In the spring of 2004 I began to notice that when I would lay down at night that I felt slightly short of breath.  At the time I was a smoker and thought “wow, I really need to cut back!”  It came and went and was easily dismissed.

Then I had a strange episode of going to the grocery store late one evening after the kids and hubby were asleep.  My parents home is also on the farm we live on and she went to the store with me.  We were looking at produce and it felt like something stung my lip.  By the time we got home my bottom lip was so swollen it was hanging down.  Went right back to town to ER and got atarax, Benadryl, steroids and told to follow up with local physician.

It kept happening to my lips, my eyes and was totally random.  I saw an allergist, had testing done…no allergies.  Idiopathic urticaria and idiopathic angioedema.  Basically, no one knew why this was happening and just kept prescribing steroids.

I also began wheezing ALL the time…suddenly I felt like my body was just falling apart.   I was stressed out, couldn’t sleep, missing work, rapidly putting on weight and getting prescribed more and more meds.  After six months of this worsening and a very scary ER visit that my pcp sent me home from, I made a very difficult decision to change to a new pcp.

He got me in right away and said I think you have a major sinus infection and this could be causing your problems.  I had a head X-ray and was seen the same day by my ENT.  He did a scope in his office that revealed infection, polyps, inflammation and also ordered a ct scan.  On December 23, 2004, I had my very first sinus surgery.  I was terrified……I had never had general anesthesia and google scared me even more!