The Nose Knows

May 4th, 9:30 am. Enter - Anesthesiologist. 
"Helo, Judy!  I'm Dr....I'll be putting you under this morning."
"Oh, so you're the important one huh?" I respond.
"Yep, that's me.- So how was your weekend?"

Next thing I know...
"Ms. Torres, I'm the nurse."

And that was it.  A whole hour of my life lost - I had finally had the sinus surgery done.  I had put it off for a small time.  Recurring sinus infections had become too mainstream in my life, and its presence was NOT appreciated.  As a singer, experiencing constant post nasal drip was not a good thing.  After a false alarm when my primary doctor thought I had polyps in my sinuses, I finally went to see a specialist.  The ENT, Dr. Jeffrey LeBenger, told me that once he did the surgery, cleared the clogged passages and straightened out the deviated septum, I would not only breathe better but no longer expererience the infections as much.

I stood up, and my friend, Brenda, assisted me.  My only anxiety about having the surgery done was simple:  How much pain would I be in?  PLENTY!  I can simply describe it as getting hit by a truck doing 90 mph, getting up and getting decked right on by a gorilla.  As a result the nose lands flat in back of the skull and just when I"m seeing birds dancing around my brain, the ENT came along and sucked my nose back into place with a big vacuum cleaner. 

My friend took care of me at her house for 4 days.  She said, "I'll drop you off at my house and pick up your prescription.  I may have been stunned into agony but I was well enough to communicate. And may we just take a moment of silence to honor those who invented these pain meds...I know people abuse them, but for those of us who are in that kind of pain, these medications keep us from jumping off a roof.

"Um, Brenda?...can we just go get the drugs?  NOW??"  And she was a GREAT nurse to me the entrire time.  If it weren't for her, I wouldn't have known what to expect and would have been far more scared with all the sensations I felt.  What did I have to deal with?  Drainage, blood, pain., the inability to breathe through my nose...sleeping on my back which I've never been able to do, pain in the throat, nose, head, teeth...I didn't know the nose could throb that way.  I lost my sense of smell, my sense of taste...oh I missed that the most.

My whole life was literally put on hold recovering from this....no shows, I canceled meetings, songwriting sessions...I watched way too much tv.  But hey, sometimes you just have to submit and acknkowledge that healing is first priority.  So after Brenda's house, I went to see Mom, who helped me through the rest of it.  I'm still not out of the woods yet, but I can now smell again.  I miss my cats,Sedona and Frenchie...but I had to give them away as I have not been home enough and to be honest, I was secretly wondering if I was allergic to them too - another reason for the sinus infections?  Hm...don't know. 

The lessson here was to learn that without your health, you can't really live life to the fullest.  You sometimes have to submit to doing nothing...and it can be okay to do that.  Appreciate your senses...every single one of them...it is one of beauties of being a human being...to smell flowers, coffee brewing, the smell of garlic oin a pan with olive oil...to taste the soup or to be able to discern whether you're eating cheese or chicken...these are the simple joys of life.  And I love them all!!!  Once I am 100% I intend to smell the heck out of everything, write more songs, sing louder, walk more, dance more, laugh more and begin to take even better care of this wonderful machine the Good Lord Gave me called:  my body.!!!