Surgery

Day before surgery:

I had to have a blood test and an x-ray before my operation just to make sure I was healthy and get an okay on having the operation. I was told I could have this blood test any time of the day so before noon I went to the hospital. I had gotten a piece of paper at the doctor's that I was supposed to give to the reception.

The receptionist needed my passport and this note and signed me in. After signing in I asked where to go and the lady just pointed behind her. I went there but behind her were 2 entrances and an area with elevators and stairs. I was so confused when I met one of my doctor's staff. She said she would show me where to go.

We went downstairs and walked through a corridor to the area where the blood tests were. She talked to the mini reception there and we waited.

When I got in the room to take the blood, there was a chair for me to sit in but inside the room was a curtain that was open, a hospital bed and in it a baby that was being examined by a doctor, possibly getting its blood taken and the baby was crying.

I was a bit surprised but maybe this is just quite normal in Turkey to share a room when having a blood test. But it was fine.

After the blood test we go a bit further, wait outside a door and then get told to get in. I needed to remove every metal on my body (there was a dressing room for that) and then the x ray was taken while I was standing up. Only took a second. And then we were done for today.

Day of the surgery:

I couldn't eat or drink from midnight the day before.

My doctor's assistant was going to meet me at the hospital. When I arrived she wasn't there but I went and waited in line to get signed in. When I was in the line the assistant contacted me and asked if I was in the hospital and I said yes, I am in the line to sign in. She then asked me to call her and give the phone to the person in the reception when it was my turn.

When it was my turn I said I needed to call and let them speak to someone on my phone. As I was trying to call, some lady just came in and started talking to the receptionist. I feel it is very rude of the lady not to wait her turn but the assistant answers and I say that I am in reception ready to let her speak to the reception but there is another lady talking to them right now.

The person in the reception then indicates that she doesn't want to take the phone. I am so confused trying to tell the assistant that when the lady that butted in says that she is actually working for my doctor and is the nurse at the surgery so I end up handing her the phone and they talked and everything was set.

This new lady ended up showing me where to go.

My room was a pretty nice, clean, private room. There was a safe there, decent size, would fit an ipad maybe but not a laptop. But they said they would lock up the whole room so I didn't need to put anything in the safe.

I had to take every piece of clothing off and put on a hospital gown. I couldn't even wear underwear or a sports top like I planned. But the gown actually reached around me to cover me completely easily so it was okay but if you are very overweight, I am not sure if it can close completely.

I had forgotten my asthma medication at home so they gave me asthma medicine through a mask. The first time they set it up it didn't really work, so we probably spent 30 minutes for nothing, they then replaced the device and then it worked so I was a bit late into surgery.

At this point they asked me questions such as if I had smoked or had a drink before the surgery, when I ate last, when my last period was and also if I was pregnant. I then got a question list asking things such as if I bruise easily and such (I was sure I didn't since other people bruise more easily than me, on the other hand I am very clumsy and usually have some bruises but that is normal I thought so I said no).

They asked me what my favorite song was and I looked it up and they noted it down.

Then they proceeded to bring a binder full of documents in Turkish, a few pages were in English explaining possible side effects of going under full anesthetic and I had to sign every paper.

Then there were a bunch of papers in Turkish and I just signed them all xD was a bit uncomfortable but my operation was late already because of the asthma medicine malfunction so I just went with it to get in.

I seem to remember I was allowed to take pictures of the documents but I didn't.

Dr. Koçak stopped by and checked on me and informed me that he had several surgeries that day, mine was the first but he would come and check on me when he was done with the other surgeries.

For some reason I was not stressed at all. Not the day before. Not when arriving at the hospital. Not while waiting to get into operation. I was just feeling fine. The nurses were asking how I was doing and I was just doing great! I just had a good feeling about this and trusted my doctor.

Then a nurse was putting the iv needle in me and she couldn't find a good place on the back of my hand so she ended up putting it in my elbow pit (The antecubital fossa)....DO NOT RECOMMEND because you have it the whole time you are in the hospital and I couldn't bend my arm at all!

I couldn't even fix my gown and tie it back closed on my own, it was horrible. The back of the hand is MUCH better.

Then they went out for a bit and meanwhile I just browsed my phone. Then they came in and I was supposed to lay in the bed and they rolled me away.

When we left the room I asked if they would lock the room and the lady then closed the door, I then asked again if they would lock it and she said that reception would. I would have wanted to see them lock it, it was uncomfortable leaving it open when I had my phone with all of my life in there, but I understand they may not have the keys and also it turned out fine in the end, nothing went missing.

It took a while to get to the surgery room and on the way I was waiting for an elevator like FOREVER hearing someone throwing up in the next room. That made me so scared because I have Emetophobia (is an extreme fear of vomiting, seeing vomit, watching other people vomit, or even feeling sick) so that stressed me a lot. We finally got to the surgery room and by that time I had relaxed again but coming into the ice cold room and being lifted from the bed to a surgical table, I started shivering because of the cold and also because I was getting stressed.

They put the blanket on me and I shivered less. Then they put my favorite song on repeat and I instantly felt much calmer. When they were ready they gave me the medicine to fall asleep and wow I could feel this intense sleepy feeling coming over me and I was out in a few seconds.

Then I had the most wonderful dream I have ever had. I don't remember what it was about but when I woke up I just felt so good and well rested from that dream.

I woke up as they were wheeling me to my bed and to begin with my vision was blurry which was scary! But it was fixed within a couple of minutes.

I then realized where I was, in a foreign hospital where I knew no one and that my nose was completely broken so I got a bit panicked. They wheeled me in my room, lifted the top of my bed to put my head up and left.

I was there thinking, I just slept, had a wonderful dream, I am not going to sleep more and was bored instantly xD so I thought, I want my phone, I want to watch some episodes. I felt around but I couldn't find the button to call the nurse anywhere. I tried to call but my voice was a bit messed up after having the tubes down my throat.

So I remembered that I saw the button on the wall before the surgery. I tried to turn my head to take a look but just moving my head slightly to look right made the room spin. I was SO DIZZY!

I actually felt pretty good, no pain, no pressure on the nose or anything but I was so afraid of throwing up if I got dizzy that I didn't dare to do much. So I waited what felt like forever until I could finally move a bit more without getting super dizzy. I managed to skootch myself up the raised bed and reach the button.

The nurse came and gave me my bag and I could binge watch my tv show.

Regularly they would come and give me something new in my iv, what I knew was in those was at least painkillers, anti nausea medicine and antibiotics.

But the worst part was that the iv was hanging ON THE BED. Yes, so to go to the toilet I needed to beep the nurse and ask her to disconnect the iv while I went to the bathroom and then reconnecting it afterwards. And they didn't even wait for the 30 seconds it took me to go, they always left so I had to beep them in again to reconnect me.

And when I am stressed I get super thirsty and need to pee every 30 minutes and it was quite the hassle, if it was just on like a thing that I could roll with me I could have gone to the toilet on my own. Except the first time I went to the toilet, I was peeing my pants but was so dizzy I could not walk on my own and had to lean on a nurse the whole way and back.

The toilet there had 2 flush settings. In Denmark that means that the little button is for when you pee and the big button uses more water for when you do nr.2. I kept flushing with the small button but the paper wouldn't flush. I then realized that in countries like Turkey it is quite common to use the bidet to clean yourself, you then only flush the pee. The paper you dry yourself with just contains water then and is thrown in the trash can next to the toilet. So for us westerners, we just need to use the big button always xD

Dr.Koçak after the surgery:

At around 6pm or so Dr.Koçak stopped by and told me that everything had gone as planned. He had asked me before if I had broken my nose and I said no but he told me that I had trauma in my nose so it had obviously been broken before. I was surprised but then remembered getting hit badly at least 2 times so apparently that broke my nose and I just didn't realize since I never went to the doctor after.

He said that the operation went very well. It was a hard case I had, my nose was crooked and had a bad deviated septum but he managed to do everything he set out to do and he then answered whatever questions I had but to be fair I was a bit out of it so I didn't ask much.

I asked if he had to break my nose completely to fix it and he said yes, he had to do that. He said that my surgery took between 3 and 4 hours and normally his operations take 1-4 hours. When I asked he said that my skin type was normal, not thin or thick.

He said that I bruised super easily and I was surprised by that. He showed me before and after pictures he had taken and noted that I started to get bruises in the operation room when usually they don't appear until some hours after surgery. He ended by saying I could leave after breakfast the next day.

In the night I couldn't sleep at all. I couldn't remember if I was allowed to lean my head to the side or not so part of the night I did lean it a bit, then realized and fixed myself but not sure how long I leaned my head to the side. Today I can see my tip is leaning a bit towards the side I accidentally slept on, so that is probably my fault, but it is so little compared to how my nose was before and no one will notice this so I decided I will not let this tiny detail bother me.

I kept trying to sleep but couldn't do more than snooze a bit here and there.

I kept almost getting those mini panic attacks, because I kept thinking ,,What have I done??" ,,What if I don't like my new nose??" ,,What if it's horrible??" ,,Did I do the right thing going to a foreign country to do this??" and such, but I did manage to manage them and not freak out, I distracted myself with my tv show all the time. I even had 2 phones and was playing a game on one while watching a tv show on the other to keep me extra busy.

I had decided not to look at myself in the mirror at all in the hospital or the days after because I knew I would look bad. I accidentally looked, and it was actually not as bad as I had thought.

Throughout the night I needed nurses to help disconnect my iv so I could go to the bathroom and sometimes a cleaning lady or someone would come in. One person forgot to close my room and omg someone was throwing up in a nearby room and it was horrific for someone with my puking phobia. I had to run out of bed and close the door. But I could still hear it faintly through the door so I had to put the volume of my phone high up and use headphones so I wouldn't hear it!

Then at 5:45 in the morning when I FINALLY was about to fall asleep the lady came with the breakfast and I was like...uuuhh crap!

The staff had asked me when I wanted breakfast and I asked for 9am and then she is there super early. Ugh.

The lady turned on the lights and put the food in front of me and left and I was too tired to ring the bell to turn the lights back off so I just put the scarf I had over my eyes to shield them from the light and slept a bit xD