More on the Sinus Infection From Hell
Nov. 16th, 2015 11:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fenchurchIt occurred to me today that I hadn't posted a followup to my last entry... it's been, um, interesting. The side effects of both the antibiotic and the Prednisone were not fun, but it gave me just over two incredible weeks of feeling *normal*. And then the sinus infection came back, just like it had every other time I'd taken antibiotics (about a week to a week and a half after I finished them). I got to my followup appointment with the ENT and had a CT scan of my sinuses (which was the plan all along) and, sure enough, you could actually see the sinus infection on the scan... but the good news? It was nearly gone (as the ENT said, if we'd done a CT scan at my first appointment, we would have seen nearly the whole area clouded up on the scan). So, I've been back on the super-mega-antibiotics for one more week and they seem to have done the trick. The funny thing is, I'd thought I felt normal after taking them last time, but it's nothing compared to this. I honestly feel like I'm waking up after being asleep for a long time. It's been amazing.
The other thing we discovered from the CT scan (and the reason it was done in the first place) is what's likely at the root of the problem... and why I've been extremely prone to sinus infections my whole life.
First, a bit of an anatomy lesson (pulled from Wikipedia): The nasal conchae (or turbinates) are long, narrow and curled bone shelves in your sinuses that divide the nasal airway into groove like air passages and are responsible for forcing inhaled air to flow in a steady, regular pattern around the largest possible surface of cilia and climate-controlling tissue.
As my ENT explained it, there are three on each side of your face: the superior, median and inferior. He was able to show me on the CT scan that the median (aka the middle) on my left side is backward. So if my sinuses get aggravated at all, they'll swell up and because it's not going the same direction as the others, it will get stopped up very easily... meaning it gets easier for nasty things to build up. Apparently, this can be corrected with surgery, but my ENT would rather avoid that if possible... so, the solution we've come up with, now that we appear to have finally beaten the Sinus Infection From Hell (doing some serious knocking on wood over here), is to use OTC nasal spray to try to keep all the membranes constricted. Once we know I'm well and truly over this... the idea is that I'd only need to use the nasal spray when I notice I'm starting to have problems. I'm really hoping this works, because the idea of nasal surgery does not sound like fun times.
Anyway, I'm keeping fingers and toes crossed that we've finally kicked this thing for real this time... I've been varying degrees of sick for most of the year and it's interfered with so many things I've wanted to do.
Crossposted from my Livejournal.
The other thing we discovered from the CT scan (and the reason it was done in the first place) is what's likely at the root of the problem... and why I've been extremely prone to sinus infections my whole life.
First, a bit of an anatomy lesson (pulled from Wikipedia): The nasal conchae (or turbinates) are long, narrow and curled bone shelves in your sinuses that divide the nasal airway into groove like air passages and are responsible for forcing inhaled air to flow in a steady, regular pattern around the largest possible surface of cilia and climate-controlling tissue.
As my ENT explained it, there are three on each side of your face: the superior, median and inferior. He was able to show me on the CT scan that the median (aka the middle) on my left side is backward. So if my sinuses get aggravated at all, they'll swell up and because it's not going the same direction as the others, it will get stopped up very easily... meaning it gets easier for nasty things to build up. Apparently, this can be corrected with surgery, but my ENT would rather avoid that if possible... so, the solution we've come up with, now that we appear to have finally beaten the Sinus Infection From Hell (doing some serious knocking on wood over here), is to use OTC nasal spray to try to keep all the membranes constricted. Once we know I'm well and truly over this... the idea is that I'd only need to use the nasal spray when I notice I'm starting to have problems. I'm really hoping this works, because the idea of nasal surgery does not sound like fun times.
Anyway, I'm keeping fingers and toes crossed that we've finally kicked this thing for real this time... I've been varying degrees of sick for most of the year and it's interfered with so many things I've wanted to do.
Crossposted from my Livejournal.
