I couldn’t properly convey all of the emotions I’ve had in the last few days regarding my pending sinus surgery. This is my first surgery as a married man, making it a whole new ballgame. I’m quite frankly freaking out a bit… sometimes more than a bit. This is one of my longer pieces at almost 1,000 words, just because it’s partially a brain dump and partially to get some good old-fashioned discussion going about some good and some rather unpleasant thoughts. Skip to the last heading if you want to avoid anything deep, meaningful, or sad. Otherwise, read on to get to know me more than you already do.
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It’s Surgery Day! Sinus Surgery No. 9
October 11, 2010
How a CFer Prepares for Sinus Surgery
October 8, 2010
My ENT, Dr. Seper, saw me yesterday to review my CT scan from Tuesday and agreed with me that there were major issues. Largest of these issues was the increased, extreme headaches that have rendered me much less productive and constantly on Vicodin, which is barely touching this pain it’s making now, though it does let me look at my laptop screen and get work done.
She gave me two options for treatment:
- start IV antibiotics for my sinuses for two weeks, but if I don’t have improvement by Monday, schedule surgery or
- schedule surgery for Monday because she had a cancellation
“Door number 2, please.”
She started coordinating with Dr. Rolfe at CF clinic before I’d even left the office, so when I got down to the car, her office was calling me to say Rolfe wanted me on IVs immediately, so I was to call clinic now. I called Sue’s cell phone and we got things arranged to start me on Meropenem every 8 hours starting this morning.
Beautiful accessed my port before she left for work, because she does a better job than ANY nurse ANYWHERE (and if you want to try to challenge that, bring it on!) and I think she secretly likes playing nurse for a patient who doesn’t puke.
It’s All In My Head
October 3, 2010
I’m not sure what news I have yet, but it’s both good news and bad news, either way. My headaches have been getting worse and worse and they are localized around my eyes and it’s pretty obvious that the cause is my sinuses. I’ve had 8 surgeries before, but due to monthly maintenance visits to my ENT, it’s been 6 or 7 years since my last one, though the one before that was only 9 months earlier. That shows how fast they can get ornery if I’m not diligent to get checked out frequently.
My previous ENT, who performed 6 of my surgeries retired almost 2 years ago, and I remembered that he said that if I had a headache for more than 2 days to call him and he’s schedule a CT scan. Well, by Thursday, I’d had about 10 of the last 12 days with a little gnome warrior wearing plate armor hacking away behind my eyes with a two-handed battle axe and a nasty goblin blowing up an inflatable raft behind my brow (those details are very important).
I scheduled an emergency visit to my ENT and got in the same day and she did stuff she’d never done before. I have a scar band running across the left side so access to irrigate is pretty much blocked off, even for the smallest tools because the direct line is blocked. My right frontal sinus (up above your eyes) is an issue because the “drain” gets clogged and gunk grows unabated if unattended to with irrigation with an antibiotic/steroid concoction we made up. The pain I was describing took her action to the next level: a small olive-tipped cannula that she attached to the suction!
