finally starting to go away and he is waking up energized in the morning.
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| Wired up for his sleep study, this is how we found out about his sleep apnea. |
The ENT recommended that we fix Andy's deviated septum and shrink the blood vessels in his nose. Doing surgery won't get rid of his sleep apnea but it will make it easier for him to breath especially with his CPAP machine and he should get fewer bloody noses. Andy and I weighed the pros and the cons of surgery and decided to go ahead with the surgery. Surgery was scheduled for two days before Thanksgiving, which is why we celebrated Thanksgiving early.
Initially we were told that Andy would stay overnight at the hospital after the surgery. As the surgery date got closer both the hospital and doctor's office said he would be released to go home the same day.
We arrived at the hospital Tuesday morning. Andy lugged a heavy laptop bag with him into the hospital, he thought he would have some time to kill and wanted to watch a few movies. I brought a backpack with some projects I wanted to finish working on, I knew I would have some down time. The nurses took Andy back to prep him for surgery and I waited for awhile. Eventually a cute old Polish nurse came to get me. She carried Andy's laptop bag and then gave him an earful for making his pregnant wife carry such a heavy bag-- it was kinda funny. I ended up taking his laptop back out to the car. As soon as I made it back to Andy, the doctor and the nurse chuckled a little-- Andy was indeed going to be staying overnight at the hospital and I didn't need to take his bag back out to the car, oops!
Usually people who have this procedure done are released to go home the same day, but because of Andy's severe sleep apnea there was a chance that he could fall asleep and not wake up. You aren't able to use a CPAP machine for about a week after this procedure.
They took him back for surgery a little earlier than anticipated. Surgery took just under an hour and thankfully things went well. We were a little nervous before hand because we weren't sure how Andy would respond to the anesthesia.
For this procedure they separated the cartilage from the bone in Andy's nose. Then they broke his nose, reset the bone, repositioned the cartilage, stitched the bone and cartilage together, placed some stints in his nose and used a special device to shrink the blood vessels. The stints will come out in a week.
A friend of ours is the charge nurse on the floor that Andy was going to be on. She was awesome and let me know what room Andy was going to be in and when he was out of recovery. The hospital was so full that day that Andy got the last open room, it was the TB room. The TB room in the largest room and it echoes, we didn't mind that.
Andy was pretty out of it after surgery, I expected that to happen. He was very pale and yellow in color and wasn't fully coherent. He has had a steady bloody nose since the procedure was done and a lot of pain in the back of his neck. Thankfully he didn't have any bruising. We got his pain meds dialed in, some food in him and got him up and walking and he started to feel a lot better.
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| Before. |
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| After. |
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| Trying to keep blood from getting everywhere. |
Almost every nurse that worked with us told us how lucky we were to have found Andy's sleep apnea when we did. They said that with sleep apnea your organs, specifically your heart isn't getting enough oxygen for 6-8 hours a day. Over the course of years that causes a lot of damage and often leads to heart failure. We feel really fortunate and blessed that we found out he had sleep apnea, that we are able to work with some amazing doctors and nurses and that Andy was able to have this surgery and that things appear to have gone well.
While I was at the hospital Bubba was home with Nana. Nana took him to visit our friend's farm. Bubba loved seeing the cows, feeding the goats, looking at the dog and horse, riding in the wagon, sitting on the tractor and playing with orange cones.
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| Riding Nana like a horse. |
Nana and Bubba also went to Cabella's to look at the animals and out for dinner. It sounded like they had a great time!
