[twister_mama]

I feel your (sinus) pain, Mel. I had a very large abcess in the way back of my right sinus about 13 years ago, when I was 21. It was pushing against my eye, and caused a constant, unrelenting migraine for two whole freakin' months, cuz every doctor I went to only wanted to prescribe pain meds rather than find out the cause of the pain. When I got to the point I was vomiting and crying from pain, my parents took me to the emergency room, where they did a CT scan and found the abcess. The only treatment was surgery, of course. The surgeon said the infection was dangerously close to invading my brain. Apparently, the "channel" that connects the back of the nose to the sinuses was really narrow and twisted in spots, which prevented my sinuses from draining correctly. So the surgeon had to open that "channel" up during the surgery, too. She also corrected my deviated septum. So I had a lot of cutting and whatnot done up in my sinuses and nose; and I had to have sponges stuffed all up into my sinus and stuff. The first several days were the worst, pain-wise; I still had that headache, and my nose felt sore. But what really annoyed me was not being able to breathe through my nose at all until those sponges were pulled out like a week later (which wasn't pleasant, of course; but my surgeon wasn't particularly gentle either, so that was probably half of the problem, lol ). They gave me good pain meds during the recovery period, so that was good.

You seem to have your condition under control with the pill; so I can see why you'd be hesitant to undergo surgery now. All my surgeries were medically necessary; or the pain could not possibly be controlled; so that was my only option (I've had 6 surgeries in the past 11 years alone, including 2 c-sections and a hysterectomy). If you do decide to have the surgery, know that the recovery isn't really too bad.

Good luck with your program! I'm glad Noogleberry has been finally working for you. Gives me hope that maybe someday it'll work for me too!