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!