Rachael has been looking forward to Valentine’s Day all week because it’s the day she’s scheduled to have the splints removed from her nose.  She’s been very good for the last four days at limiting her activity and her nose seems to be doing fine, with no significant bleeding or discharge since the first two days after surgery.

We drive down to Sunnyside (the Kaiser hospital in Clackamas where her surgery was performed) for her 11:30 appointment.  We arrive early, she’s admitted early, and she’s out only about ten minutes later with the gauze off her nose and a big smile on her face.  After a week of having tubes jammed up her nose it’s a relief to have them removed and to be able to breathe through and blow her nose again.  And her nose and face look totally normal, the nose not visibly swollen.  Happy Valentine’s Day!

And she’s looking forward to getting out for some modest exercise after being idled for a week - probably the only time since we’ve been together other than her concussion-inducing bike accident when she hasn’t gotten any exercise at all for a week.  She’s been given the green light to start walking again as long as she doesn’t exert herself.  She makes plans for a walk down to the waterfront soon.

But not today.  She’s tired (she has been sleeping poorly with her nose under wraps) so she settles in for a long winter’s nap while I head down to Caffe Umbria for a chat with my sister.  Later I drive back home, pick up Rachael, and we head over to Justa Pasta for her first meal out since surgery.  We place our orders at the heated, covered outdoor seating area,; but soon the wind picks up, it starts to rain, and it’s cold enough so that we dash indoors and sit at the bar to finish our meals.

Afterwards, since we’re out in the car anyway we stop by the nearby Fred Meyers for some grocery shopping.  I drive Rachael back home to drop off her and the groceries, and then make the propitious decision to take a chance and park the Raven in the surface parking lot rather than driving it back down to Elizabeth’s condo where it will be safe from vandalism.  This is the first night since the night we arrived here that I’ve left it here overnight.  Every other day I’ve taken it down to Elizabeth’s spot and either walked or biked the mile and a half back home afterwards - and of course gone back again the next day if we need the car, which we have every day so far.

Next, we settle on the couch to watch the next installment of Dopesick, the appalling/horrifying/enraging story of OxyContin, the Sackler family, and the opioid epidemic (highly recommended, if you’re not aware of it or the story).  Isn’t that the sort of way everyone spends Valentine’s Day evening?

Soon after, Rachael blows her nose and notices it’s bleeding again.  A little at first, then more significantly - it’s dripping from her nose onto her sweater and favorite jeans.  We put her in front of the sink with paper towels and she pinches her nose to stem the bleeding while I look up her post-op instructions.  It gives the standard instructions for how to stop the bleeding and advises a trip to the ER if it doesn’t stop after 20 minutes.

Twenty minutes is a long time to stand still over the sink.  I try to help her pass the time by requesting that Alexa play her some Richard Thompson favorites, and finally the time passes.  The nosebleed is still with us though, and seems to be worsening instead of improving.  The ER it is, so we head off to the nearest one, Good Samaritan, about three miles away over in the Alphabet District.

How fortuitous that the Raven is right across the street!  Otherwise we’d be calling a cab or I’d have been biking down to Elizabeth’s in the dark to retrieve the car.

To make an already long story short, she’s on a Stryker Bed in the ER for the next three hours as various approaches are made to stop the bleeding.  It starts when the triage nurse puts a lime green nose clamp on her nose, which slows down but doesn’t stop the bleeding entirely.  And, it’s a terrible color for her - not in her fan, and it clashes with her blood-stained fuscia sweater.

Eventually they install inflatable packing up her right nostril (the only one that’s bleeding, fortunately), inflate it, and leave her to lie still for the next hour and a half while intermittently checking on whether the bleeding has finally stopped.  It’s painful - and in an ironic twist they ask her to rate her pain on a scale of one to ten to see if she needs pain meds.  It feels like a scene we just saw on Dopesick. 

Boring, discouraging, the time goes slowly.  I try to help speed it up by sitting next to her and scrolling through photos on CycleBlaze from some of our favorite recent outings.  Finally, about one AM, they decide she’s stable and clear her for release with the instruction to call her doctor first thing in the morning.

Unhappy Valentine’s Day!  The worst one she can remember, unsurprisingly.  The next morning though, it looks like things are stable.  She had a difficult night, her sleep disrupted by a very painful back for some reason; but this morning after a phone consultation with her doctor things look back on track.  This still sounds in the normal range of possible after-effects of this surgery, and they instruct her to come back Friday to have this new packing removed and in the meantime keep taking it easy.  Very easy.

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Andrea BrownUh, no it won't. Rachael! I'm so sorry!
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2 years ago

Bruce LellmanThis does not look like fun. I'm sorry, Rachael. I hope your nose recovers quickly now.
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2 years ago

Jen RahnJust catching up on the blog.

So sorry about this miserable evening and hope the next post has tales of improvement!!
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2 years ago

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