Surgery and Sjogrens

I had nasal surgery many years ago but it was before SS. I had several things done, one of them was to fix my deviated septum. After the nasal surgery he's going to shove about 6 feet of strips of gauze up into each nostril. In addition you'll probably have these plastic splints that go in your nostrils to stabilize your septum after it's fixed. As you can guess with all that gauze and a splint up my nose I found it to be extremely painful. It was so bad that I had to have somebody else administer my pain medication because I couldn't be trusted not to do something like take the whole bottle instead of suffering like that. But after two days of that the nurse called me to see how I was doing and I told her how horrible the pain was and she said well then just take two pills at a time! This was not what was on the prescription so I was pretty upset but I certainly did start taking two at a time. I think it was a week after the surgery that I went back in to see the doctor and he removed the gauze but left the splint. As soon as the gauze had been removed from my nose the pain was gone. I live in the US and I don't know where you live but if you live in the US as well you might have to fight to get enough pain medication. Be sure to talk to your doctor about this before surgery.

You've already had this surgery once so you're familiar with all the accoutrements. So much of the pain has to do with the doc/surgeon's skill. I did not have Amkoffee's experience. The doc did many things: removed a bony growth between my eyes, drilled extra drain holes in a sinus cavity, and did his best to correct the deviated septum. He had made no promises on that as he believed my nose was badly broken before I was 5 & untreated. That was in "90, a few years ahead of my diagnosis. He improved things but it's not perfect. When I needed a 2d sinus surg a few years ago the otolaryngologist decided not to try to do anything more for fear he'd make it worse.

So have a serious conversation about whether things can really be improved. If the doc says "oh absolutely" I would be cautious and ask why he's so certain. If he hasn't got clear medical reasoning, go elsewhere, especially if you are in the States.

I've had 6 surgeries since my diagnosis and 4 before. I recently had double blepharoplasties. I had a flare that started several days after the eyelid surgeries, terrible neuropathy in both my feet that lasted so long & covered much more area than ever before. But it may have been my degenerated spine & having to sleep propped up or in recliners for many days. It started after I came home and slept in my lift chair and could easily have been due to getting my spine in bad positions for long stretches. Surgery was 3.1 and the neuropathy has passed. I saw my neurologist a few weeks into it but he didn't think it worth agonizing me with EMG & nerve conduction. If he wasn't worried & was okay with me upping my gabapentin as needed, then I was okay with it too. He couldn't say whether it was sleeping in the chair or from a flare of SS, either.

Nothing else flared. Neither sinus surgery took long for recovery, but surgery inside the skill is very painful and if you're in the States you must have a pain med conversation with the doc before your surgery. While intense, I've not had skull surgery pain last more than 3 or 4 days.

I've never recovered quickly from any cut on my body, whether from a piece of paper, barbed wire or a surgeon's scalpel, but that's all on the skin. The 10-12" incisions have taken a long time. They won't be doing anything to your skin to fix your septum, not unless that surgery is radically different from mine. If they go so far as to break your nose as part of the fix, it will hurt longer & take longer to heal.

There are no guarantees unfortunately. Does the septum affect your daily life?