Thanks to a recent TV episode more people are hip to a common nose condition often requiring nasal surgery.
A November episode of TV’s The Big Bang Theory departed from its usual offerings of yucks, thigh slapping and silly laughs to dive into a bit of drama.
On the show, Leonard, one of the main characters discovers – due to his loud snoring – he has a deviated septum.
The septum, a thin divider of bone and cartilage separating your two nostrils, is easily knocked from the center of the nose to block a breathing channel.
(Learn more about the importance of the septum.)
One of the symptoms of deviated septa: loud snoring. Because of a lack of healthy breathing at night, Leonard goes to a doctor and decides to have an outpatient nasal surgery surgery known as septoplasty which restores the septum to its proper place, allowing for healthy breathing without snoring.
But nerdy roommate Sheldon wants to nix the idea; he’s one of the few people on earth who finds snoring puts him to sleep.
(Read how breathing is made easy just after septoplasty.)
Anyhow, roommate Sheldon doesn’t approve of elective procedures and does some math computations to reveal a severe risk of not surviving anesthesia.
That’s where the story breaks down – given competent hands and a certified operating room, you are safer in that O.R. than in the car that brought you.
The chortles continue as Sheldon refines and re-refines his figures to find the risk intolerably high.
Nonetheless, Leonard goes in for nasal surgery with Sheldon tagging along in case Leonard does sucuumb in to surgery so Sheldon can say, “I told you so!”
While waiting, there is a small earthquake knocking the power out. Sheldon panics and runs smack into a glass door, breaking his own septum.
The episode ends with both characters (above) recovering from septoplasty while talking through noses stuffed up with post-surgery cotton..
(Read more about septoplasty recovery.)
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