I discovered I had a deviated septum last year, when I had a head scan for a different issue. It makes sense, as I broke my nose playing rugby as a teenager, and I have noticed my right nostril is always stuffy. I briefly discussed with my GP about having it corrected, but it was suggested that in my (mild) case, the operation was more hassle/pain than it was worth, with a potentially unpleasant and prolonged recovery being stressed. Good luck to the OP if you go ahead.
Resurrecting an old thread - was recently diagnosed with a deviated septum which exolains a whole lot of things, so I’m going to try to get surgery asap.
One question I do have, though: how long is recovery? I guess both for long-term full recovery and also for short-term in time off the bike during base training.
How many many weeks should I expect to take off the bike, and how long to stay at low intensity?
In 2017 I had surgery for a deviated septum, turbinate reduction, and sinuplasty. Rough timeline was:
Week 1 - Didn’t do much of anything. (nor did I want to)
Week 2 - Went back to work but drove instead of bike commuting
Week 3/4 - Started bike commuting again. Wasn’t riding at all hard.
Week 5-6 - Did a few easy workouts.
I don’t remember the timeline for getting back to hard workouts; I had scheduled it for the off season so that wasn’t really a concern. My doctor’s commentary when I asked about training was something to the effect of you can try, it’ll probably work but you may get a nose bleed.
I am glad I had it done, though. Being able to breath through my nose is nice.
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Also resurrecting this thread. I’m getting my septum surgery tmrw. Will report back on how it goes and recovery process.
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How did it go? Can you breath much better? Was it worth it?
Thanks for the reminder!
It went great. I needed a septorhinoplasty, which involves Septoplasty and basically rebuilding my nostrils for better airflow. So my recovery was a bit more involved, a week of couch time after. Not overly painful, but quite uncomfortable. Very leaky as you need to keep nostrils moist. I absolutely could not work for that week, but after that was fine.
Breathing was improved surprisingly quickly, even though my nose was crazy swollen and stuffed with gauss. Now, three months out my breathing is much better. Previously I had huge challenges sleeping, as I could only breathe through one nostril. Now It’s way better and I’m much less restless. The improvements with aerobic performance are less noticeable, but still there.
Toughest part was being super careful for 6 weeks post op: no sunglasses or goggles, so no skiing which sucked as that’s my winter past time. I had a great doctor and he was super reassuring, especially after I read a bunch of horror stories online! Hope that helps, I actually kept a journal for the first week if you have more detailed questions.
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