Sinus Surgery - Night Before the Surgery

I'm getting up at 4:30AM and will arrive at Fremont's Washington Hospital around 5:30AM for a 7AM sinus surgery. It'll be my first surgery, and I'm definitely anxious, but I'm also optimisitic that the procedure will help reduce the constant pain/pressure I'm experiencing in my sinuses and upper jaw and the frequent recurring sinus infections, nasal blockage, snoring, ear pressure issues,and reduced sleep quality. Whoa those are a lot of issues!

Before I forget I wanted to include some interesting links I've discovered while researching the surgery procedure:

1) A UCSD medical school diagram/flowchart showing the escalation of treatment from the initial acute sinusitus finally to an exacerbated condition that requires sinus surgery.

2) An informative first person account by a patient who underwent surgery for recurring sinus infection that involved turbinate reduction and correction of a deviated septum.

It's taken me quite a while to actually discover I needed surgery, and after that to actually schedule a proper date and get up to speed on what the surgery entails and the outcomes it hopes to achieve. I still feel a little in the dark as I reviewed a lot of qualitiative information about outcomes and risks, but obtained no quantitative info regarding how these surgeries improve symptoms and quality of life. I had a pre-op with my surgeon last Tuesday, CT scans taken the day before that, and a pre-op testing with nurses at Washington Hospital last Friday. I may not have asked the most pointed/specific questions to my surgeon and therefore received pretty vague answers. In fact the first time I saw a list of the actual procedures being performed is when the hostpital pre-op interview nurse asked me to a sign a form consenting that I know what procedures are being performed on me!

They include:

Middle Bilateral Endoscopic total Ethmoidectomy
Bilateral Endoscopic Antrostomy w/ removal of Maxillary sinus mucosa
Right Concha Bullosa resection
Nasal septoplasty (repair of nasal septum)
Resection of inferior turbinates (with risk of atrophic rhinitis which sounds scary!)

I'm also not clear about how my sinus tissues began thickening in the first place! I definintely didn't have chronic sinusitis 8 years ago, but I have always had allergies and asthma. I've taken lots of different medicines indicated for treatment of nasal and lung inflamation and constriction. The topic of allergies deserves a whole separate discussion/post, but anyone who wants to get a refresher on why we have allergies and how the circumstances in the environment create a perfect storm for allergies year after year, listen to last week's Science Friday w/ Ira Flatow and two allergy doc's.

So I'm going to wrap up now, I wrote this post with two aims: 1) kickstarting a few articles that will chronicle my sinus issues, the surgery, and the outcomes (also with the hope of educating others and helping them ask the right questions before surgery!) 2) writing this helps me organize what I've learned and so I get to synthesize the info and it sinks in a bit more.

Wish me luck!

I'm Back in the USA - bank account is poorer, brain is richer? maybe?

I've been back for over a week now. It's not weird to be back even though this is the symbolic end of my escapades around the world. I visited 14 countries and over 35 cities since I left my Google gig back in May 08. I wasn't traveling the whole time by any means, it was more like 6 months of traveling. The rest of the time I spent in San Francisco and other parts of California. Europe was so expensive, I keep telling people I should've visited Europe before SE Asia and India some common commodities are 15-30 times more expensive in Paris and London than on the western beaches of Southern India. But that gripe is mostly a joke, I'm glad the timeline worked itself out the way it did.

The last 3 weeks of my trip were awesome. I stayed with local friends for about a week each in southern france, sw germany (rhineland pfalz) and berlin and it was a much richer experience because of the local contacts.

In the picture above I'm free as a bird, having enjoyed a wine tasting in Sankt Martin and overlooking the town of Diedesfeld. The vantage is next to Hambacher Schloss, famous for being the site of the Hambacher Fest held in 1832, which symbolizes the rise of German democracy. Alleged by locals as the site where the black/red/gold of the german flag was popularized.

Altrip, Rhineland Pfalz, Germany - Why am I here? There's a fantastic explanation.

I met Sabrina briefly in Varkala Beach, Kerala. On Christmas Eve last year. Little did I know at that time that I'd run into her again at Hampi Ruins, Karnataka a few weeks later while travelling with my sister and uncle. Even stranger still - I mentioned to her that I was travelling to Germany with a final destination of Berlin - she generously offered me her family's extra room in their awesome Altrip home. And so I've been here for the last three nights! It's been wonderful to relax, do laundry, have "psuedo parents", and sneak in some amazing german wine, history, architecture all while nestled in the beautiful riparian landscape of the Rhine River.

Altrip is a small village of 8000 inhabitants. It's very close to Mannheim where I first trained in. The post office in Altrip is in the back of a vegetable and pet food store, it's very small, but also very awesome. Believe it or not Altrip comes from the Roman Alta Ripa meaning raised up land next to a river ecosystem. Believe it or not Altrip was founded by the Romans in 369 AD. That's one old village.

We went to Speyer yesterday. Martin Luther officiallly split from the Catholic church here in the 1500s. It has a beatiful main street to the largest gothic cathedral in Germany "Dom". There's also an awesome mideival clock tower/city gate on the other and of the picturesque restaurant and shop lined cobblestone street. Nearby we visited a near 1000 year old Jewish Baths in the heart of the City, the ruins have been turned into an informative museum.

Last night my friend Sabrina's father took us to the SAP ice hockey arena to watch Mannheim proceed to kick Berlin's ass in a best of 5 playoff series. They're 1:1 now, it was a great game with awesome perks such as unlimited German buffet and excellent german beers! Dunkelweisen Jaaaa!

Today I woke up very late and in the afternoon we visited Dr. Burklin-Wolf winemaker. Sabrina's brother Glen's good friend works at the Cellar and gave us an excellent and informative tour from fermentation chambers all the way to bottling. There was a 1937 Vintage locked in a basement cellar-cave - it was preserved - and costs 1000+ euros, but many of it's "mates" were pillaged by American and French troops after they occupied Germany at the end of WWII. We ended the tour by sampling 4 different styles and vintages of Reisling in a well appointed tasting room - all after closing time! It was really a treat! BTW the word for wheat and yeast in German sound exactly the same, "heffe".

I finally watched Slumdog Milliionaire on a perfect transfer pirated pre-release-copy. More thoughts on Slumdog later. Let's just say I'm not sure why it won all those oscars. That's provocative perhaps? Well, germany's provocative.