I had a CT scan a few days ago as a follow-on to a comment made by a technician who reviewed the brain MRI taken after my bicycle accident last year.
The MRI cuts through your head at such an angle that it misses a good portion of the sinuses, but the tech noticed that what he could see seemed pretty occluded.
So, around a year later due to timing, changing jobs and getting health insurance set up properly again I finally get the CT scan done to check out the sinuses and my doctor called me to tell me he was pretty shocked to see how blocked up all the sinuses are.
One of my friends has recently had sinus surgery for a different reason so I’m going to pick his brain the next time I see him, but if you’ve had it, what’s been your experience?
My driving motivation is that I’ve been pretty “heavy headed” for a long time now. We’ve been treating it as if the associated lethargy was possibly infection or allergy related. It seems almost a relief to finally have a reason for just wanting to sleep during my free time.
The prognosis of surgery may be premature, I still need to see a specialist (I’ll be calling on Tuesday to set this up) but I’m very much looking forward to progress and “lightening up”.
As you know, I’ve been having major congestion problems for 3.5 years now. The family doctor’s been isisting it is alergy, but I saw (in Jan) a different doctor, who has sent me to an ear-nose-throat specialist. I saw the specialist May 3erd. He took a 5 second look in my nose and said I was infected, and would be giving me drugs. He also said I had extreeamly large palops(sp) and would almost certainly need surgery.
He also said normally, he would inspect my sinuses with a scope, but I was so badly blocked, that he would not be able to insert the scope, so I had a CT about 3 weeks ago.
I’m still waiting for the next appointment. The antibiotic (2 weeks) and steriods (3 weeks) seemed to clear up the infection, but I still could not breath.
Let me know how your condition progresses.
Also, have you tried the ‘NeilMed Sinus Rince’? (that is it’s trade name up here, I’m sure it or something similiar is for sale down there). Basically it a squeese bottle, that you mix up 8 ounces of water with pre-made packages of salt and soda and rinse out your sinues. While not very plesent at the time of doing it (I’m sure you swam enough to know what a head-full is like), but it does make you feel beter for a while.
Hi King,
I’m glad to hear that you’re making progress on this issue.
In my case, all of my allergy symptoms (which were pretty much limited to a runny nose during peak season) are held at bay by some Nasonex.
The sinus thing manifests only as a fullness in my head, no pain just an unbelievable desire to sleep all the time.
It also manifest as a terrible pain on decent when flying commercially, but fortunately that’s only about a half hour and it goes away.
I have used that rinse before, more generically folks use a Neti Pot, but I opted for that squeeze bottle approach as well when I had a cold last year. It provided some modest relief for that issue. But my congestion issues are apparently so deep that the neti pot / saline has no impact.
Hey there Marc,
I came across your blog today and saw this post. I was wondering what you ended up doing, if you decided to go through with the surgery or not and what your doctor said.
I actually work for a company that treats sinus problems topically, and after reading this post I think it could be a great option for you. Just wanted to share! Feel free to e-mail me, I’m more than happy to help out however I can.
All the best,
Ryan
ryanw@ghprx.com
http://www.sinusdynamics.com/
@Ryan Wilkins – I actually did have the surgery last week and just had the packing stuff pulled out today so that ship has sailed.
My Sinuses were absolutely blocked.. all of them, so I don’t believe I would have been able to take a less drastic approach. Combined with a deviated septum and enlarged turbinates and, well, you get the picture.