Jacob's Surgery

Ever since I've known him (and for as long as he can remember), Jacob has had trouble breathing through his nose. He gets dust in his throat when hiking on a dusty trail, and he feels like he's suffocating when he eats because he always has to breath through his mouth. Poor guy. Every once in a while he can breathe through one nostril but the rest of the time his nose is plugged. Until now!!! He visited an ENT (ear nose and throat) specialist (and his name was not Treebeard) a couple weeks ago who said, with a scope in hand, "Yup, I can see why you have a problem. Things are pretty crooked inside there. I can fix your nose, no problem." Our jaws dropped and we said, "Could it really be so easy?" The "septoplasty with turbinate reduction" was scheduled for a week later and done last Wednesday afternoon. The surgery lasted about an hour and Jacob was home a few hours later. He should finish healing within a week or so and be able to breath easy at last! Yay! When he woke up from the anesthesia he said he felt like thanking the whole world.

The surgery was done in the same hospital where I work so I got a tremendously big kick out of seeing my husband wearing the exact same pattern of hospital gown that I see all my pregnant and laboring patients wear. I of course, had to take a picture while he struck a very "manly" pose to counteract the fact that this gown had probably been worn at some point by a woman in labor.

Here is a much more thoughtful and serious Jacob just minutes before going back to the operating room.
The man you see in the background helped with the operation. After taking Jacob's health history, he told us a hilarious joke to break the tension:

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Interrupting cow.
Inter--
MOO!!

We laughed all the way until it was time for surgery. The doctor came out to the waiting room and chatted with me after the surgery. He said that the inside of Jacob's nose had been smooshed over to the left side but that things were looking really good by the end of the surgery. I asked him how his nose had gotten that way and he said it could be one of two things. Possibly a childhood injury, or we could blame his mother - something about the way babies' faces get smooshed as they come through the birth canal. We may never know. But the cause is not as important as the fact that Jacob will now be able to easily smell things, chew with his mouth shut, and keep dust out of his throat! Hooray!