Back to the Future

When I started this blog last year, I did so in hopes of writing my way into better health, along with changes in diet and exercise. Ironically ,last year was probably the worst year of my life, healthwise.

I developed a sinus infection on my right side in April that just wouldn’t clear up but didn’t make me as sick as I had been with past infections. The worst thing about it was the awful odor I sensed each time I sneezed or blew my nose. “Blowing” my nose was not really a term that applied during this year at all; I could only blow through one nostril until Christmas. The odor was unlike anything I had experienced in a long history of sinus problems.

I am allergic to penicillin and sulfa but was on and off multiple other antibiotics until July, when I developed pneumonia. At first I ran a low fever for two days so I waited to see if I was coming down with a virus. On the third day, I woke up too sick to know what I was doing or needed to do. It took me five more days to arrange to see my doctor and, during that time, I experienced blood sugars as low as the 30s. My primary care physician diagnosed pneumonia and I spent the next three weeks getting well enough to resume a modified normal schedule.

Just before the pneumonia presented itself, I called for an appointment with my ENT, in the belief that I might need sinus surgery to clear this thing up once and for all. He did not have an appointment open until late in September so I had over two months to wait.

In March, I started attending a medically supervised weight loss program as part of my new commitment to improved health. By the end of September, despite my sinus problems, I had lost approximately 50 pounds. I learned more about diabetes there then I had in the three years since I had been diagnosed. My blood sugar dropped dramatically, I was able to reduce insulin to less than a half of what I had been taking, and I was exercising regularly. I looked and felt great and was looking forward to finally getting weight under control. The 100 pounds I had yet to lose did not seem at all overwhelming.

When I saw my ENT in late September, he took cultures from my right maxillary sinus. The results showed that I had two strains of pseudomonas aeruginosa (the same bacterial infection that killed 20 year- old Brazilian model and Miss World finalist Mariana Bridi in January 2009). My research on the Internet showed me that I had been luckier than I could have been. Pneumonia triggered by pseudomonas can be fatal to diabetics in just a few days. My delay in getting to the doctor in July had been very risky.

I was told that all the antibiotics I had taken since April were not appropriate to fight the pseudomonas infection and I began several rounds of Cipro and Avelox. A CT scan showed an unidentified mass in my right maxillary sinus and I scheduled surgery for the first possible opportunity – Christmas Eve day.

As many people told me – the physician and physical trainer at the weight loss clinic, my pharmacist, and a good friend who had years of prostate problems in the 90s – Cipro wreaks havoc on blood sugar, your gastrointestinal system, and prevents exercise, due to its links to ruptured tendons. My weight and blood sugar began to climb steadily. All my exercise efforts ground to a halt. I craved sugar and carbs. I had to add multiple OTC medications and probiotics to manage the stomach problems. I ate yogurt daily until I couldn’t stand it anymore.

Surgery was extremely easy. I had had endoscopy before and knew that I would have no problems with it. However, as a cancer survivor, I was apprehensive about what type of mass had developed. In the recovery room, my ENT reported that he had removed an “impressive” fungus and bacteria ball that had calcified and totally blocked by sinuses on the right side. He also told me that the pseudomonas infection had not abated at all. He had removed the diseased tissue and hoped that a month more of Avelox and an antibiotic nasal spray would finish off it off.

It didn’t. I took two more weeks of Cipro and started using an antibiotic nasal wash. My weight continued to climb. However, the odor from my sinuses was finally gone, leaving me to wonder if it had been caused by the blockage rather than the infection.

Now, in mid-February almost a year later, I finally know that the pseudomonas is gone. I have been able to breathe out of both sides for over a month and dropped all the OTC meds two weeks after finishing all the oral antibiotics. I do tire quickly and need a nap many days. I am slow to begin to exercise again; it took so long to develop a pattern of exercise last year and now I am faced with starting over. In fact, “doing it all over again” seems to be my agenda for 2009 in breaking my body’s craving for sugar, lowering blood sugar, gradually shaving off weight, and even remembering to ride the exercise bicycle or walk ten minutes back and forth on the driveway.

Despite the events of the last year, I have had some real breakthroughs in understanding and planning for my better health. A year ago, I thought that living as a healthy person would solve all my problems. Now I understand the difference in living as a healthy diabetic and a healthy person. Diabetes will not disappear because I live the life I should have in my earlier years. It will trigger negative episodes in managing my health in the future and I will have to start over again when it does.

Although it is still February, many of our trees and shrubs are beginning to bloom. By mid-March, spring will have arrived fully and I will feel that surge of energy and mental strength that comes with spending hours a day in the garden. A ten pound weight loss in the next few weeks will make it much easier for me to start seeds, move perennials, prepare planting boxes, and mow the grass. It will also get me down one size into the pants I was wearing in the pre-Cipro days late last summer. They are four sizes smaller than the ones I was wearing a year ago. How hard can ten pounds be?