Sicky McSickerson

You guys, I have been terribly behind in updating my blog! I'm so sorry. I will keep working on catching up--slow and steady wins the race, right?

The truth is, I have been fighting off a raging sinus infection since the end of January. Seriously, that long. So here's the story:

I started getting sick late January and I hoped, hoped, hoped it was just a cold or something and I could fight it off. I took sudafed like it was going out of style (seriously...I could take out stock in pseudoephedrine), and allergy meds and airborne and vitamin c and you name it. I did everything I could. I drank about 3 gallons of OJ, slept as much as possible--nothing.

Finally, mid-February-ish, on top of everything else, I woke up with a raging earache. LB gave me strict orders that I needed to see a doctor (which was already in the plan). The next day I had to teach the whole day, and I couldn't hear AT ALL out of one ear (awesome), so after a miserable, long day, I headed to Urgent Care. The doctor confirmed that I had a sinus infection and double ear infection, so he gave me a prescription for sudafed (yeah...you have to have a Rx in Oregon) and another for a Z-pack antibiotic.

The Z-pack cleared up my earache pretty well, but didn't even touch the sinus infection. I know a Z-pack is supposed to keep working for a couple weeks after you finish it, so I thought I'd wait it out and see if it would work. Nothing. So finally, completely miserable, I went back to Urgent Care (the doc had told me to come back if it didn't work after a couple weeks). He saw me again and said that if the antibiotics didn't work, the next step was to get a CT scan of my sinuses. That seemed a little extreme to me, but after 2 solid months of feeling crappy, I was a little desperate.

I kept taking my concoction of cold and allergy medicines to keep me functioning and feeling like 1/2 a human being and set up the CT scan. I had never had a CT before, so I was a little nervous, but it was quick and easy. Luckily it had been scheduled during the schools' spring break, and I had already arranged to take a few days off to try to recuperate a bit (since I had worked about a bazillion hours already, taking a few days off was no big deal--I didn't even have to take vacation time for it). So I called in to see about results a few days later, and all they would tell me at the Urgent Care was that the scan confirmed I had a sinus infection and needed to see an ENT.

Seeing an ENT is easier said than done. You really can't just get an appointment with an ENT, so I decided to start from scratch and get a whole new doctor (which I needed to do anyway). I made an appointment for the next day.

Dr. D'Souza is a hilarious, kind, awesome doctor from India. I'm pretty sure I was the last patient of the day, and he spent a long time with me, which was really nice. They gave me the report from my scan (thank goodness for the biology degree--times like these it comes in really handy) and he told me, again, that I needed to see an ENT. But he also told me that in true sinus infections, antibiotics don't really penetrate the sinuses very well, so you need steroids to decrease inflammation and to hit it really hard with a major antibiotic, which is exactly what we did. So with two Rx's and an appointment with an ENT later, I left.

I saw the ENT at the end of March, and he examined me, then he showed me bit by bit the pictures of my sinuses in the scan I got (which was SUPER cool, by the way). Here's a quick biology lesson for you:

You have four sets of sinuses in your head: one set deep in your head behind your nose (sphenoid sinuses), one set in your forehead (frontal sinuses), one set between your eyes (ethmoid sinuses), and one in your cheeks (maxillary sinuses). They all drain to the same place, and the maxillary sinuses are the ones that have to drain against gravity. Anyway, if you have any inflammation in there (usually caused by something like a cold), they can become blocked and can't drain, which then can cause a sinus infection. (For more info, click HERE.)

I was diagnosed with chronic sinusitis, which is a little different than just a sinus infection--mostly it's more annoying and super hard to get rid of--and it also turns out I actually have an extra set of sinuses on either side of my nose, which is a contributing factor to my misery. This means that, even more than usual, whenever I get sick at all, even with a simple cold, it's easy for my sinuses to get blocked off and I get these sinus infections that never go away.

So what does all this mean? Surgery. Yep, that's what the doc said. They are going to go in and remove these extra sinuses, and probably my ethmoid sinuses, too, while he's at it, put me on some more major antibiotics, and hopefully this will be a long-term solution. He promised me that without the surgery, this whole months-of-sick business every winter will be the norm. NO THANK YOU!!!

So, on May 16th, I'll be having surgery. Luckily he said my septum (the thing that goes down the inside of the middle of your nose) is right down the middle and nice and straight, so it should be a relatively easy surgery. They go in through your nose, so he said no stitches and I hopefully won't have any black eyes. I'll take a few days off from work to recover, but he said I'll be sore and feel crappy for a little while. But then hopefully I'll finally be done with this all-the-time sick stuff!

In the meantime, the combo of steroids and crazy antibiotics (and I started going to acupuncture, just for good measure) has finally started to make me feel like a human being again. So, I'll keep you posted, but that's the story for now. Hopefully I'll keep feeling better so I can be a functional person again soon, sans sudafed. :)