The second attempt at the surgery was a success. I won’t describe what happened in the hospital because, quite frankly, I remember almost nothing from the first day after the surgery. The only thing in my head is the doctor who, right before taking me to the OR, shoved some soaked bandages into my nose. I also remember fighting to walk to the OR on my own two feet, rather than following protocol. In the OR, I remember jumping out of my clothes and switching beds, and I remember talking to my nice anesthesiologist. I remember her asking if I felt a stinging sensation and… I remember waking up in my room. I started texting Iza not to come because I was going to sleep. The text turned into absolute gibberish because the anesthesia was still making me groggy, and a few minutes after I sent it, Iza appeared in the doorway. I spent my remaining two days in the hospital reading books. “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers” by Mary Roach, in particular, made quite an impression on the other patients in the room. I don’t know why, it’s a really great book—highly recommend it.
Just as they broke and reassembled me on Monday, they let me out on Thursday, and I made it home with Tomek. I still looked awful then: a cast on my nose, black eyes, but with a partially clear nasal passage. To my surprise, the only thing prescribed to use after the surgery was… seawater. The swelling went down so fast that on Sunday the cast fell off my nose on its own. So I went to the hospital to ask my attending doctor if it should stay like that or if we needed to put on a new one. I was supposed to come back in a week anyway to get the stitches and nasal splints removed. It turned out everything looked so good that, just a week after the surgery, they took out everything they had left inside earlier.