Septoplasty with Turbinate Reduction - Houston, TX

I had septoplasty with turbinate reduction 9 days ago. It was a Friday. I'm a 60 year old healthy woman. I wanted to share my experience because I did a lot of research before I had mine done and found it helpful, if not frightening at times.
In case you don't read the rest of this there are a couple of important things I think you should know. Make sure you have TONS of Kleenex in the house. Also, have some kind of non-acidic juice in the house, along with some soft foods to eat for a couple of days. And some numbing spray for a sore throat. And saline spray q-tips, peroxide, and antibiotic cream.
I had a pretty good experience so I thought this might put some others at ease! The day of surgery I arrived at 6:00 am. Everything went very smoothly and I was done by 9:30 or so, home by 10:30. When I got to the operating room, I laid down on the operating table, they covered me up because it was freezing in there. They put the mask over my face, I took a couple of deep breaths and the next thing I knew I was in recovery with a splitting headache but they gave me some pain meds for it and it went away quickly. I was also coughing, probably from being intubated during surgery. The nurse told me not to cough. After about 45 minutes, my husband drove me home. For the rest of Friday and Saturday I was pretty out of it. I drank lots of apple juice over ice and was able to eat soft food, macaroni and cheese was my favorite. And toast. I took the pain meds, mostly to help me sleep, not because of extreme pain. I never did have any extreme pain. I used peroxide with a q-tip to clean around my nostrils and coated the insides with Bacitracin. My throat was sore for the first 24 hours or so so I used a numbing spray from the drugstore. After the 1st 24 hours, I started using saline spray. I didn't have major issues with bleeding. However, I wore the mustache bandage until Monday because of bleeding. I did go back to the doctor on Monday because I was worried about continued bleeding on one side. Of course once I got there it stopped, but he suctioned some stuff out of it anyway and I didn't bleed much after that. I went on Wednesday and had the splints removed. Regarding the splints... I had silicone splints and no packing. From Sunday until I had them taken out they caused mild discomfort. Not pain, just annoying knowing they were there. And I couldn't really breathe, so I spent most of the time on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday trying to distract myself from them and from not being able to breathe. I quit taking the pain meds because I didn't want to become addicted. So I just watched a lot of TV and tried to sleep. Getting the splints out was no big deal. I had heard/read horror stories. I was numbed and he cut the stitch that held them in, grabbed them with tweezers and they slipped right out. Then he suctioned both sides really well, which was kind of strange feeling because I'm sure he was accessing places that had never been "touched" before! I went ahead and went back to work (desk job) on Thursday. I took it easy and all went well. On Friday I had a sinus headache all day and at about 1:00 I started blowing (gently) my nose and huge disgusting chunks of dark blood were coming out (think liver) when I blew, for about 30 minutes. Then it stopped and my headache went away. And I haven't had that issue since. So now, 9 days out I'm about back to normal, with some stuffiness still but it seems to get better every day. I still use saline spray several times a day. So, the whole thing wasn't as bad as I anticipated and I'm looking forward to being able to breathe freely for the first time in decades.