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[nenjin]

Anyone had any experience with it?

I had nasal polypectomy surgery done, and had my deviated septum fixed. Must have been pretty bad, surgery took like 3 hours.

Anyways, it's been 2 days since the surgery when it dawned on me....I can't smell a thing. Nothing. Nada. Taste has been blunted by like 80%. I can breathe great, but zero smell.

I get I just had surgery on the interior of my nose, there's blood and mucus, I'm rising it with salt water periodically so.....smell being messed up or gone for a time is to be expected.

But I've been doing reading and people's long-term experiences are all over the place. People say smell comes back better, about the same, less or never between 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, a year or 13 years.

I consider myself a sensualist. (I guess I'd also accept hedonist.) I like my food and my smoke and my beverages. Flavors and taste are super important to me. My sense of smell, even before the surgery when I was all blocked up, was very keen. Sometimes even too keen. Were my sense of smell (and therefore taste) not to come back is there anything to be done to encourage the nose to regain the sense of smell?

[martinuzz]

I really do hope for you it recovers.

Having no smell is a terrible handicap. A friend of mine was born without the ability to smell. He needs someone to do housekeeping for him to prevent eviction, because he won't smell when there's a dead rat stinking up the place, or rot in the kitchen sink, or when he stepped in dog poo and carried into the carpet. He also needs to be real careful with dates on food, and keeping food after opening because he can't tell if something's spoiled or not.

[ChairmanPoo]

Have you talked about it with your surgeon?

That being said,  during my brief stint at the ORL department back in medical school my impression was that nasal surgery immediate post-op days/weeks were pretty miserable in regards to nasal constipation and pain (can't blow your nose, etc... in all honesty, the idea of undergoing nasal surgery scares me not because of any inherent danger, but because of the rather unpleasant post-op). It does not seem unlikely to have an impaired sense of smell if your nose is clogged

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

Anyone had any experience with it?

I had nasal polypectomy surgery done, and had my deviated septum fixed. Must have been pretty bad, surgery took like 3 hours.

Anyways, it's been 2 days since the surgery when it dawned on me....I can't smell a thing. Nothing. Nada. Taste has been blunted by like 80%. I can breathe great, but zero smell.

I get I just had surgery on the interior of my nose, there's blood and mucus, I'm rising it with salt water periodically so.....smell being messed up or gone for a time is to be expected.

But I've been doing reading and people's long-term experiences are all over the place. People say smell comes back better, about the same, less or never between 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, a year or 13 years.

I consider myself a sensualist. (I guess I'd also accept hedonist.) I like my food and my smoke and my beverages. Flavors and taste are super important to me. My sense of smell, even before the surgery when I was all blocked up, was very keen. Sometimes even too keen. Were my sense of smell (and therefore taste) not to come back is there anything to be done to encourage the nose to regain the sense of smell?

If your nose is permanently damaged I would suggest keeping track of the things being done at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

[kilakan]

I'd also consider some sort of lawsuit or something against the hospital if they never warned you that could even be a thing.  Botched surgery is not something you should just ignore and having a friend who has no sense of smell after a similar procedure I can tell you it's really affected his life.

That said, a few days would not be something too worrying, I mean people lose their sense of smell when they get flus/colds for a few days to a week pretty normally.

[martinuzz]

What ChairmanPoo said, you should go ask your doctor.
As a layman (I'm just a biologist and no medic), I'd say there's a few possibilities.
- your actual smell receptors in your nose are clogged by whatever swelling and fluids the post-op throws at your nose
- post-op swelling is temporarily pinching off the smell nerves
- the smell nerve was damaged during the operation

in the first two cases, I'd say you'll regain your sense of smell soon enough.
in the latter case, you might have a problem

[nenjin]

The potential for an "altered" sense of smell was mentioned as part of the pre-op documentation. It wasn't stressed by the surgeon though.

I'm probably being a little over paranoid. It's just the time I do have my sinuses mostly clear of blood clots after cleansing, I still can't smell at all.

And yeah, recovery is......not great. Better than it used to be, from what I understand. I didn't realize though that the "new" method for this surgery is to cut you and essentially just let you free bleed it out for days.

Botched surgery is not something you should just ignore and having a friend who has no sense of smell after a similar procedure I can tell you it's really affected his life.

The problem is it's hard to prove anything was botched. I actually went back into the OR the same day of the surgery because the bleeding had reached that "call us if your bandages soak through this fast" point, and the doc went back in with suction and a scope......and that was maybe one of the more painful experiences of my life. He looked and said everything "looked good."

Basically doctors will come back with "every body is different" "the nose is a complex ecosystem" yadda yadda as a defense against post-op consequences for surgery. Unless something obviously wrong happens like they clip your optic nerve or puncture through the lining of your sinuses into your brain.....I don't think there's much room to claim they caused unintended consequence. It's also possible the degree to which he had to remove tissue would, naturally, irrevocably alter my sense of smell. As I said, he originally felt the surgery would take 1.5 hours after he saw the imaging of my sinuses and I asked him "is it so bad you expect me to be in surgery longer than you originally thought" and he said no. Well, three hours later....

[ChairmanPoo]

Basically doctors will come back with "every body is different" "the nose is a complex ecosystem" yadda yadda as a defense against post-op consequences for surgery. Unless something obviously wrong happens like they clip your optic nerve or puncture through the lining of your sinuses into your brain....

That's because it's true you know.  Every body is different, and there are just too many variables at play in medical acts to be able to predict individual outcomes. That's why you can demand that the reasonably needed means were put in play in an intervention, but cannot actually demand results, because there simply is no way to guarantee results.

That's also why you signed an informed consent form before the surgery, stating the procedure's potential risks.

[nenjin]

Knew your were going to come back and say that . I work in IT. I often have to tell people I don't know why shit happens the way it does, it just does. And that's with a machine.

I expect it's the same for doctors. I'm not criticizing. It's just not a great feeling.

[kilakan]

Yeah More what I meant is that if it never was part of the listed warnings, and you were never told about it at the very least you should be re-admitted on the hospitals cost to have corrective surgery if at all possible.

[nenjin]

Yeah More what I meant is that if it never was part of the listed warnings, and you were never told about it at the very least you should be re-admitted on the hospitals cost to have corrective surgery if at all possible.

That cuts to the root of my question though; can anything be done? Seems like one of those things that, when you lose it, modern medicine does not have an answer for how to restore it. Casual reading on the internet doesn't indicate there's a solution.

[ChairmanPoo]

Damn, I'm getting predictable 



I'd say that it has been a very short interval since the surgery to worry seriously about it being permanent. Most likely it will pass.

[kilakan]

No idea, I often forget that human bodies don't work like my dear engineering and physics projects and it's not something as simple as some sheered metal that can be replaced.

[TheBiggerFish]

Posting to provide moral support.

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

Yeah More what I meant is that if it never was part of the listed warnings, and you were never told about it at the very least you should be re-admitted on the hospitals cost to have corrective surgery if at all possible.

That cuts to the root of my question though; can anything be done? Seems like one of those things that, when you lose it, modern medicine does not have an answer for how to restore it. Casual reading on the internet doesn't indicate there's a solution.

Wake Forest Institute for (regrowing entire human organs in a lab) Regenerative Medicine. They are in the experimental stages now, but a woman used one of their artificial uteruses to carry a child to term.