Happy Holiday to you if you are enjoying a few extra days off for Easter. If not you are perhaps from a different religion, whose own holidays will be along soon enough or you are perhaps living in the USA, which seems to have one of the meanest allowances in the whole world for any kind of holiday time off, no matter what your beliefs are. My American friends always seemed envious whenever I told them how many days off a year my UK employers gave me because they barely enjoyed even half of what I had. Of course now I am a writer, most people think that Every day is a holiday for me, even when I find myself writing 7 days a week!
A number of medical procedures have unfortunately ensured that the past few weeks have been anything but a holiday for me. Most, which would come under the heading of ‘preventative maintenance’ are not worth mentioning beyond declaring that I am very fit and well. Indeed, one doctor even told me that my results are what he would expect of a much younger man, although it is still unfortunate that my looks no longer back up this flattery! Which all neatly brings me onto the subject of my recent nose job.
Some of you may remember how I described, late last year, a close encounter with a number of wild boars. How the animals not only succeeded in knocking me off my scooter, but also appeared ready to attack me until one of their piglets moved away from a position where I was between it and its HUGE mother. Although I didn’t realise at the time, I suspected that I had broken my nose… again. However, this didn’t become a problem until I realised that I was waking up several times a night and on hearing that instead of snoring, only when I was very tired (or had too much beer) I was now snoring almost every night.
So a few weeks ago I found myself in the office of an ENT (Ear Nose and Throat) Surgeon, who quickly diagnosed a condition called Sleep Apnoea, caused by a deviated nose septum in my left nostril, which basically restricts or blocks completely the flow of air. I had heard of this condition that basically means you actually stop breathing for up to 2 minutes when you are sleeping, which then forces your brain to flush your bloodstream with adrenalin to wake you up. The Doc told me that this was undoubtedly why I kept waking up with a racing heart and pointed out that the condition has not only the potential to shorten one’s life, but in some instances some people fail to wake up at all and simply die prematurely in their sleep.
Death is never something you want to hear in any diagnosis, so a week later I found myself waking up from a four hour Op in a Bodrum hospital. Although I should explain that the original Op had been extended from up to two hours for a couple of good reasons: Firstly during the Op the surgeon realised that nostril 2 wasn’t firing on all cylinders either, probably because of an even earlier break, and so fixed it for me. Secondly and more significantly I had also elected to back2back the nose job with another procedure. I won’t bore you with the details of the other Op but will just say that I am a bit of a pussy when it comes to anaesthetics so rather than have two lots I went to sleep in one hospital theatre and woke up in a completely different one, on a different floor, after my ENT guy had also worked his magic.
They tell me it takes about three weeks for all the swelling and tissue to repair itself before I know how successful the Op went. So with two weeks gone I am happy with the results so far, although the odd thing now is that I can no longer remember how bad the old nose was so I just hope that is a good sign.
Finally, for those of you who don’t know what I look like from earlier posts. I should just point out that my nose is never quite as big as it is in the photo above and the reason one of my eyes is half closed is because moments before it was taken, the surgeon had just yanked the splints from my nose. Sorry there is unfortunately very little I can add to mitigate the rest of my appearance as this is really how I look!
Happy Holidays!





