Non-CPAP Forum Posting

Posted by gary.in.fremont on May 28, 2001 at 17:23:12:

In Reply to: Hubby getting Septo/Uppp, any advice or concerns? posted by CST on May 28, 2001 at 07:55:32:

Hi.

Despite what I'm about to tell you about my own experience, I would say that septoplasty and UPPP are generally very safe operations. I would also say that most people who have them are pleased with the results. I know that so far, I am very pleased.

If my recovery has been any indication of what's typical, then I'd think your husband will have no more than a week of significant pain, and probably no more than 4 or 5 days, really.

Unsolicited advice: Get all necessary prescriptions from the surgeon before the surgery, and fill them ahead of time. Your husband will not feel like hanging out in a pharmacy for 45 minutes after he's released.

If the doctor wants for your husband to use Lortab to control his pain, ask for an alternative prescription as well, just in case. Some people do not tolerate Lortab very well. It gave me the worst nightmares of my life, and kept me from getting restful sleep at the time when I needed it most.

Also, you might want to check with your husband's surgeon to understand why no surgery is planned to reduce the size of your husband's tongue. The other surgeries are vastly more likely to relieve or resolve apnea symptoms when performed in combination with some sort of tongue base reduction.

Now here's the scary part that I warned you about, though it's EASY to avoid the mistake that I made.

If your husband is going to have his tonsils out as part of his UPPP, I would urge him to avoid bending down from the waist for at least 3 weeks after his surgery. (Actually, the longer he can avoid doing this, the better.) It is especially important to avoid bending that way on post-operative days 10-14.

If he needs to deal with anything that's on the floor of your home or othewise close to the ground, then he should be careful to bend at his knees instead of his waist. Better yet, someone else can do it for him.

If he bends from the waist, he will increase the odds of his having significant bleeding at the site of his tonsillectomy.

In my case, I bent at the waist toward the floor of my apartment on post-operative day 10, in order to refill my humidifier, and I immediately began to hemorrhage.

My doctor told me that bending over from the waist like that had caused an artery in my throat to go into spasm, and the force of the blood pushed off my tonsillectomy scab(s), which led to my nearly dying. This is more likely to occur on days 10-14 than at any other time, though my doctor told me that it's happened as long as 6 weeks after surgery.

If your husband does begin to hemorrhage, I'd strongly suggest that you make sure he's not bent at the waist over a sink. That's what I did, and it only prolonged my bleeding.

Very soon after I changed my position, the bleeding stopped on its own.

I'm fine now, by the way. And I'm still glad that I had the surgery.

I no longer stop breathing in my sleep, I hardly snore at all any more (and that will continue to improve for another 2 months), and I can breathe easily through my nose for the first time in my life. I still show some symptoms of periodic limb movement disorder (a subset of apnea that involves leg jerks when asleep), but that is also likely to improve over the next 2 months as the post-operative swelling in my throat goes away.

Best of luck to you and your husband.

-- Gary

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