Janna's Journey

So a couple of you wanted to know the story of how I broke my nose, so I finally got brave enough to share. This was such a yucky time in my life, I really had a hard time looking back at all these pictures! This happened years ago( like almost 15!!), so don’t get confused thinking this is happening now. LOL.

So a little backstory, we were living in St. George at the time. We had just sold our house because Doug had just found a job up north. We sold our house right at the very beginning of the huge market boom where houses were selling crazy fast, we put a FOR SALE by owner sign in our yard and we sold it in less than a week! We realize now we probably were not asking enough. 😉 The job that Doug was offered fell through so we needed to find another house to buy in St. George but now the market was booming like crazy and we couldn’t afford anything!  luckily the people who bought our house didn’t need to move in for a few months so we were able to rent it back while looking for something else to buy.

We found an older house that was kind of  interesting, it was in our price range but needed all kinds of work. We loved that it was right on the mountain side and that it had a pool in the backyard, but it was a house straight out of the 70’s and it was sporting what we liked to call a one butt kitchen, there was literally only room for one person in it… and that had to change if we bought it.

We ended up buying that house because time was running out and we only had a few weeks to get things fixed up before we had to move and we could see potential in this unique little house. The problem was that all the contractors were super busy at this time too, builders were building away trying to take advantage of this housing boom. So we had the hardest time finding someone to come out to do what they would consider a “small job”. Doug finally got ahold of a guy who was willing to come take a look at our kitchen and give us a bid. He told Doug he would call when he got a small window in his day and I had to be ready to meet him right then and there.  Doug calls me and says you need to answer the phone when this guy calls, he is super busy and if we miss this call it might be the only time he calls. So Doug made it very clear I was to not miss it!!

I got the two older boys off to school and put on a show for Tyler to watch and decided to go take a bath. I was soaking in the tub when I hear my cell phone ring, It wasn’t in the bathroom with me, I spaced it and left it in the kitchen. Panicked that I would miss this important call, I jumped out of the tub and grabbed a towel and sprinted down our hallway, towel flowing behind me with the corner of the towel in each hand getting ready to wrap it around my body, but just as I made the turn down the tiled hallway, I slipped and because both of my hands were in use… I  landed my fall right unto the coffee table with nothing but the side of my nose! It knocked me right out! I’m not sure how long I was out for but when I came to, my face was pounding, I reached up to feel the side of my face and nose that hit, and all I hear is a crunching sound as I push against the side of my nose and it seemed a little mushy. I stood up and a gush of blood came running down my face. This can not be good.  Funny part of this story is as I am laying their buck naked I turn to see what Tyler was doing, he just looked at me and then continued  on watching Blue’s Clues like no big deal! LOL we still tease him about this. He was only 5 years old at the time.

I run into the bathroom to see what was going on. I feel the side of my nose again and it still feels squishy… NOT Good! I had never broken a bone before up to this point in my life, so I wasn’t sure what to do next! I try to call Doug, but he doesn’t answer, so I call his office and I am trying to talk to one of the girls that I know that works with Doug but I immediately start crying and she has no idea what i am trying to say. I finally get out that I need to talk to Doug. When Doug finally gets on the phone he says why didn’t you answer the phone earlier? I then start crying again and tell him what happened… Yep it was Doug calling me to see if the guy had called yet or not! WHAAA !! It wasn’t even the contractor!

Doug tells me to come to the office and they will check out my nose and see what they think, no sense in going to a doctor if it’s nothing right? Well the girls in the office have never x-rayed a nose before, they work in an orthopedic office, so they did the best they could and they all thought it looked fine. I wasn’t convinced of this but what do I know? I remember feeling super tired and drained that day and even got the call from the contractor and met up with him later that day.  I can vividly remember him going through all that we wanted done with the kitchen and then he suddenly stops and says, I’m sorry I have to ask… what is going on with your face? LOL I looked a mess! I was starting to get a black eye, I also had a scratch down my cheek and my nose looked all swollen and crooked. I had to tell him the story … he felt really bad.

Here’s what I looked like before I broke my nose and my cute little boys, look how young and small we all are!!…

**pics of me working on the house and close up of my nose and face after I broke it

The crazy thing about this is I literally walked around with this broken nose for a few weeks not knowing for sure if I broke it or not. I know I had a hard time sleeping at night, I couldn’t breathe very well out of one side of my nose. But I have a high tolerance for pain and I was busy with three little boys, in the middle of a move and renovating the other house so I didn’t really spend much time thinking about it. It wasn’t until Josh decided to jump off a ramp with an electric scooter and knock his two front teeth out that I finally got some answers. He ended up splitting his lip also which required a trip to the Plastic Surgeon’s office to stitch it up in hopes that there would be little scarring. When the surgeon was done stitching him up he looks up at me and says, ok now what is going on with your nose?!? I tell him the story and I said I am not sure if it is broken or not, he laughs and says, really? I can tell just by looking at you it is! Sure enough takes one look inside my nostrils and sees that the one side is completely smashed. I had to wait a few more weeks for the swelling to go down before he would fix it. So that was a great time of my life… not sleeping very well because it was so hard to breathe, working most days on our house while the boys were in school  painting and boxing things up to be moved.

**Josh with his split lip

Fixing a broken nose is no joke! The Doctor came out of surgery saying it was way worse than he even thought, he said there were some pieces of bone he didn’t even know what to do with and ended up just taking it out… said if he knew it was that bad he would have had an ear, nose and throat guy do the surgery!  It was a very painful surgery and I hated every minute of the recovery. I looked like I had been beaten, In fact Doug got some serious crusty looks when we would go out together.  It was such a yucky time in my life, I remember thinking I would never look the same again, it took months for the swelling to finally go down! My nose is still crooked if you really look at it. I can breathe out of it fine, but I do get bummed sometimes when I see it in pictures, but the recovery of that surgery was sooo bad that I will just live with an ugly crooked nose!

 

**These are pics right after surgery and a few weeks after, I looked crazy and I seriously wondered if I would ever get my smile back 😦 I was so swollen My face looked so weird when I smiled, I thought it would never return! Such an awful time in my life. Not to mention my horrible skinny eyebrows and sun bleached permed hair! LOL

Now when I say live and learn… I did learn a big lesson that day, NO RUNNING with wet feet! Seriously people when you are at a pool and the sign says no running… Just don’t do it! Take it from me! Wet feet and slippery surfaces are a really bad combo! Oh and just keep your cell phone near you at all times! And remember NO phone call is ever that important! LOL!! oh and P.S. We didn’t even end up using that guy for our kitchen 😛

 

***Here’s the the before and after of our Kitchen remodel… I know the after is totally dated but remember this was back in 2005!!

So There you have it, yes I’ve had a nose job and NO It wasn’t elective surgery! LOL