Tales of tonsilitis, bloody noses, and "I don't feel good" (s) PART 1

I woke up the other day thinking about a few years ago, when I got to experience how horrible having surgery is. This is kind of something I have been wanting to document, so down the road I can read, in detail, what took place.

For my sake, I am going to start at the VERY beginning. Here is your chance to decide wheather or not you want to continue reading a VERY VERY VERY LONG post, or hit the X in the right hand corner. :)

At the end of my freshman year (9th grade) I started getting horrible headaches. At the time I had only ever had ONE migraine, and I could tell that these daily headaches were different. I tried drinking more water, getting more sleep, reducing stress in any way possible.. and nothing worked. My mom was constantly asking how I felt and always getting the response "I just dont feel good." She decided to take me to the doctor. He was extremely nice, but a little concerned about the constant headaches, so he sent us to a specialist and ordered an MRI.

The specialist was kind of mean! First off, his office scared the crap out of me! He had all sorts of tools and instraments that I hadnt ever seen at my regular doctors office.. and second, it took him like 45 minutes to look up my nose, in the throat and ears and then say "I would like for you to have some allergy testing done, to rule out a few things." And like that he was gone. He talked to us a whole 5 minutes and left us with questions unanswered.

Fast forward a week, and I found my self sitting in Brother Boyce's seminary class. Someone had said something funny and I let out a quick "nose laugh". (ya know? where you lightly blow a little air our of your nose.. but you dont completely laugh?) In the middle of this little nose laugh, not only did air come out, but blood too.[This was one of many bloody noses I would experience in a years time... I had no idea what I was in for!] In comple embarrassment I ran straight to the bathroom.

I will spare you the details of the murder scene I left in the Mapleton Seminary Building.. Lets just say, Brother Boyce was concerned enough, that after about 25 minutes he politely knocked on the bathroom door and told me I needed to call my mom and go home. He cleaned up the mess, and a week later we were laughing about the whole ordeal.

Long story short (ha! Do I dare say that?) I had MANY days like the on mentioned above.. They consisted of headaches, bloody noses, and leaving school early.

A billion needle pokes and an MRI later, and we were back in the specialists office. Scared of what he was going to find on the MRI, and terrified I was going to be allergic to anything from horses, to grass, to hair.. the doctor came in and explained that I had a severly deciviated septum. Treatment for it was surgery, but in my case it wasn't necessary. He recommended a nasal spray for the bloody noses and ibuprofen for the headaches. He also told me I wasn't allergic to anything!

Sophomore year began, the bloody noses and headaches continued. I would occasionally miss school due to non stop nose bleeds.. And I suddenly started catching colds like crazy.
Every night when I would lay down to sleep, my nose would plug up, I would sleep with my mouth open, and dry my throat out. All of this would result in a cold and I would be miserable for about a week. I would sleep in (missing seminary) and tell my mom "I just dont feel good."

Over time, all of the horrible-ness, ceased and I was starting to feel better! I was only having bloody noses once or twice a month, the headaches were not nearly as often or bad, and I was used to constantly having a cold.

Life went on, and I continued to put up with my annoying issues. I made it to my senior year, and BAM one morning I woke up, sweaty, shaking, and feeling like i had been swimming. After one or two attempts of getting up, I felt like my body was strapped to the bed. I was so weak and could barely move. That's when I noticed the blood. In my hair, on my shirt, wall, blankets, phone. Everywhere.

Sometime in the night I had gotten a bloody nose. I bled and bled and bled... For who knows how long! I composed myself, shakily walked to the bathroom and turned on the sink. And what do ya know? My nose started bleeding even more! Drip drip drip. Steadily, dripping from my nose. In attempt to not swallow any blood, I tilted my head forward and held a cold wash cloth and a little pressure on my nose.

Again, I will spare you the details of what happened, but it ended in disaster. I had lost too much blood. I was getting dizzy, sick to my stomach and I had to be to school in 45 minutes.

My mom came down, realized this was probably one of the worst bloody noses I'd had (I had another one like this on a vacation an literally left a puddle of blood in a public restroom.) and we decided enough was enough.

We got an appointment with an ENT specialist and counted down the days until we could get some answers.

To be continued...