My entire life I have had sinus issues. I am allergic to dust which is just everywhere so I spent my life not being able to breathe very well. I have this memory of going to an allergist as a kid and asking him why it doesn’t help when I blow my nose and he told me that my nasal passages were just swollen so I would just sort of have to deal with it. I just accepted that as fact for the next three decades.
A few months ago I was listening to a podcast and one of the hosts was talking about how he had sinus surgery to help open up his nasal passages. I had no idea that was even a thing, but I decided I would look into it. The only problem was that I was still transitioning from NYC to my new weird beach life in North Carolina, so I didn’t have local health insurance yet. I finally became a legal NC resident, got my new ID and switched my health insurance over and of course it took me weeks to get an appointment with my new doctor. He gave me a referral to an ear nose and throat doctor and after several more weeks I finally got an appointment.
While I was at the doctor they put a camera up my nose and into my sinuses. They went into my right nostril and sure enough my sinuses were swollen as expected. The doctor told me she would put me on a steroid that might help and I’d just come back in six weeks and we could go from there. And then she put the camera into my other nostril and she told me I had a polyp, a really big polyp. She though the steroids would help that as well, but I would also need a CT scan and she needed to go talk to a surgeon to see what he thought.
When she came back she said, forget the CT scan and the follow up appointment. They needed to send me to a specialist at UNC, just a quick 2.5 hour drive from my place in Wilmington. It was a tumor… one with about a 10% chance of being cancer, and an extremely high rate of return and every time it comes back it might be cancerous all over again. Best case scenario I am gonna need surgery and yearly checkups for the rest of my life. Fantastic.
I got an appointment with a specialist very quickly which honestly was concerning. I was supposed to get a CT scan locally but there was some confusion and I wasn’t able to get it in time for my appointment. My appointment then got canceled because of a winter storm and no one in North Carolina knows how to deal with the slightest big of snow so they declared a state of emergency for less than two inches of snow. The specialist’s next appointment wasn’t for weeks. Fortunately there was another doctor that had an appointment the following week so finally I saw someone last Monday.
I had been spiraling for two weeks at this point, reading too man studies and things online, exactly what they tell you not to do, but of course you do it anyway. When I got there I had fasted because I didn’t know if I was going to need a CT scan. I had packed for several days in case they needed to do my surgery right away and I was just prepared to be there all day. We got to the appointment 20 minutes early and I think I was out of the office before my appointment time.
The doctor told me he had seen a lot of these and had removed way bigger ones. I was sure that mine was extra huge because usually people find them because they have sinus problems, but I didn’t notice anything because my sinuses always suck. He told me that all the cancerous ones he had seen, he could tell visually immediately. He said that doesn’t mean I don’t have cancer, because he can’t see all of it, but he didn’t think I should worry too much. He didn’t even think we needed to do a biopsy until it had been removed. The surgery just goes through your nose so I would get to go home that day and he told me he could do a minor correction to help my breathing while he is in there. I was very relieved.
Now, I have a long way to go with this. I get it removed on April 1st, but I am going to have to drive five hours round trip to Chapel Hill so many times over the next year to make sure they didn’t miss anything and it doesn’t come back immediately. After 18 months or so, I will only have to get it checked out once a year, but still not exactly something I want to be dealing with, and now I have a preexisting condition forever. Also, I still haven’t had a CT scan, so it’s possible that the tumor is growing into my eye socket or brain which would not be ideal, so there’s a possibility of a much more invasive surgery and all sorts of fun complications. Wish me luck.
So welcome to the first B-Side. I really want to be blogging more and I hate that the first one was so depressing, but it’s nice to just pump out 1000 words real quick and have a place to put it. I promise the next one will be a little more fun… Talk soon.