Have you ever tried doing something around New Year that changed your life significantly? I’m not interested in how you got drunk and your drunk video got viral. I’m interested in serious legit stuff. If you have, great. If not, read on.

Everyone wants to celebrate the New Year with their loved ones, or prospective loved ones. I was no exception.They say whatever you do on new year’s eve, you’ll experience it throughout the year. This year I was drugged, strangers did things to me which has now changed my life forever. This blog is about my survival, my struggle, my fight with the inner self. For concerned folks, neither did someone inject LSD into me nor was I looted. I just underwent surgery. This New Year was at the hospital with drugs in my veins, a blocked nose, high-tech medical instrument consoles all around me, worried parents, and Keralite nurses (Thank you Kerala for providing such capable nurses!).

I’ve had sinusitis for the past 15-16 years. Sinusitis is nothing but Najla who did his bachelors in the UK. Although this is a disease which is quite amusing to others, it has its pros as well. For instance, I am (read was. Damn!) Totally immune to bad smells. It took Hydrogen Sulphide for me to give the reaction that you would give to normal farts. On the contrary, I could never smell the aroma of Chicken Biryani, Butter Chicken, Rajma, Paneer Tikka, Chicken Tikka, Roasted Chicken, Mutton Biryani… Basically, my life was sad on this front. However, now, after spending New Year in the hospital, draining out more than a litre of mucus and blood from my nose, I feel better.

The pain is real

How people console…

A normal person has five senses, I had four. You remember the anion Chemistry practical which required smelling? I had to take my friend’s help in that. You remember the super ability to smell and gauge the freshness of food, I couldn’t. That’s sinusitis for you folks! Basically, I had the nasal counterpart of colour blindness.

Pre-surgery eternal bliss!

This is not the only issue with sinusitis. Another major problem is that no one takes it seriously. You can neither benefit from a medical certificate nor can you claim medical insurance. After all, it’s just a blocked nose. Only people with sinusitis can understand your issues.

When you tell people how bad Sinus is…

Nonetheless, life went on. Sinusitis got really bad, so I decided to get operated. If you are a TV series junkie, you do have a virtual experience of almost every situation. I was expecting my operation experience to be either similar to Sanjeevni or House M.D. But then, I realized that House never treated anyone with Sinusitis, so I settled for Sanjeevni. There is no harm in expecting that a Jennifer Wingett lookalike will at least do a temperature check, if not the frequent check-ups.

The reality, as we all know, is far from expectations. Nothing new in this. So the D-day arrived and I went with my parents. They did all the necessary tests required before the operation. I was told to sit in my ward, where nurses would attend to me later. The first thing you’re told to do is to change into operation friendly clothes. These operation friendly clothes would easily find a place in the raunchiest clothes hall of fame. Let me explain!

1. The ONLY thing between your body and those clothes is your integrity, fear of embarrassment and self-control.
2. They have a lot of laces. A lot!
3. They usually have bright colours. Mine was orange. I’ve never seen sober patient clothes ever.
So, after wearing raunchy clothes, the next step was ECG.

Apparently ECG measures your heartbeat, which can never be normal if Jennifer Wingett checks it, so maybe this is why they avoid such scenarios. Getting an ECG done is actually funny after the nurses have opened all your lacy knots. Lacy knots and opposite sexes are never non-suggestive unless you’re in a hospital and nurses are in a hurry to get the process done.

Since this was the first time that I was getting operated on, I was very curious to know about the whole process. I warned the head nurse before she could do anything that I will ask a lot of questions. “If you get annoyed, let me know. I don’t want you to vent your anger out in some medical way”, I told her. She was really sweet and answered every question which qualified as a sane question. “Will this hurt?” was my first one. “No, but you might feel ticklish.” Damn, she was right. Before they plug the electrodes on your feet and turn you into a guinea pig, they apply a gel to increase the conductivity. Imagine a gel being applied to your bare chest with cold hands in the January winter, there’s no way it won’t tickle. It was awkward – in those orange raunchy clothes with laces open, three nurses applying a gel on my bare chest so they could check whether my heartbeat was normal or not. It was tough, but I passed the test. Zakir Khan would’ve been so proud of me!

Medical treatments make you realize that a lot can happen between the opposite sexes for good without making things awkward. ECG was the only fun part of the whole operation, filled with laughter. Going by the beginning I was very optimistic about the surgery being painless. I was correct – not completely, though. Post ECG, I was transferred to the OT – Operation Theatre. A classy place would always have a classy acronym to go with it. Operation theatre is so middle class, OT is dripping with class. And by the way, there wasn’t a token red bulb over the OT’s door. (Majorly disappointed) However, OT was indeed impressive. With all those cool machines and huge lights, it was something straight out of sci-fi movies. There I was asked to take some medicines and put on an oxygen mask. I so badly wanted to put on an oxygen mask for no reason. Here my curiosity was shown the exit door by the serious, no nonsense staff.

So there I was sitting upright with an oxygen mask over my nose. I was trying to figure out why the staff around me were tensed. Then I heard someone say, “You forgot that? How could you do so? Don’t you know it is crucial for the surgery?” This sentence killed my enthusiasm instantly. It turned out they were talking about some other patient. Close save, right?

The most interesting part of the operation table is the monitor with numerous colourful numbers and
the heartbeat signal. A host of wires were connected to various body parts feed data to the computer which then displays it in colourful and bright colours. I wanted to know of the legitimacy of the data. For that, I held my breath for some seven-eight seconds to know if any of the parameters changed. It didn’t change much. Next, I tried taking out the clip off my finger. All readings went blank – mission accomplished. I put the clip back again, and then removed it again. Then I tried to find out the exact area of the skin required to get the readings started. In my defence, I was very much fascinated by the machine. Before anyone could declare me mad I stopped and went back to inhaling oxygen – purity in, impurity out! Pure oxygen feels funny. I don’t know how else to explain it. Oh, and it is tasteless as well, no fizzy effect as well. Bland is the word for oxygen, just like Katrina Kaif’s expressions.

You remember the entry of every protagonist in every action movie ever? Well, that’s how the head surgeon arrives. She entered in slow motion, with two juniors around her trying to get hold of some information from her. There’s an aura around experienced doctors. Their calmness is worth drooling over. They can ask you the most embarrassing questions and tell you the most dreadful news with the same tone as a news anchor reads the news. They’ll just ask you anything, talk random stuff to you and next thing you know is that you’ve been operated. I’m not kidding. This is what I remember before getting operated. One of her assistants was cutting my nasal hair (the costliest hair cutting I’ve ever had.) Then she asked me whether I smoked or drank? And I asked her assistant on a very serious note whether there is any chance that I can turn into Deadpool or Batman because of some reaction to the medicines. Even hawk eye would do, but please say yes. He had the most pathetic reply to my serious query, “You already are a superhero!” How old was I to him? Five? If that assistant is reading this by chance, please note that from next time just answer with a straight face, Don’t be Mother Teresa.

From now on I’ll be very graphic with the details. So weak hearted people be careful.

After that question, I remember shivering like a fish straight out of water. The operation was over. I was to be kept under observation for an hour. As you are aware, we breathe from our nose. When it is being operated, you breathe from your mouth. Try breathing only through your mouth for three hours without drinking water. You’ll be able to feel the Grand Canyon building inside your nose. And when you try to swallow your saliva (involuntary action) it feels as if two Flintstones are being grinded against each other. It was hell. The worst part was you couldn’t drink water because of some issue with anaesthetic agents. My eyes were watery, not because of pain but because of some fluid passage being blocked as my nose was jam packed with medicine, cotton, and medicine. So my eyes were as clueless as people post-breakup. My whole ENT was in an emergency. They took their own time to get back to normal.

Every time I thought that I had gone through the worst, something even worse would happen. The next challenge thrown at me was to swallow medicines. Again, try swallowing pills when your nose is as stuffed as the potato in a Samosa. I remained in this state for two more days. Then came the day when I learnt that the longest tunnel in the world is not in some mountains. It’s in your nose. I’m not joking! I was told that cotton would be removed from my nose. I thought, “How bad it could be? I went through one hell hour post-surgery. Ain’t no thing as dope as that yo.” I was wrong. If there was a Grand Canyon in my throat, this time it was Amazon rainforest in my nose. Just replace trees with dried mucous and blood, and amazon with blood. It was like watching “Ram Gopal Verma ki Aag” in 7D – unimaginably painful. I could feel every vein of mine cursing the doctor. The cotton which came out was all dark red. When they pulled one cotton out I let out a sigh of relief, only to find out that one more was to be pulled out. I was confused. Bewildered. If they just pulled out five-inch long cotton from one nostril, where the heck is the other one? Behind my eyes? The anatomy of the human body is beyond me.

Source: Personal experience!

Where was this 10-inch long tunnel in my nose? At one point I was worried that he’ll pluck my oesophagus out. It was crazy. Deep down my nose? (I don’t know if it was still under nasal jurisdiction) Throat? There was a cotton dressed in dried mucous and blood ready to freak the crap out of me. If pulling out one cotton was that painful, I couldn’t imagine how women endure the pain during labor! I don’t know how I managed that, but I did. The first whiff of fresh air I inhaled after that was priceless. Worth all the pain I had to endure. Nirvana in every sense.

I have never enjoyed breathing like I do now. It feels amazing. Sinusitis is not easy to get rid of. For the next one month, I had to get into the shoes of Walter White, mix a drug or two to get the perfect nasal cleaning solution. This too involved pain, blood, and the inseparable mucous. My hostel room had turned into a drug alley, with unpronounceable labels and chemical glass bottles all around. The lady who cleaned my room used to look at me as if I was the reason behind Pablo Escobar’s astounding success. I had to perform Jal neti with medicinal solution crafted out of perfection. Initially, it felt like applying aftershave after shaving on a bruise. Later on, it became bearable. Like you develop a taste for whiskey, I got accustomed to the weird pain. Apparently, all this effort wasn’t enough. Every fortnight, I had to go for expert nasal cleaning to the doctor. This was another tech-savvy process involving a suction pump, small anaesthesia doses, me cursing on top of my lungs, watching a jelly-like red substance coming out of my nose, and blood and mucus and pain…
After 2 months of numerous curses at doctors during cleaning, becoming an expert at drug mixing, watching my nose expel out mucous and blood in every form possible, learning to clean a nose in 4 ways possible, I can finally breathe fairly well with both my nostrils at the same time.

What did I learn from this? Clean your nasal hair, else you’ll pay a hefty price for it. *sigh* Quite an experience it was, wasn’t it?