After over a year of dealing with a
seemingly endless string of upper respiratory issues in the last 1 1/2 years, allergy, colds,
infections and asthma events, 3 of the latter involving E.R. visits, I am about to
take radical measures to correct the pattern.
2 Days from now I’m
having sinus surgery. The best evidence is that my asthma, the worst of the
symptoms, is a result of drainage from them ( the sinuses).
This current string of illness episodes eventually resulted in loss of my singing voice back in May of last year. I literally had to leave in the middle of a concert. The voice came back around the beginning of November but I've had a number of interruptions in singing due to colds, Flu, infection and asthma events since then. Unfortunately my flu shot in October didn't completely protect me as I came down with influenza B in December.
This won't be my first sinus surgery. I had same back in spring of 1980 for correction of everything I've experienced this time except for asthma and complete loss of singing voice. The results were dramatic back then. The sound of my voice was very improved as well as quite a dramatic decrease in the infection events.
The 2nd scariest part of this whole thing, the scariest obviously being going under general anesthesia, has been getting off certain meds in preparation for the surgery. Those would be any aspirin or any other NSAIDs (Advil, Aleve etc), allergy or cold remedy meds and dietary supplements. Since my asthma results from sinus drainage, the number 2 item in the list is the scariest part.
The nature of the procedures has advanced quite a bit since 1980 so the surgeon will be addressing it with different corrective "adjustments" of the structures.
One of the things he'll be addressing is my deviated septum. That was part of the 1980 surgery as well, correcting the results of a foot to the nose in a pick-up football game ~ 1968. 19-20 years ago or so I managed to re-injure it by failing to wear a catcher's mask while warming up a little league pitcher and looking away at just the wrong time.
I'm hoping to be back to singing a couple of weeks after the surgery but we'll see. I'm 34 years older than the last time after all.
