You’re Very, Very Sick

 

By the time I heard that for the second time, I was beginning to think the doctor and the nurse were not talking about my unfortunate combination of flu and ear infection. 

 

The doctor continued, “You have a very serious chronic sinus infection.”

 

Ummmm, ok, I thought.

 

“Here, look,” he said pointing to the X-rays.  “This part of your X-ray should be black to indicate that there is air there.”

 

HA!  I thought.  I already knew that from the nurse.

 

“But your’s is all gray.  It’s filled with infection.  In fact, the right side of your sinuses is 100% filled with infection.  And the left side of your sinuses is over 50% filled.  There may be polyps or cysts in there, but I can’t tell because you have so much infection.  And look how thick the lining is in your sinuses.  You’ve had this for a very, very long time.” 

 

OK.  Head full of snot.  Not a good thing.  Polyps?  Cysts?  Well, I decided to ignore that for a second. 

 

“We’re going to hit this thing hard.  We’re going to hit it really hard and see what we can do with it.  I’m going to give you steroids and antibiotics and then you’re going to come back here in a month and we’re going to see what is happened.”

 

At this point, I thought I ought to bring up some relevant information for this new doctor of mine.  “I’m going to start trying to conceive next month.”

 

He looked at me seriously, “No, you’re not.  I don’t want you to try to get pregnant for at least two months.  You are very sick and we need to get you well.  If you got pregnant again, the hormones would really mess with your breathing and it could get worse.”

 

I felt the wind knocked out of me.  “But I just had a miscarriage.  I should be pregnant right now anyway and then what would you do!?!  Besides, I’m 41!  I need to start trying again to get pregnant as soon as possible.”  I started crying a bit in my chair. 

 

“No,” he said.  “I can’t let you.”  He paused.  “OK.  One month.  Just wait one month and let’s see what has happened then.” 

 

So great.  My head if filled with infected snot and some doctor I don’t even know says I’m “so sick” I can’t get pregnant. 

 

At this point, he decided he wanted to get a culture of my snot infection to see if there is something peculiar about this one that the antibiotic won’t fix.  He shoots stuff up my nose again and we head off to the biopsy chair.  At this point, I just bluntly tell him that I am not having fun.  Yeah, he says, this is not what you expected today to be. 

 

The nurse is very reassuring.  I start sobbing telling her that he doesn’t want me to get pregnant and I’ve just had a miscarriage.  She is incredibly compassionate and shares with me that although she has 4 children, she had eight pregnancies.  She also nearly cheers when I tell her I’m still breastfeeding Conor and says she breastfed all her children too including the youngest for nearly 3 years.  Wow. In all of this, I find a kindred spirit in a nurse.

 

But then she gets quite serious.  “You really can’t get pregnant right now,” she says.  “You’re really very sick.”  

 

“But I don’t feel sick!” I protested, which is ironic since I’ve just come in there with the flu and an ear infection and I was still running a 102 degree fever. 

 

She sighed and said “This has happened so gradually, you don’t know what it feels like to feel well.”   She paused again.  “Your head is filled up.  This could infect your brain next.” 

 

Let’s pause for a second and think about this new information.  My head is full of infection.  In fact, 75% of the available space in my head is full of snot.  The next place for it to go is my brain.  Do you have any idea how embarrassing it would be to be a professor whose brain is attacked by snot?  I have no idea the final outcome, but if I died because of snot to the brain, I would be mortified.  If I was simply hospitalized because of a snotty brain, I can pretty much guarantee you that I wouldn’t get tenure.  “Yeah, she was a promising scholar until that brain infection.  Wasn’t that due to too much snot?”

 

So they got the sample for the snot culture.  It was complicated by my severely deviated septum which 1) was quite painful and 2) is a likely explanation for why I have this chronic sinus infection.  (I’ve been scouring the web and the vast majority of chronic sinus infections occur due to allergies or asthma of which I have neither.  The distant third reason is severe facial bone problems for which surgery to remove said bones and fix the deviated septum appears to be common)

 

I am on prednisone for another week and I have a FOUR MONTH PRESCRIPTION to antibiotics.  I’d like to go on record saying that I’m not a big fan o’ the prednisone.  The first three days when I was on the mega dose was pretty emotional around here.  I still have 6 more days to go, but we’re definitely in the taper zone now. 

 

I still don’t feel like I’m “very, very sick.”  I understand that they think I’m very, very sick.  But I’m not so sure I agree.  And I’m not sure I’m going to stop trying to conceive.  Yes, we’ve agreed to not try next month, but after that, I’m not sure I’m willing to wait any longer.  If surgery is the next step, then why can’t I wait until after I get pregnant and have the baby to have this thing fixed?  If I’ve had it for years, what will one more year do before it’s fixed?  And I can’t imagine that 4 months of antibiotics is going to do nothing.  Surely that will clear this thing up enough to let me get pregnant and hold me over until we can quasi-permanently solve it. 

 

So, there.  It’s a bit of an anticlimactic end to this story.  I’ve been diagnosed with a chronic infection, and they aren’t going to let me start trying to conceive for another month.  I don’t have cancer.  I don’t have a tumor.  I don’t have heart disease.  I have, quite literally, a head full of snot.  I’m supposedly so sick I don’t know what it feels like to be healthy.  Yes, I’m tired all the time, but I’m also a working mother of a toddler.  Which is the true culprit here?  Go invest in Kleenex, my friends.  That’s all I really know about what is going on at this point.   

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