Hello from NC, SACU House all. hank you for your prayers! I checked into the hotel on 3 June, and had surgery at roughly 2pm on the 5th. Today is day 3, post recovery and it’s been rough, but not as brutal as expected.
Pre-operation it was difficult to maintain mental clarity as I’d been fasting, and though I prepared as best I could, I didn’t have a list of questions written down, and each doctor or nurse did a job, left, and was replaced by someone else like a rapid opera. Plus a patient in waiting room was feinting and I had to call for a nurse. The waiting room area was full of other patients including cancer patients so I struggled to focus on “me.”
I experienced a profound spiritual event moments before going into full anesthesia as the surgical team was around me (I estimate 8-12 people??), I remember telling them “She’s here! She’s here!” but I could not see Her. It was Our Lady and I could feel her in the room. Her presence was literally of the Divine Mother, total love. Then I blacked out.
The evening of the 5th right after surgery was the worst. Turns out that aside from anesthesia, I was also incubated so my lungs had to be drained in the post-surgery area, but I wasn’t given instruction by the recovery nurse. Rather, as I laid in the recovery bed, I wondered to myself how I’d managed to get my lungs full of muck so quickly, and thought I had the flu! I also woke to find that I had two plastic drain tubes attached to two small plastic collection vials strapped to my gown. Their purpose was to collect blood discharge from the upper ear areas. The tubes were maybe 2" into my head entering right below and behind each ear lobe…NOT fun.
Unlike other patients of Dr. Hackman, I was not hit by nausea but I did have a lot of drainage and pain in the right ear where the incisions were largest about 1.5 inches (and the largest styloid though I don’t have pictures yet). I expected he would cut into my neck, and did not. But I was told by the post-opt team on the 6th at 6am, that “both styloids were angled inward, no facial numbing and that the surgery went very well.” Because of foggy brain, I wasn’t able to ask more specific questions of them before they whizzed off.
The epiphany I had about my styloids is that they seemed to me to be a crown of thorns at the base of my skull. The stabbing sensations at the base of my skull alone have been “surreal” and sheer torture since 2021. Post surgery, some of my other symptoms are being affected, like tinnitus went away for a bit but it returned now (6/8/24). Also when I lay my head down on a pillow, I no longer feel sharp rocks being pushed into the back of my skull (like literally).
I was discharged on the 6th and have been in a walking daze at SECU House taking Norco and Tylenol as well as prescribed steroids as part of my recovery. I can FEEL the unobstructed blood flow to my brain!!! 
However memory remains a real problem, and I think this has probably to do with the concussions I’ve suffered from being rear-ended, first in 2012 and then by a semi-truck in late 2023; all being compounded by the restriction of blood flow caused by the styloids impinging both jugular veins for years…Hence severely impairing my ability to function. What I don’t have yet, are the pictures of the actual size of the bones removed. Dr. Hackman had told me that my styloids were not ‘elongated’ but in reviewing the Surgery Pathological Report exam provided by UNC, they were LARGE. Like larger than a popsicle stick!
Gross Description
A. “Left styloid,” consists of an elongated fragment of bone with attached unremarkable soft tissue (2 x 0.5 x 0.4 cm overall). No sections are submitted to histology-the specimen is submitted for gross evaluation only.
B. “Right styloid,” consists of an elongated fragment of bone with attached unremarkable soft tissue (1.7 x 0.9 x 0.4 cm overall). No sections are submitted to histology-specimen is submitted for gross evaluation only.
I’ve been able to eat, albeit SLOWLY I have gotten shooting pains mainly on my right jaw but that’s been the extent. Sleeping is another matter, and I’m about to walk to a local pharmacy to buy more gauze so as to cover the two small holes that remain at the bottom of my ears. I’ve also had some blood drainage that’s soiled at least one hotel pillow. Another issue has been constipation caused by Norco, which was made worse by the negligence of the nurses who did not prescribe stool softeners despite dispensing 10mg or Norco every 4 hours. Fortunately I’d prepared for that by buying stool softener at Costco before surgery
Lastly, I continue on Norco, and sleep is getting slowly better! I need to add, the UNC online web portal is NOT user friend…you gotta tinker with it. My styloid pictures were uploaded but I had no idea which subdirectory to find them in until toady (6/15/24). I’ll include them above.
