I'm not dead!
Mar. 4th, 2023 08:14 pmI'm not dead! Not that this was in question, although it could have been.
...Let me back up.
Round about January 2022, I got a sinus infection that would not go away despite multiple antibiotics. I eventually got kicked to an ENT in November, who did a CT scan and found my entire left sphenoid sinus (the one behind your eyeball) and most of the adjoining ethmoid sinus were completely blocked. The bone around those sinuses had grown and thickened quite a bit, which means I probably had the infection for at least a year, if not longer. The bone separating the sinus from the brain and optic nerve is only a few millimeters thick, so the infection could eventually have gotten to my brain or eyes and done very bad things.
Needless to say, I agreed to have it surgically evicted as soon as possible, which turned out to be February 15. My body had tried to wall off the infection with more bone, so the ENT had to basically break open the sinus like a really gross pinata, then flush it out with several cups of saline. While he was in there, he fixed my deviated septum--he actually had to do that to even reach the sphenoid sinus, it was so far to the left--and removed some other excess tissue on both sides.
Upon culture, the infection turned out to be MRSA, because of course it did. Luckily, the lab confirmed it was susceptible to Bactrim, so I took that for a while after the surgery.
I'm 2.5 weeks postop and hoping that eventually it all stops hurting. The first night (it was a day surgery) was agonizing even with Norco, and the next four or five days were still pretty bad even with good painkillers. This was in part because you have to sleep sitting up for several days, and even though I splurged on a fancy pillow system to do so with, I didn't exactly sleep well.
I got the plastic splints they stitch in place to hold the healing septum in place removed after one week, which helped with the pain, but ever since I've been stuck on the same plateau. I'd characterize it as "Distracting and quite unpleasant without drugs; still noticeable but ignorable with tramadol and/or Advil." I will say the area of pain is slowly getting smaller; now it's mostly my front teeth and the very front of my septum. I guess nerves that got severed are waking up or something.
The swelling is supposed to take a couple of months to fully subside, so the jury's still out on whether it will help me breathe better. Right now I don't feel a ton of difference from before. Maybe it's a bit easier.
Anyway, that's been my last few weeks.
On top of all that, my employer is offering a free medical weight loss package that involves some kind of nutrition class and (free!) semaglutide, aka Ozempic or Wegovy or so on. I decided to take advantage of it and got my first dose this week...only for the auto-injector pen to malfunction last night, spraying the drug all over me rather than into my thigh. Hopefully the doctor's office or the drug company will replace it, as happened when one of my biologic meds did the same thing.
I've heard that these drugs basically shut up that voice in your head that tells you to eat every moment of every day, which is my problem. I can make the decision to stay away from the food that tastes good and eat the food that tastes less good but is better for me 3-4 times a day. Once we get to snacking or eating 8-9 times a day, my willpower fails.
I'm a little concerned about what happens when one comes off of this drug, but the NP who prescribed it to me said there's been success with putting people on Metformin after so they keep the weight off. I'm already on a very low dose of Metformin because I had a borderline fasting glucose reading last year and figured what the hell, apparently it's a miracle drug and with an autoimmune disorder I'm already predisposed to diseases of inflammation like diabetes, so I might as well take it.
I also got told to start eating 20-30 grams of protein at each meal, which seems absolutely absurd to me, but I'm trying. You can't really do that without eating ridiculous amounts of meat or via things like protein shakes. I'm not that into meat (and it's expensive anyway), so I tried a protein shake tonight. It wasn't as terrible as I remember them being years ago, actually, so this might be viable long-term.
...Let me back up.
Round about January 2022, I got a sinus infection that would not go away despite multiple antibiotics. I eventually got kicked to an ENT in November, who did a CT scan and found my entire left sphenoid sinus (the one behind your eyeball) and most of the adjoining ethmoid sinus were completely blocked. The bone around those sinuses had grown and thickened quite a bit, which means I probably had the infection for at least a year, if not longer. The bone separating the sinus from the brain and optic nerve is only a few millimeters thick, so the infection could eventually have gotten to my brain or eyes and done very bad things.
Needless to say, I agreed to have it surgically evicted as soon as possible, which turned out to be February 15. My body had tried to wall off the infection with more bone, so the ENT had to basically break open the sinus like a really gross pinata, then flush it out with several cups of saline. While he was in there, he fixed my deviated septum--he actually had to do that to even reach the sphenoid sinus, it was so far to the left--and removed some other excess tissue on both sides.
Upon culture, the infection turned out to be MRSA, because of course it did. Luckily, the lab confirmed it was susceptible to Bactrim, so I took that for a while after the surgery.
I'm 2.5 weeks postop and hoping that eventually it all stops hurting. The first night (it was a day surgery) was agonizing even with Norco, and the next four or five days were still pretty bad even with good painkillers. This was in part because you have to sleep sitting up for several days, and even though I splurged on a fancy pillow system to do so with, I didn't exactly sleep well.
I got the plastic splints they stitch in place to hold the healing septum in place removed after one week, which helped with the pain, but ever since I've been stuck on the same plateau. I'd characterize it as "Distracting and quite unpleasant without drugs; still noticeable but ignorable with tramadol and/or Advil." I will say the area of pain is slowly getting smaller; now it's mostly my front teeth and the very front of my septum. I guess nerves that got severed are waking up or something.
The swelling is supposed to take a couple of months to fully subside, so the jury's still out on whether it will help me breathe better. Right now I don't feel a ton of difference from before. Maybe it's a bit easier.
Anyway, that's been my last few weeks.
On top of all that, my employer is offering a free medical weight loss package that involves some kind of nutrition class and (free!) semaglutide, aka Ozempic or Wegovy or so on. I decided to take advantage of it and got my first dose this week...only for the auto-injector pen to malfunction last night, spraying the drug all over me rather than into my thigh. Hopefully the doctor's office or the drug company will replace it, as happened when one of my biologic meds did the same thing.
I've heard that these drugs basically shut up that voice in your head that tells you to eat every moment of every day, which is my problem. I can make the decision to stay away from the food that tastes good and eat the food that tastes less good but is better for me 3-4 times a day. Once we get to snacking or eating 8-9 times a day, my willpower fails.
I'm a little concerned about what happens when one comes off of this drug, but the NP who prescribed it to me said there's been success with putting people on Metformin after so they keep the weight off. I'm already on a very low dose of Metformin because I had a borderline fasting glucose reading last year and figured what the hell, apparently it's a miracle drug and with an autoimmune disorder I'm already predisposed to diseases of inflammation like diabetes, so I might as well take it.
I also got told to start eating 20-30 grams of protein at each meal, which seems absolutely absurd to me, but I'm trying. You can't really do that without eating ridiculous amounts of meat or via things like protein shakes. I'm not that into meat (and it's expensive anyway), so I tried a protein shake tonight. It wasn't as terrible as I remember them being years ago, actually, so this might be viable long-term.
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