Yet Another Sinus Surgery in the Books

Wednesday started off in the usual fashion of burning facial pain and blowing pus out of my head. From the minute I woke up, the anxiety hit me immediately. Today is the day. Let’s be honest, I’ve waited for this to happen since March.

The wait alone challenged my patience more than anything. I understand waiting a little bit, but 6 months was a bit excessive. Waking up every morning to the same thing. Over and over. I tried to tell him we need to do it sooner, but it didn’t seem like a priority since imaging wasn’t showing anything.

We got to the hospital right at 11:30am, got checked in, and then the wait began. By the time 1:30pm rolled around, thr nurse came in apologizing. Hepworth was running behind, not surprised. By 3pm, things started to happen.

Dr. Hepworth came in quick, had me sign consents, asked a few questions, and left. Soon after the anasthesiologists assistant came in. Signed consents. But then I asked her for 2 things, Versed, and Ketamine. She immediately said no problem, which was a relief. She ran off to grab the doses of versed, but no more she left, the OR nurse came to wheel me back. I hugged Aggie, and we were on our way.

Thr anasthesiologists assistant caught up to us, and immediately hit me with Versed. Instant calm. It’s good stuff to just calm you down. We went through the maze of doors and hallwats, then finally made it to the OR. I hopped over to the table and got into position.

I made sure to remind the anasthesiologist to hit me with the ketamine when the surgery was done, he replied, no problem. Right after that, he asked if there’s anything else, I said hit me.

And that was it. Next thing I remember, is waking up in recovery. I immediately went to feel my face, but noticed there were no bandages, stitches, or anything. The nurse noticed I was waking up, and I straight up asked her why did Dr. Hepworth skip the debridement.

She didn’t have any answers. Dr. Hepworth was quite vague in what he told Aggie. I really had no idea at this point what was done. At this point I was just frustrated, and in pain. So I asked for the usual hour of fentanyl shots.

I asked for my clothes so I could change back, and get the fuck out of there. As I got into the car, Aggie started to tell me that all my salivary glands were seized shut again, which I wasn’t surprised. She then said that he skipped my face because he found something else.

As he was doing the ethmoidectomy, the pus reared its ugly head. Then he found an abscess. I fucking knew it. He spent an hour getting rid of everything in my sinuses, he just ran out of time for my face.

We got home, and I just crashed. I had a long enough day. When I woke up, the notifications started to roll in. Hepworth sent things off for culture. I almost expected it to show nothing, but the results showed MRSA. Yup. MRSA. The same thing I told infectious disease during the summer that this is what it could be. But now I have a culture.

The next day, it felt like someone just punched me as hard as they could between my eyes. But there was one distinct difference than yesterday. My face wasn’t on fire. I mean, it was painful, but not the burning sensation I’ve grown so used to feeling when I wake up. Or the inside of my nose just feeling raw. Or spitting out pus as I always do.

It was gone. As I looked in the mirror, I noticed the swelling on the left side of my face has gone down. I couldn’t believe it. I stood in the bathroom for a solid 10 minutes just trying to grasp that maybe we finally found what’s been causing all these problems. The next thing I noticed, is I could breathe again. Everything felt open again.

I got my sinus rinse bottle out, and started to make it. The not so fun part comes next. The first rinse. I emptied out so much blood it wasn’t even funny. But every glob that came out, the more relief I felt. God it felt so fucking amazing. I kept up with the pain meds, because I knew that was coming soon once the initial dose of ketamine was going to wear off.

Thursday I just spent the entire day on the couch sleeping. I needed it. It felt good to finally get rest. I set an alarm for every 2 hours to do a rinse, it will help immensely for next Mondays post op appointment. If I can just keep things clean up there, it will be less to remove.

I texted Hepworth later that day, thanking him for the help, but mentioned the MRSA culture. He said it’s too soon, but I’ll probably have to go on Vancomycin to finally kick this once in for all. I then asked him if it looked really bad up there, his only response was “yes”.

So for now I’m off work again until the end of next week. Hopefully Monday he will make the call to infectious disease. I just don’t want this coming back anymore.

I really hope this is the last surgical intervention, but at least now, I think we were able to eliminate the finaly hiding spot.

I’ll update this again after the post op appointment on Monday.