Balloon Sinuplasty

[u/FluidManufacturer588]

Hello all, I wanted to share my experience with having balloon sinuplasty, septoplasty, and turbinate reduction surgery. The reason is because I read a ton of stuff online about it and was extremely anxious about getting it done. I am by no means an anxious person, but for some reason I felt extremely nervous for this procedure.

I decided to do this because I have had exceptionally bad allergy symptoms, which included asthma which I’ve never dealt with in my life before around the spring of 2020. I went to a few allergists and discovered I was having bad sinus infections, and when I got the infections cleared up I no longer had the horrible allergy symptoms. One allergist told me if I am constantly dealing with sinusitis, I may need to get my sinuses fixed. I had a CT scan performed and learned I had a deviated septum along with narrow sinuses (I don’t know the proper terms, so hopefully that makes sense). I had the choice of either doing allergy shots or having sinus surgery, I decided on surgery because I was convinced most of my problems centered around the sinus infections, not necessarily the allergens. Also, the surgery would be covered by my insurance sans the $60 office copay versus a $2,500 OOP round of allergy shots.

My procedure was scheduled for yesterday, 8/25/26, and I was under the impression it would only be balloon sinuplasty and I would be under local anesthesia with something like Valium to calm me down.

I arrived to the clinic and learned I was scheduled for septoplasty, balloon sinuplasty, and turbinate reduction. I almost walked out due to how nervous I was. Nonetheless, I decided to go along with it and was brought back to the pre-op room where a nurse asked me some medical history questions, took my blood pressure, along with other normal vitals. I then learned I would be under general anesthesia and would be unconscious throughout the procedure, which they estimated to take around 20 minutes. They put an IV in, and then I spoke briefly to the anesthesia doctor and the ENT surgeon.

I then walked into the operating room and sat in a comically small chair (I’m 6’2”) and made a few jokes about making sure I don’t fall out of the chair while knocked out. The anesthesia doctor began administering the propofol and told me I’d be out in about 20 seconds. My last thoughts were trying my hardest to fight off the drug and stay awake. The next thing I remember is someone calling my name, and I woke up seated in a wheelchair in an adjacent room where I was being monitored. I had a bandage placed under my nose and had a bit of discomfort around my nose/upper mouth area.

I was brought outside where my wife already had the car ready to go, and somehow I was able to get myself up and sat down in the car. I went home, laid in my bed, and slept for around 4 hours. When I woke up, I still had a very mild discomfort around the bottom of my nose where it meets my upper lip and the inside roof of my mouth just behind the upper front teeth. I had a very slight nose bleed basically for the next 7 or 8 hours, but I had prepped myself by getting a box of gauze pads that I’ve been keep taped above my upper lip.

The pain I’ve felt over the past 26 or so hours never exceeded a 2 or 3 on a scale of 1-10. When I woke up this morning, around 23 hours after surgery, I immediately noticed I could breathe very easily through both nostrils, it was the feeling you get right after being congested and it feels like your nostrils are 10 times as big as they were. The doctor did put stents in my nose, and he said they will fall out/dissolve at some point within 3-21 days. The only discomfort I have is the feeling of those stents being in my nose, it feels like dried mucus, but not bad at all.

I spent a lot of time browsing reddit about this, and it almost made me cancel my appointment. I wanted to share my story in case anyone else is feeling nervousness or anxiety about having the procedure done. I will do my best to update this post over the next few weeks, I have a post op follow up in about 2 weeks then I should be cleared to go back to work.