I am a senior rhinitis sufferer.
In the city where I live in Nanjing, allergic rhinitis is a common disease, probably because the climate characteristics of the city in winter and summer are too obvious.
My earliest memories of the pain of rhinitis began in the first and second grades of elementary school (around 1984).
My symptoms are very typical: as long as the seasons change (winter into spring, autumn into winter), I will definitely not have a nose and can't breathe.
Then it progresses to headaches and dizziness, often living in a muddy mess during the day, and at night because of a blocked nose, falling asleep normally has become a very difficult thing.
Image source: Stand Cool Helo
The most embarrassing and troublesome thing was that I would have a lot of runny nose every day, or the kind with yellow-green pus. It wasn't like it was now, with handy paper drawers and small packs of tissues. So every day when I go to school, I have several handkerchiefs in my pocket and bag, and I have to put two small towels next to my pillow at night to blow my nose.
Looking back now, I have a strong ability to take care of myself, which must be related to washing my own handkerchief and towel every day since I was a child, otherwise the handkerchief is really not enough.
Now that I think about it, my academic performance has always been at a moderate level when I was a child, and it may be related to rhinitis. Just think about it: while reading a book and doing problems, dizziness, headaches and endless blowing of the nose, concentration must be reduced.
Rhinitis also brought me a particularly big regret, and I still think about it to this day: I like to swim, and when I was in the fifth grade of elementary school, I was selected to train at the county sports school, but after only half a year of practice, I was dismissed because rhinitis seriously affected my grades.
Because of rhinitis, I've been a medicine jar since I was a kid.
For my disease, the doctors' diagnosis at that time was allergic rhinitis and chronic paranasal sinusitis.
I have eaten many kinds of medicines, and the most impressive is proprietary Chinese medicine: the smallest is a bile pill, a small pill counts for a long time; the largest pill can not remember the name, it is as big as a ping-pong ball, wrapped in a wax shell, it is very difficult to swallow.
There is also an oral liquid that does not remember the name, bitter ... It was particularly bitter, and I was very resistant every time I ate it, and my mother taught me the idiom "good medicine bitter mouth" at this time.
Just the other day, I pulled out a pack of medical books from home, and every page and every line was almost filled with the words "Rhinitis Medicine".
(Patient's medical record book.) Photo courtesy of the interviewee)
The effect of taking medicine was limited, and in order to treat me, my family found the top five otorhinolaryngology experts in Jiangsu at that time through various channels. So the treatment was upgraded: when I was thirteen or fourteen years old, I received cryotherapy, and when I was seventeen or eighteen years old, I did two laser treatments in the same year - laser treatments can impress me too much, not only to endure the huge pain of burning in the nasal cavity, but also to be forced to experience the smell of human flesh being burned, but it is too exciting.
Despite this, my troubles remain unresolved. All kinds of medical treatments can only bring very slight improvements, and I am still the "old rhinitis" patient who is dizzy every season and feels panicked in the throat.
In the summer of 1999, I was 22 years old. When I couldn't remember how many rhinitis attacks I had, the doctor suggested that I have surgery to correct the deviation of the nasal septum: "Simply taking medicine may not solve the problem, and corrective surgery should improve your condition." I am a science and engineering man, firmly believe that "professional things are done by professional people", do not worry too much about what they do not understand, firmly believe that the process of treatment is the process of cooperation between patients and doctors, and doctors say that we will do it.
The operation was very impressive, after all, I had only had two surgeries in my life (another time was hemorrhoids, semi-numbness, the doctor chatted with me while operating, "You big organs, who are you in your unit, who, who else, and who else I cut...")
(Image source: soogif)
The more troublesome thing is to do a sinus CT before surgery, which was a very expensive examination at the time, and there were many processes and approvals to go through. Admission is a routine process, various procedures are done by yourself, and examinations should also be the standard preoperative process. Through preoperative education, I knew that it was a general anesthesia operation, which was probably an opening from the inside of the upper lip.
Halfway through the operation, I woke up and felt the doctor chisel my forehead (which should be the nasal cavity) with a small chisel, making a "tuo, tuo, tuo..." sound. Because the work at that time required frequent contact with the troops, I was confused and thought, "Am I at the range?" After a while, my thoughts drifted to "Woodpeckers should live like this"... It didn't hurt at all, but it sounded a little scary, and I began to hum military songs, from "Forward forward forward..." to "At the age of eighteen I joined the army to the army"... The doctor probably couldn't bear it anymore and said to me, "Don't sing," and I went back to sleep.
When I woke up again, the surgery was over, my mouth was numb, and my face was numb. A face in the mirror was swollen and high, and the eyes could only squint. It felt like the doctor had stuffed so much stuff in my nose that he couldn't speak; so when the commissioner and the president of the union came to see me with fruit and a small envelope, I could only make a "uh-huh" sound of thanks.
After that, I stayed in the hospital for more than ten days. Every change of dressing is very painful, the kind of pain of the flesh under the forehead being torn open... The first time I changed the dressing, I was very surprised by the volume of my nasal cavity. The nurse pulled strips of gauze out of my nose: one after another... The dressings I drew out quickly piled up in the kidney-shaped disc, and at this point I experienced the pleasure of short free breaths. After changing the medicine, the nurse stuffed my nose with one strip of gauze after another, and I returned to the "fullness" state of not being able to breathe normally and speak coherently.
It wasn't until there was no blood in the change of medicine that I was finally discharged from the hospital.
(In order to recall as accurately as possible, I check my memory by using specific terms from search engines.) Knowing that the nasal septum deviation is now a minimally invasive operation through nasal endoscopy, there is no such a big battle. The doctor who operated on me at that time is now the director of the department of facial features at a hospital in Nanjing. ）
After that painful operation, I did not go to the department of five senses for a long time to "check in", and there would still be a situation of no nose and pus when changing seasons, but it was far less powerful than before.
The real twist came around 2005, when I started to regain my love of swimming.
As mentioned earlier, when I was a child, rhinitis was withdrawn from the swimming team, which is a kind of compensation for childhood regrets. Unexpectedly, after insisting on it for a few years, the discomfort period of the nose was significantly shortened to two or three days during the change of seasons. By around 2010, the discomfort period of the nose during the change of seasons was only half a day, and the blowing of the clear water snot passed. I joked that I was "cured by the disinfectant water in the pool".
(Kayaking training.) Photo courtesy of the interviewee)
From swimming, I slowly developed the habit of regular exercise, and the sports I engaged in expanded from swimming to running and kayaking, from practicing and playing by myself to participating in national amateur leagues such as Pan le... Now I keep training for three hours a day, getting up early every day every day to drink a glass of ice water and a 2-minute cold shower. Maybe this somewhat "hardcore" lifestyle is more suitable for me.
Expert reviews
Xie Zhihai:
Chief Physician, Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University
Nasal septal deviation surgery is the most common type of surgery in otolaryngology and has been practiced for decades. In the early days, nasal septum surgery was performed under local anesthesia submucosal chondrotomy, and there were more ways of total osteotomy.
With the development of medical technology, nasal septal surgery is also advancing with the times. Today's nasal septum surgery is performed under general anesthesia, whether it is nasal septum correction or nasal septal plasty, the distorted bone is removed under nasal endoscopy; for those cartilage or bone tissues that are not biased, doctors will try to preserve. Therefore, compared with the "total incision" method in the early years, today's nasal septum surgery is relatively less traumatic and the patient recovers faster after surgery.
The protagonist in the text still remembers the surgical experience many years ago, and the description is very specific and vivid. He woke up during the operation he was talking about and felt like the doctor was "chiseling with a little chisel", and the rhythm was so clear that he hummed a song, which described the doctor removing the crooked bone in the nose.
The current nasal septum surgery method has changed greatly compared with before: the surgeon exposes the bone and cartilage under a clear nasal endoscopic field of vision, and then removes part of the distorted bone and cartilage, and then resets the cartilage to the mucosal sac after repair, or pushes the bone plate fracture to the midline, or through scratches and shakes, the cartilage can be reduced to the midline.
In the text, the protagonist has improved the symptoms of rhinitis through surgery, and he feels that his real "healing" is after insisting on exercise exercise, which has a certain correlation: insisting on exercise can promote blood circulation throughout the body, help the turbinates and nasal sinus mucosa contraction, facilitate nasal ventilation and drainage, and to a certain extent, promote the rehabilitation of rhinitis.
However, for people with rhinitis, exercise needs to pay more attention to the choice of environment, and should be avoided when there is smog or air pollution is more serious. In addition, rhinitis patients must pay attention to adding or subtracting clothes when exercising to prevent colds, so as not to aggravate the symptoms of rhinitis.
Review expert: Xie Zhihai
Author: Wu Sheng, Aimina Yuan, Xie Mingxia
Editors: Wu Jiaxiang, Ye Zhengxing
Proofreading: Wu Yihe | Typesetting: Li Yongmin
Operation: Han Ningning | Coordinator: Wu Wei
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