Sinus Infections "Treated" since 1995, "Solved" in 2004 and "Managed" Since

I thought it would be helpful to have a topic about my sinuses.  Not that it's the most 'entertaining' and 'pleasant' thing to write about, but it is something that comes up a lot with people.  Since many reading this might not know anything about me, I'll do an overall summary. 

I was born in 1960 and raised in the dry mountain air of Colorado.  My mother and grandmother smoked in our very small house and I had no seeming effects from it (which was not the case, later heavy metals testing showed lead and cadmium, which my MD/specialist has said is likely from the papers of the cigarettes, but it took years of toxins to my body, mind and spirit before my health 'slid' from being on the 'chronic wellness' end of the teeter totter of life, to 'chronic illness' in my 20s.  

I was 'delusional' about my health status because the body has such a capacity to handle insults that there were not outward signs of my having anything lying ahead that would devastate my health and life for a while.  I didn't miss one day of junior high from illness! I had some colds but nothing aside from a few really bad and embarrassing coughing attacks -- that wouldn't keep me from going to school; my family was kind of 'old school' with their work/school ethic. Little did I know that some of the symptoms I was experiencing were related to 'adrenal fatigue'.  What do the adrenal glands have to do with the sinuses?  Read on.  

In high school I had several occurrences of strep throat, or what my MD thought on looking was strep thoat and and would give me a painful penicillin shot in my butt.  When I was 16, I had an episode and drove the 12 miles to the doctor alone, where my temperature was 103.5 and he was sure it was strep and wanted to give me a shot.  I couldn't imagine driving home with my butt hurting that badly, so I asked if he could give me pills and I'd come back for a shot if the culture revealed it was in fact strep.  He agreed.  It was not strep.  Score one for the rookie 16 year old.  

Once I got to college and was sexually active with my boyfriend from high school, I started having UTIs.  Over and over, but no problem, antibiotics cleared them up.  Or so it appeared at first and second and third.  In order to get married in 1981, the state of Colorado required women be tested for German Measles/rebella and I had n titers so had to get an immunization.  The next month I was in the ENT (ear, nose and throat) specialist's office due to having a 'reverb'/echo after sharp noises.  

Somewhere in this timeframe, I had a UTI and an ear infection which just would NOT go away; I was getting my medical care at the University Health Center and they referred me out to a specialist for the ear infection, who told me 'you're healthy, you're young and you don't smoke, you don't need antibiotics for an ear infection, you just need to clear your tubes by backpressuring them at least 10 times a day'.  

I remember leaving angry about NOT getting a pill solution -- clear my ears as many times a day as I can think of it and THAT is going to cure this infection that antibiotics cannot?  Yeah RIGHT.  Well, it worked!  Score one for the smart doctor who was using clinical reasoning and thinking long-term, not short-term solutions.  However, unfortunately, he didn't know what I now know this was a symptom of, and in my opinion, the opportunity to 'nip my health problems' in the bud, was missed. The results of that missed opportunity was VERY expensive to me; the doctor likely never knew he had only PARTLY helped me that day.  

The health center transferred me to their medical director, whose speciality was gynecology, and she catheterized me for a sample as they were trying to figure out why taking the usual antibiotics for the usual problems they saw with young women wasn't working for me.  Yes, there was bacteria in me, it wasn't that I was just bad at following instructions on doing a clean catch sample.  Like the ENT, above, they just weren't aware of what was going on.  The year was 1982, the 'bibles' about the medical condition I had but was unaware of and undiagnosed with, adrenal fatigue, weren't yet written and on the bookshelves as they have been since the 1990s.  Part of the 'package' of coming down with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia includes frequent infections.  However, things didn't deteriorate enough to be 'CFS' until 1989 --  SEVEN YEARS of missed opportunities to do 'early intervention'.  If you're reading this and hear yourself in some of the things I experienced early on, PLEASE consider making this a highest priority to learn about and intervene so you don't go down the path to CFS and FM, it's very difficult to reverse and recover from.  Very few will say they believe it is 'curable', most with knowledge about it agree it can be reversed and managed. In the past five years I have managed to temporarily reverse it so much that I felt like it was most accurate to say 'I've had fibromyalgia and it's in remission right now'; then more stressors came along and I slid backwards again.  But definitely, I am in the 'reversible' belief camp!

Much of the immune system is in your gut -- 50-75% are the figures that the writers at Lumigrate's forum or in video have said. I will post links, below, to guide you to a few of the main places on Lumigrate I suggest you look at and study if you're wanting more information about these things. Today, there is much awareness about restoring the flora of the gut which is stripped out with antibiotics and other things in our diet and water which impact the health balance our bodies will have ideally, when we're 'chronically well'.  There's even a yogurt which advertises heavily that, if you eat three of them a day, are shown to 'regulate' people's GI systems.  Why not just take probiotic supplements? But I found out at age 35 I was al allergic as you can be to dairy.   Remember all the antibiotics I was given for my first and second symptoms related to infections (throat, urinary tract, ears)?  Back then, I hadn't yet learned, nor had the allopathic medical community, about the flora of the gut. Today, you'd have to be under a rock to not have heard about that theory, and it might not be a theory that everyone wishes to subscribe to, which is fine; everyone has their reality and path, I'm simply sharing mine if it will help others.    

You'll notice I'm up to age 22 in this story and have not yet gotten to the sinus part.  Well, that's because I didn't have my first documented/diagnosed sinus infection until I was 34!  Another TWELVE years!  I was feeling worn out working full time and going to school part time and had discovered occupational therapy and wanted to pursue that full time, so I decided to stop taking college classes ('drop out' to use the dreaded expression) and get a full time job with benefits for myself and my husband. He hadn't wanted to follow the health center's request for him to come in to also be tested for UTI in case it was something getting passed back to me; now I believe it wasn't that at all, but it didn't win him any favors with me that he refused to do something so simple for solving my health problem. There is always something you can put your finger on and say 'this is when I started to leave the relationship' and that was the point; we were divorced when I was 25.  

I would get SO tired in the afternoons -- I remember having a Bronco game on and our friend over with the guys YELLING with the big plays and I'd wake up from my place on the floor in front of the TV and see what was goign on and zonk back out. It was like what people call a 'food coma', except I hadn't had the food! During the workweek I couldn't take a nap at my desk typing statistical documents and doing data entry and office reception for the consulting company I worked for, so I'd reach for coffee.  I started having problems with my sinuses related to headaches from the cigarette smokers whose break room was right off of my work area.  

On weekends I started wanting to take naps; naps were something I'd occasionally taken when I was growing up, sometimes this incredible fatigue would come over me. But my dad, it turns out, had chronic fatigue when he was in college in the 1930s, and later had an undiagnosed case of fibromyalgia, I believe. (100% sure of that).  I wanted to do things instead of sleep the day away, it was sheer determinism on my part to do all the things I wanted or 'needed' to do.  I was a pretty active person with work, family, friends, outdoor activities.   

Somewhere along the lines my headaches turned into migraines and I didn't know that was the case because my dad had to go to bed and would sometimes be sick to his stomach from them and mine weren't doing that to me; I could motor my way through my work day or whatever I had to get done that day.  That was in my mid 20s. I had gotten a very good job for what go on to become a world-renowned air quality project; the work I was the key administrative staff member for lead to the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.  Needless to say, we pulled out all the stops and worked incredibly hard for a long time to bring the funding, study and results to fruition.  

The research group had grown to require a new building and since it was at a Colorado State research campus, the construction was cheaply done to save money.  Much formaldehyde and other toxins outgassed; I had almost daily migraines and one early summer day not long after I'd turned 29 years old, I couldn't walk from my car and up the stairs to my office without stopping on the landing midway up the one flight of stairs.  I couldn't walk a block, I couldn't stand at the stove long enough to stir whatever I was trying to cook; my blood pressure was dropping, I now realize.  Again, doctors didn't know what any of this was at the time so we weren't aware of what was causing what.  I just knew I wasn't well.  I fortunately had a good Primary Care physician who knew who to refer me to in Fort Collins, and I had outstanding allopathic advise.  I wish I would have known more about complementary/alternative medicine interventions at that time but at least eventually I did.  

I did go to a doctor of chiropractics which helped me a lot overall, but the eating plan he suggested to all his patients, I now realize, was contraindicated for 'adrenal fatigue'.  But in the short term it made me feel amazing and I used to say "I made a 110% recovery!"  Well, that extra 10% was an indicator that something was not 'right'.  One of the phases of adrenal fatigue is to get a really high energy level -- man I was in shape! 13% body fat because I was working out so much! I felt good, I looked good, I was having a good time .... what's to worry about!?  

In my mid 30s I was accepted to OT school and had just met a man who, at 39, said 'you're the one!'; he'd bought a house big enough for the two of us and our stuff/cars and life seemed golden! My last summer before the OT program started, I took the required cadaver anatomy class, which in the summer means TWICE as long per day hanging over fumes; the professor had not told me of the proper masks to filter out the type of toxins in the embalming fluids.  The second day of class I got a horrible headache, and it continued until I researched what I needed and drove to Denver and bought the $100 mask from an occupational safety warehouse that 3M told me about when I called their 800 #.  But this dose of toxins, along with the stressors of that semester and the next (which is the 'weed out the weeds' that medical programs are famous for), tripped me into what turned out to be diagnosed as 'fibromyalgia', yet that would go missed or misdiagnosed for a few years.  

We loved to ski, and between Christmas and New Years were staying around Ouray, soaking in hot springs and skiing in the day, despite having colds, and then coughing SO badly in the night I was afraid we were keeping the whole building awake.  I called and there was ONE appointment with our doctor, so we took it and left in time to do the long drive back to Fort Collins.  I said 'SURPRISE, doctor, you have two patients with the same cold, I think he has a sinus infection so if you can only see one of us, see him'.  Well, the joke was on ME -- turns out I had a sinus infection!  Me?  I've never had a sinus infection ....... that I knew of....... Gosh, maybe I've had sinus infections all along when I had these colds with all the coughing.  

From that point on, whenever someone had a cold in my OT program, I got it, and half the time I got REALLY sick and had to go to the doctor for bronchitis/sinus infection.  I'd take the antibiotics and not restore my gut, just as the doctor would educate and prescribe for me to do.  I was miserable.  I DREADED winter because of the bugs! It's not like you can call in sick to OT school, internships, etc... the 'show must go on!'.  

This went on for years.  Several times I was so sick 'just from a cold that went into bronchitis', that I could barely function.  I had good insurance, so I'd go to the doctor and do what they said and prescribed.  Finally, in 2004, I again was staying in Telluride, this time in the fall for the Telluride Blues and Brews festival.  My room in the condo I was sharing with friends overlooked the hot tub I'd been in the day before and I was so sick I didn't think I could make it back up the stairs to my room if I want, and the day before I'd been FINE (or I thought... my body was doing it's excellent job of seeming fine/well as our bodies will do. They 'hold it together' for survival until they get REALLY overwhelmed.)

Fortunately the ER doc in ER (where I had a $400 fee), knew about 'prednisone blasting' and she talked me into taking prednisone in this 'different' way -- your body doesn't have it long enough to have the side effects which I had always wanted to avoid in my years of saying 'no' to prednisone for fibromyalgia treatment from my well-meaning providers.  Not only did the sinus infection go away, my asthma, which was going more into COPD-ish symptoms, went away too!  

Different than the way allopathic medicine thinks, in CAM, the lungs and the sinuses have a 'connection', as the brain and the gut do.  If someone's gut is out of balance, the brain will be as well.  So now you'll see why writing about sinuses required me to start talking about medications given to me in my teen years for a throat/lung infection, and then how that might have related to what went on with my overall difficulty in fighting infections.  I went through many years of kidney infections as well, which were cured and managed with a simple sugar known as d-Mannose, which affects the bacteria so it doesn't imbed itself into the walls of the urinary tract (from kidney all the way 'out').  

In December I stopped off at ITC Pharmacy in Castle Rock, which has patients in all 50 states of the US and provides content to Lumigrate related to subjects they have expertise in (supplementing nutrition and biologically identical hormones). Co-president Allan Jolley, RPh, ND was there and came out to help me pick out something for my friend's son who had a stye on his eye when I dropped him off at a friends to 'hang out' while I went to say hello and show my face to ITC since I was in the area.  He showed me a product that was a homeoopathic of colloidal silver, which was really cool and interesting and then I said 'would this work when I get sinus infections trying to break through?' and he said 'yes, but if you have a sinus issue, you HAVE to look at what's going on in the gut.'  

There's much to that, and I'll give you links to read more about that if you're interested.  In the mean time, know that M-F you can call ITC Pharmacy, or email them, and Allan or his partner Gary or other pharmacists who are working the laboratory will be able to answer your question.  They have a LOT of experience in this because about 70% or more of their customers/patients have fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.  When you read Jacob Teitelbaum's Beat Sugar Addiction Blues book, which I would say is REQUIRED #1 top of the list reading if your interests are piqued here, you'll see that ITC is one of two pharmacies in the US he suggests people route to for getting their thyroid or other hormone prescriptions filled.  I've used them for just over a year now and they have consistently delivered correct orders and with incredible promptness, sometimes less than 24 hours later my doorbell rings! At most it was three business days, that was over a weekend.   

I know this was a lot of words with this 'tale'; Allan's educational pieces are very segmented and streamlined, so I hope this is a good way to string the two together.  

I will come back with the links -- this is a work in progress.  Check back soon, this is a top priority to complete this piece.  ~~ Mardy