Ugh

Brando FINALLY went to see an ENT today after eight years of suffering chronic congestion in his sinuses. Of course they recommend surgery, weeks of steroids, and allergy treatment every day for the rest of his life.

He does have a deviated septum, so crossing fingers fixing that will fix a huge part of the problem. I very much dislike that they are putting him on steroids to calm the inflammation before they go in to fix it. Especially the very steroid that has made his mother's hair fall out (!?!?!) this last year. Only she took it for a few months, and he'll take it for ten days. Except doctors are lying to themselves if they say a drug that can do THAT amongst other things after a few months of taking it doesn't do ANYthing to you if you take it short term. On the upside, he has been going into sleep apnea lately where he stops breathing because no air can't get through. I think I'd rather have him on steroids for ten days than slowly losing oxygen every night.

The one part that gets me is he has a TON of nasal polyps (don't google it, you'll lose your breakfast), that they will remove as well. The little research I did (yes, I'm one of those crazy internet googlers/researchers) mentioned that they come back for a lot of people. I asked the nurse about it and she said, yes, they will come back the next day if he doesn't aggressively treat it with more steroid nasal sprays. Seriously?!?! That conflicts with the doctor's information that says they don't want their patients to be on continuous steroids.

Crazy googler that I am, I found that castor oil seems to reduce polyps. Also, hydrogen peroxide.

Another surgeon cauterizes the 'root' of the polyp if there is such a thing so they will not come back.

Sigh. I know he will want to go the surgery route because he is tired of not being able to breathe, but I want it to actually SOLVE it and not have to go back in over and over for more surgeries. Which, if he doesn't find a way to deal with it naturally, is quite possible, or he's on nasal steroid spray drugs for the rest of his life.

Ugh.

Oh and, on a sad note, the ENT put him at an 11 on a scale of one to ten. You couldn't see ANY of the normal black indicating open airways on his nasal passages, barely any on his sinus cavities above his eyes, and only the the top 3/4 on the sinus cavities on either side of his nasal passages. Grody and poor guy.

Oh, on an upside, he might be able to kiss me for longer than it takes to be able to take a breath afterwards for a little while!! Man, how I MISS that. Ah, I'm a bit selfish thinking of that. But if it's what it takes to get me through watching him go through this without completely freaking out on him, I'm sure he'll be on board with it.