Sinuses

We finally saw the ENT (otolaryngologist) yesterday. Our appointment got delayed and we got a big runaround, I guess she was in surgery most of the day. Ricky, meanwhile, was thrilled to be out of his room (we were seeing the doc in the clinic downstairs) and was going ape**** (the only word I feel is appropriate here) crazy, acting terrible and not listening to a word I said. So anyway, our appointment was at 2:15 and we finally saw Dr. Messner at 4:30.

Firstly she showed me the CT's. Ricky's ethmoid (between the eyes) and maxillary (under cheekbones) sinuses are completely clogged full of crud. So of course she recommends surgery. The catch, she is not available till Thursday and that means we'd have to stay inpatient till then. Or we can go home but then the insurance authorization takes 2-3 weeks. I am leery of styaing in the hospital any longer than we have to. She says he'd probably need another surgery in a year if we could not get him to do flushes in the meantime. Which I am nearly positive he would not do (I mean he would probably not be able to sit still for them).

I had done my research and asked her if it would be possible to just take out his adenoids (also enlarged) because that has been shown (admittedly, in non-CF patients) to help with sinusitis. She said we could certainly try to do that and see if it helps, then do the sinus surgery later. It was a bit of a frustrating conversation because I wasn't able to get a straight answer, like, what would she do if it were her kid. It was like "well, every kid is different..." and then another emergency came up and she just rushed out of the room in a big hurry without a goodbye or anything... I did get the nurse practitioner's number to call if I have questions or decide to do the surgery.

I think we will probably do the whole shebang. The literature says that adenoidectomies usually don't work on kids with CF for this kind of problem,
though no formal research has been done. I want to go home for a while though so I can schedule vacation time and such. One thing that encourages me is all the success stories I am hearing from so many of you.

It looks like we'll be going home on Monday. That's tentative but we'll keep everyone updated. We don't have the pH probe results yet but I hope to get them today. Talk to everyone later!