My doctor's appointment in a nutshell - the surgery is a go and set for Thursday afternoon.

The doc took one look at my CT scans and showed me how socked in my sinuses are. Basically I have inflammation and infection in all my sinus cavities; especially my right maxillary cavity which has been infected for some time. Years, maybe. Which begs the question I never asked: if it's been so bad, how was I able to skydive and even moreso, how was I able to scuba dive? My guess is it wasn't that bad yet at those points in time. I last did both of those activities in September/early October of '04 although I distinctly remember losing my sense of smell some time before that.

The doc - incidentally, he's a hottie - explained that the surgery would last about 3 hours and he would be opening the sinuses some and cleaning them out. Do the holes he's knocking into my skull count as trepanning? But I digress - afterwards I won't be able to lift anything heavier than 10 pounds for a few weeks so Jon gets to chase Brenden around without me for a while.

The doc also explained to me that this operation should alleviate the symptoms but they were not a cure. He said that if I do not work to aggresively keep my allergies in check, I would probably be right back in the surgery center in 5 - 10 years time. I am currently doing 2 of the 3 things I need to be doing to keep them in check: 1) medications - the coticosteroids I'm taking (Nasonex) to keep the swelling down. 2) Allergy shots. The third thing is to go through the house and allergen-proof it. Which means ripping up the carpets and putting a different flooring down. Hooray! I've been tempted to put wood flooring anyway. We'll also replace the couch and bed and use HEPA filters and all that jazz. One thing we will not do is get rid of the cats. Vasquez doesn't have much mileage left in her anyways, and I couldn't part with BFK. I think I'm not allergic to him anyway.

Yeah I'm a little scared but I'm also looking forward to not only maybe being able to smell and taste my food again, but also a mini-vacation from my responsibilities.