Suddenly Sinus Surgery

Remember that tooth that I had all those root canals and root-ectomy and ultimately extraction procedures on?  That tooth is back.  Well, it's not back, it's still in play.

I want to get an implant there, but to do so I had to wait four months for the extraction to heal and bone to fill in.   That time has passed, the endodontist is ready to implant the screw and wait, hold on, the maxillary sinus above the jaw looks filled.  It shouldn't be filled.  "You need to go see an ENT", he told me.   Blast.

My upper left side is now two molars down (plus the third wisdom tooth I didn't have room for when I was eighteen) and I have a lower left molar that may migrate north if it's not opposed by an upper tooth at some point.  Also, I'm tired of doing most of the major chewing on the right side.

Off I go to the ENT and one CT scan later reveals the left maxillary sinus is, yes, full.   So fourteen days of antibiotics in the hopes of avoiding surgery (he thinks I'm going to need it but this is what the insurance company is going to require) and then we'll do another CT scan. 

Fourteen days later and it's a wee bit better, but not clear and not good enough for my endodontist to insert two screws into the sinus space, gently moving the sinus membrane out of the way in the process.  That would be fine, well and good, provided the sinus could adequately drain and heal as designed.  A blocked sinus doesn't do that well and if things went truly, badly wrong, I suppose I could lose my head and that's really not the outcome I was looking for.

So we scheduled surgery.  Monday it is.  I was on his schedule as fast as he could get me in.  Monday morning very early, let's do this thing and get that sinus open and cleared out.   Friday afternoon I get a call from his office.  Insurance hasn't given approval.  Monday is cancelled.  But not to worry, he can see me Tuesday if the approval comes in on Monday.  I'll get a phone call on Monday and we'll go from there.

This morning (today is Tuesday if you're reading this at some future point) the phone rings at six-thirty.  It's the hospital.  Where am I?  I have surgery in an hour.  "I do?  I didn't hear insurance had approved it.  No one has called me.  What do you want me to do?"

And this is where I'm going to spare you the details about how the ENT's office did some amazing things, making calls to the insurance company, giving them the doctor's personal cell phone number (while he's in surgery) so that they could get me in at some point today. 

Back up to that phone call at six-thirty the nurse said, "have you eaten anything?  You haven't?  Good, then don't!  We're going to try to get you in.  We'll call you back."

It was eleven-fifty-five, my husband and I were in line to pick up the children and I was hungry when I found out I was approved.  Could I get there in no time flat?  Yes, I could!  I was already in the car and only ten minutes away.

Now my sinus has been opened up and soon, yes soon, the endodontist will be able to get me one step closer to being able to chew on the left side of my mouth again.  But for now, I wish my nose would stop bleeding because I look silly with a gauze bandage taped to my face.

The Big Boy Update:  Doozers.  There is a show Uncle Jonathan showed my son.  In one viewing, my son obsessed.  He asked about the show multiple times today.  Before bed my husband let him watch it and through unrelated thing, showed my son the binoculars Gramps had brought over earlier.  I heard my son say, "oh wow, that's better."  Then he said, "it's smaller than ever."   My husband laughed.  He said the Doozers show had two characters holding binoculars.  One of the characters was using them correctly and said, "oh wow, that's better."  The other character was looking through them backwards.  He said my son had turned the binoculars around, looked through them backwards and said the same comment the character did, "it's smaller than ever."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Another update from her visit with Mimi yesterday: We went outside to play, and her hand found some mud. I wiped off as much of the mud as I could with a tissue, but she still had a dirty hand. I told her I would clean her dirty hand when we went inside. We played outside some more and most of the mud rubbed off. When we went inside she looked at her hand and said, “Where did the dirty go?”