Wednesday, April 19, 2017

the ENT redux


He basically blew me off. (of course, there was that less than stellar review I wrote on the questionnaire they sent me after my first visit) We looked at the CT scan images of my nasal passages and he pointed out how constricted the left side is and how I don't breathe out of the left nostril because of this constriction which is why I breathe through my mouth and most people would have got that corrected. old news All this is damage from when I was 3 and broke my nose and my parents never saw fit to have it corrected later and then as an adult with no insurance and living and raising a family on an artist's income it was out of the question as long as it wasn't life threatening and it hasn't been life threatening. I am aware that my breath through one nostril is restricted, I take care to sleep with my nose and mouth not smooshed into the pillow, I don't like stuff around my face, I try to keep my nasal passages clear within reason. For the record, I can breathe out of my left nostril and only breathe through my mouth when I'm stopped up. It's not like what happens is a slow asphyxiation. When it happens it's sudden, one minute I'm fine and the next I can't breathe or just barely.

So he does the camera down the throat thing which didn't hurt (the attendant put numbing solution soaked cords in my nostrils first) and shows me my vocal chords and has me make noise and I see them constrict and he pointed the camera into my nasal passages. All looks good and right in there, no obvious malformations down there.

Then he kept pointing out this thing in the image of the CT scan in my nasal passage on the left adding to the constriction from the broken nose...a skin sac full of air. It was very clearly there (hmmm, I wonder if that's why the left side seems full so much more often) so a malformation there in that most people don't have this but I was born like this he says, born with it, that it shows up in about 15% of people. I'm like...OK, so this is something I've lived my whole life with and I'm not really sure what he's saying or recommending, it doesn't seem to be a problem that demands to be fixed to me unless it is or will get worse for which he didn't really have an answer. So yeah, OK, but what about the problem I'm here for, the whole suffocation/choking thing. Perhaps I should get a second opinion, he said, because he could not see anything wrong, perhaps another doctor would be able to see something he wasn't able to, and he was done. What a colossal waste of time and money. I got more attention and useful information from the speech therapist that helped administer the barium swallow test than from this doctor.

So no. I'll not be going through this again just to find out what I already know, that it's just one of many swallowing disorders that you learn to manage among the many weird things that affect and afflict the ever diverse physical form of a human body, unless something extreme happens. 

Maybe I am choking, or rather, aspirating and not suffocating, only instead of one big thing blocking my airway, it's small droplets (saliva or liquid) that take some effort to expel. Who knows. The only answer is the same...mindfulness. Mindfulness when I eat and drink so I may be a pretty dull dinner companion from here on out, just saying.

But, y'all, I kept my promise and went to the doctor about it.




14 comments:

  1. Well. Now you know...almost nothing helpful.
    Jeez.

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  2. The skin sac thing is weird. I've never heard of that! I guess you could look at it this way -- you had it checked out, they found nothing, and that's some source of comfort. Even if the underlying cause of the choking is still vague.

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    1. right? my body is all kind of crazy. this is the 4th thing that falls into the different-from-everybody-else category.

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  3. Seems like all is fairly good until you start choking (which is never good).

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  4. I'm a big proponent of going to the doctor, even if it doesn't really help, because I still believe that they know more than I do. But maybe that's not actually true :) (I'm not letting Mike read this - I keep trying to get him to go to a pain management doctor & he's being stubborn - and this would just give him more ammunition).

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    1. you know what they call the guy who graduated at the bottom of his class in medical school? doctor. my dad was a doctor and he instilled a solid skepticism of them in me. not that he was a bad doctor but because I was getting the inside story.

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  5. Well, it doesn't sound like anything serious but it is "something." I hope this condition fades so as to cause you less trouble.

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  6. And whaaat did this cost, no matter what and even if the insurance pays for most of, ENT's seem to be the least effective of any of them. (my experience too).
    Yeah, mindfulness. I get such bad stomach aches that I have to chew everything to mush so it will digest better, it's such a drag, takes me forever.
    Let us know if the suffocating thing happens again, hopefully not!

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    1. $360...co-pays for the doctor and tests. maybe you need better gut biota. have you tried live and active culture yogurt? and I don't mean the sugar filled fruity 'yogurt'.

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  7. Go to an ENT from the far east that is hard to understand and they will figure it out. My internist figured out I had a bone spur in my sinus keeping me stopped up. I thought bone spurs were just in joints. I just knew it was the end. Seems nothing could be done about it. At least it is good to know nothing serious and no surgeries.

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    1. this guy was from India and I did have a hard time understanding some of what he said. at one point I even spelled the word just to make sure he was saying what I thought he was saying. he was not concerned with or interested in pursuing the problem, seems his main interest was in me getting my nose fixed which is not why I went to see him.

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  8. From a person who hasn't breathed well since 1979, I feel your pain.

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  9. After what you've been through, it seems as though there ought to be a more definitive answer. But as you say, sometimes things just "are." At least some things have been ruled out, which is all to the good. Still, I imagine it gets tiresome, producing these weird sets of symptoms for the docs to ponder over.

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I opened my big mouth, now it's your turn.