Recovering

3:06 PM Aug 1, 2007by Rob Ritchie

I saw the doc yesterday, and he said that I'm healing up just fine. I've been working from home this week, but I'm well enough to go into the office tomorrow so that'll be good.

It's been a strange seven days. I'll be glad to be on my feet, but this past week has brought my wife and I much closeness, and I regret letting that go.

Recovery

7:20 AM Jul 27, 2007by Rob Ritchie

I'm recovering, but it's slower than I imagined. Oddly enough, you don't shake this off in a few hours.

The first night was, as you might imagine, the worst. They put packing in my sinuses which meant breathing exclusively through my mouth. It's difficult to sleep like that, and when I awoke my tongue was as dry as the blanket!

Yesterday morning, however, I visited the doctor's office and the nurse yanked the packing out of my head. Not pleasant, but once it was out I could actually breathe through my nose, which felt delightful.

But, there's bleeding because they don't put in stitches or cauterize or anything like that so I have to be careful of my movements, get up slowly, etc. Afrin-soaked cotton swabs will stop most nose bleeds, something I didn't know before.

Anyway, I'm on the mend and my prognosis is good. Doc said that when he got into my head, he realized that basically every anatomical detail in there was conspiring to close off my sinuses from one another, and he's confident that once I heal up I'll have relief from much of the headaches and pressure I've been having.

Endoscopic sinus surgery tomorrow

9:22 AM Jul 24, 2007by Rob Ritchie

It occurs to me that I haven't posted on this.

Tomorrow morning I'll be going in for outpatient surgery to fix my sinus problem (or, at any rate, a few of my sinus problems).

I'll be under general anesthesia. The only time prior to this that I've been under was close to 25 years ago when I had my wisdom teeth removed. I don't recall much about it, I was pretty sick and groggy when it was over.

Recovery should take a few days, and then I'll return to my regular pattern of sporadic posting and infrequent updates.

Results

2:26 PM Jun 24, 2007by Rob Ritchie

Met with my doc last week to go over the CT Scans of my sinuses. I've got a few "anatomical abnormalities" in there that he can clear up, no real surprise there.

I was surprised, however, to learn that I'd broken my nose at some point in my life. That pronounced S-curve in my septum is apparentely the "crumple zone" of a long forgotten impact between myself and something hard. There are bone spurs that indicate that it happened quite a long time ago, but I have not particular memory of it.

Any of my family reading this remember me with tape over my nose as a kid? Of course, I have few memories of visiting a doctor in my youth, so it might have simply been one of those "he'll get over it" kind of things....

Anyway, doc says I'm a good candidate for the surgury and I'm considering it. It'd be nice to be able to breathe easily, something I've never really been able to do.

5:17 PM Jun 2, 2007

by Rob Ritchie

Here's another image from my C-T scan last week.

This is from an axial plane, and shows my septum (I think). I drew an arrow on the picture to indicate the place I think is messed up. Doesn't look right to me; I was expecting more bilateral symmetry.

This is one from the coronal plane; looks like a river delta in there.

7:52 PM May 31, 2007

by Rob Ritchie

I've been having some sinus trouble for several years, so I'm finally doing something about it. I had a C-T scan yesterday, and I got the pictures.

Here's the inside of my head:

As you can see, there's nothing in there.

I like the way my fillings and crowns are so bright.