For what it's worth

So the CT scan of my sinuses came up clean, which means... well, I don't know what that means. After a week of feeling pretty good after running the 21-course of antibiotics and getting the good news from my Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist my post-nasal drip seems to have re-established itself and my lymph nodes are going back to being sore again. Are these just my allergies, or am I going to need an exorcist to cleanse these damned sinuses? At this point, I have no freaking clue.

I go back to my retina doctor this Wednesday to have my diagnosis of CSR (Central Serous Retinopathy) in my left eye confirmed, after a wholly unsuccessful attempt to have the test done last week. I knew I had been cutting the test close by trying to schedule it before my Second Life class, which was meeting later in the afternoon, but when I arrived early to find a room full of patients who obviously had been there for quite some time I realized that even what little cushion I had budgeted in probably wasn't going to cut it.

After having my pupils dilated I sat in the waiting room for an hour and a half before learning that my doctor wasn't even in the building, but still in Boston performing laser surgery on another patient. So given the fact that the test itself would take about an hour and a half and there were about half a dozen patients who were ahead of me in the queue I decided that I'd just have to come back another time. So I apologized to the receptionist, made my make-up appointment, and drove home in the blinding midday sun with still-dilated pupils so that I could squint my way through my online class.

So all in all, the medical frustrations continue. Well at least the Second Life class is going well...

(More on that later!)

Bring it on!

So I went to the ophthalmologist yesterday, concerned that the Flonase I had been taking to alleviate my sinus woes had given me blurry vision in my left eye (or worse, that the infection in my sinuses had spread to my eyes). After putting me through the wringer the doctor concluded that neither was in fact the case, but that I was probably suffering from something called central serous retinopathy, which occurs when the cell wall between the retina and the blood vessels feeding into the eye sockets ruptures and allows fluid to puddle directly beneath the retina. Gross, but in the grand scheme of things I guess that's better than an eye infection or a drug mishap, and better yet it's a condition that clears up on its own as the rupture heals itself and the cell wall is restored. Nevertheless I keep getting the feeling that my body has just exceeded the mileage on its factory warranty. What's next, I wonder?

The funny thing is that the eye doctor told me that this condition is the sort of thing which happens to males in their 30's and 40's who are "Type A Personalities". I had always considered myself a B-minus at best, so this was something of a compliment!

(Huh. Looking at the National Retina Institute's write-up on central serous retinopathy I noticed that they say this: "It follows that we also encounter CSR in patients taking steroid medications as well as during pregnancy." Flonase being a corticosteroid, I wonder if it was in fact responsible for my eye problems, or perhaps the combination of the artificial steroids in my bloodstream plus all the natural ones I'm sure I've been producing through what has been a pretty high-stress few months. Anyway, at least we have a name for it now.)

The drugs, they do nothing

So more than a week into my third course of antibiotics I'm beginning to suspect that mere pharmaceuticals are not going to be able to dislodge whatever it is that has decided to take up semipermanent residence in my sinuses, and that surgery is probably going to happen in my near future. Yick.

Break out the big guns

So my long-awaited meeting with the Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor went as well as one could hope, I suppose: he took one look at my nostrils and declared that mine was one of the worst cases of sinusitis that he'd seen! So now I'm on a 21-day course of Avelox (a powerful antibiotic that is a relative of Cipro, that drug everyone was stocking up on shortly after 9/11 when the anthrax scare was going on), after which I'm doing to have a CT scan done in order to make sure there's no long-term blockage problems. The cool thing is that when they do that they use a special mask that allows them to create a 3-D digital map of my sinuses, which the ENT would then use to navigate via GPS if he had to go in and do anything surgically.

The crappy thing is that the Avelox is totally kicking my ass. Twenty more days of feeling like something the cat dragged in doesn't sound like my idea of fun, but if it can exorcise the demonic slime eels which have taken up residence in my sinuses I'm all for it. I'm slightly annoyed with my primary care physician, however, as it seems that if he had prescribed either of the two courses of antibiotics I had taken before for longer than 10 days I wouldn't be in this mess right now. I suppose this should be a lesson for me to be a less passive patient when it comes to advocating for my own health - I probably should have pushed to see a specialist months ago instead of coming back for successive levels of treatment that didn't do a bit of good.

Sick day

Been battling a nasty little sinus infection since earlier this Fall. Going to my doctor for the third time now, after seeing if it would just go away (Visit 1) and throttling it with amoxicillin (Visit 2) have more or less failed. Wish me luck!

Update: Well, we're established that whatever it is that's haunting my sinuses, it ain't bacterial! Apparently there's a viral infection making the rounds that takes around two months to clear out, so lucky me.