Sinus Surgery, Neurologists, and Allergy Shots

This post will go from January 2012 to Winter of 2012.

Well since we were getting absolutely no where at all with my headaches and neurological issues I decided to readdress my sinus and allergy issues. I found a new ENT and I REALLY like him. He ordered a CT scan of my sinuses and compared them to my old films from 2010. He said there were definitely large polyps present in the maxillary sinuses and that they were much worse than they were a few years prior. There was no way of knowing if these polyps would continue to get worse, but he was fairly certain they would not get better without surgery. Next, he ordered a new round of environmental allergy skin tests. These came back as we expected: I have moderate to severe environmental allergies. Mold, dust, trees, grasses, and pollens of all sorts were big triggers for me and were the reason for my year round allergies with particularly bad allergies in the fall.

At this point at I had four options: 1) do nothing and continue as I was 2) try medical management 3) have surgery to remove the polyps 4) start allergy shots. Well option 1 was not an option and I had been trying option 2 for many, many years so that left options 3 and 4. We decided to go for surgery since it was likely that even though allergy shots would help my allergies that I would still get the sinus infections and sinus pain because of the polyps.

I went in for the surgery in April of 2012. It was a relatively short surgery if I remember correctly. I had absolutely no issues besides the vomiting from the anesthesia, but I expected this. The recovery was pretty straightforward and I was really feeling significantly better within a couple of weeks. I still had the allergies, but we wanted to wait to see the full results of the surgery and see how my fall allergy season went before I committed to allergy shots.  

After this I ended up needing all four of my wisdom teeth removed. I have a small mouth so my dentist felt I should go straight to an oral surgeon as soon as I noticed they were coming in. The oral surgeon agreed and after some fighting with the insurance company I got all four of my wisdom teeth taken out in July of 2012. This was an easy recovery and everything went very well, in fact compared to my other symptoms this pain was extremely easy to manage. 

That August I was so fed up with my headaches and neurological symptoms that I decided to go to a new neurosurgeon. He ordered a new cervical MRI. This was about the only good thing that came from him… He said yes I had Chiari, but no there was nothing he could do for me.

I then went to a rheumatologist to check again for autoimmune issues or any blood diseases. He ran numerous blood tests and was a really wonderful doctor. My vitamin D levels came back normal, which was great. This meant that the maintenance over the counter dose I was taking was doing its job. Other than that the only thing he told me was that I had hyper extendable joints, which I already knew from the last rheumatologist I had seen. Although he was FANTASTIC he was not the right kind of doctor for me. He suggested that I return to Loyola and see the surgeon who had seen me previously, and then if this did not work out he suggested to go to another teaching hospital. This proved to be an excellent suggestion, but I was a little hesitant to act on it.

In the mean time I was still having allergy issues, so my ENT and I decided that it was time to start allergy shots. I started those in November of 2012 and will probably be on them for 4 years at the least. I learned to do them myself and was able to take them home in January of 2013 so I don’t have to drive an hour to go get them done twice a month (it was more often at that point).

Well I think I will stop there for now and save the rest for another couple of posts!