As a trainer and nutrition expert, 27-year-old Whitney DeLong could tell his bodybuilding students to breathe deeply, although he couldn’t follow his own advice.
In fact, he could barely breathe at all. Whitney found out he was on the wrong track when his allergy specialist told him he, the specialist, could do no more for him and that he should find a good ENT (ear, nose and throat) specialist.
Due to allergy complaints, Whitney had been getting allergy tests, allergy shots, prescription nasal sprays, pills and breathing treatments. All without relief.
“I was used to people constantly asking me if I had a cold or needed a cough drop,” Whitney says. “There was rarely a day in my life I COULD breathe normally.”
Many people with breathing woes often go down the wrong path because they think the problem is sinus.
Whitney did know from one CAT scan, he had a severely deviated, or bent, septum leaning strongly to the right in his nose.
“I later learned a deviated septum can block the breathing channel,” Whitney says.
It must have been a serious block because nose surgery was scheduled on the same day as the initial consultation with the surgeon who added another procedure.
Due to Whitney’s allergies, some internal nasal structures – the turbinates — in his nose had also been swelling and adding even more blockage to his breathing channels.
The procedure, turbinate reduction surgery, slims down the problem blockage. Skin covering turbinates is especially rich in blood so usually some bleeding follows the procedure.
(Read more about Whitney’s turbinate reduction surgery.)
Most nose surgeons apply a thick absorbent pad just under the nose across the lip in turbinate reduction. The patient then changes the pad at home.
(Learn what to do after turbinate reduction surgery.)
Turbinate skin is like no other in the human body. Because the job of the turbinates is filtering, warming and moisturizing the air you breathe, skin covering the turbinates can swell up tremendously and then shrink later.
(Read more about septoplasty and turbinate reduction surgery.)