Under the knife again

Today I saw my ENT to get the results of a CT scan of my sinuses I had done last month. Naturally I felt a little anxious, as one does, but it was mostly good news. No scary looking lumps or bumps. But my left sinus is completely blocked by a chronic infection, and I’ll be having some more surgery to try and unblock it.

It was a very interesting appointment actually. In fact, my ENT is quite an informative and chatty man, which explains why he runs record-breakingly late. At my first appointment, he kept me waiting for two entire hours. Today, he was running about an hour late which was actually fairly normal for him.

The reason he runs so late is that he feels compelled to give each patient a thorough and very detailed explanation of precisely what their problem is, how this affects the wider population, the possible methods of curing it, the way that he might treat other people with the same problem, the chances of success, and the theoretical risk of death if we go through with that plan.

I did get to see the CT scan pictures of my head. I learned that there is definitely something where my brain should be, although admittedly its the same colour in a CT scan as whatever is completely filling my left sinus right now, so I shouldn’t make too many assumptions about what my brain is made of.

The picture we focussed on was essentially what I would look like without the front part of my face.  The nasal cavity and sinus look like a maze, and each side of the maze is supposed to have an opening that runs from the nostril all the way into the sinus cavity. On my right side, it does, but on the left, its as though someone built a great big wall a couple of turns into the maze, and nothing can get in, or more to the point out.

So, the ENT will put me to sleep (possibly by telling me again how he would cure this problem in the 99.9% of the population who don’t have radiation-ravaged sinus passages), take a long sharp instrument and poke about a bit until he’s removed some bits of blockage and hacked out some of the bone in there for good measure.

Then I will stay in hospital overnight, feel a bit rough for a week or so, and after some strong antibiotics and maybe some steroids (yay, last time I took steroids they gave me a great burst of energy.  But they are hard to stop taking.  Oh yes, steroid withdrawal…), a couple of months later I will hopefully feel like a new woman. 

Surgery is currently scheduled for late July, so I’ll keep you updated