Losing my mind
Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 7:56PM I've pretty much had a sinus infection since mid-December, and its cumulative effect has been to bring me closer to the sense of losing my mental health than anything I've ever experienced in my life. After a while, it just feels like your brain is infected, like there's always this darkness on the edge of town that you dare not look at straight on, because the dark thoughts come with it, and once you let one in, you're scrambling.
That's night, anyway.
Sinus infections, for me at least, tend to come at you like you're coming down with the flu around 6pm (imagine that for 10 months in a row), and then you just have to watch yourself, because you feel so bad that if anyone gives you a decent reason, you'll blow up. So, to avoid that, I take some Tylenol severe sinus congestion to make sure the pain levels off in my skull and then I try to adopt this "father/husband of infinite patience" mindset, where I peer through the fog to realize how lucky I am to have all these amazing people in my life.
I would say I have about a ten percent success rate.
If I stay quiet (Legos with Jerry, maybe a movie in the home theater with any array of kids or spouse), then I feel okay--just a bit beat up from the skull down. I don't try to go to bed before midnight and then I read a lot in bed. Right now I have to go easy on the Elvis in decline stuff, because it gets pretty dark and then I have negative thoughts and can't manage sleep (so Elvis like), so I'm alternating with Conrad Black's FDR bio, but there again, we get this guy who suffers polio and all this pain and is bedeviled with sinusitis his entire life!
If I'm lucky, I read myself to exhaustion and crash around 2-3am. I usually get up at 0600 and get the younger kids dressed and fed, pack the lunches and them in the car, and drive them to school. Then I come back, a bit zombie-like, because mornings are really bad too. Very intense nausea and this pressing down feeling on your skull. Every instinct in your body says, lay down now, which is not me in the least. Frankly, under normal conditions, I like to write hard from 0600 to about 1130--and I mean intensely. But now I have to do all my writing in the afternoon.
So if I'm home and not traveling, I often go back to bed and sleep two more bad hours. Then I'm up around 10am and my work day will run to about 8pm, although, frankly, a work day for me is just whatever it takes, which has always been my style. If I'm working something, or writing something, or thinking something, or making calls and organizing and scheming, it's just all I do for hours on straight until I feel too bad, and then I have to quit.
But being the kind of intensely focused guy that I am, that hours-and-hours can be 20 or 22 hours straight under the right conditions, and then the next day I have to slow it down a bit.
When I'm on the road or on deadline, all that accommodating the bad feeling gets suspended, and I simply gut it out, sometimes going 20 hours a day for 3 or 4 days, with non-stop movement, writing, speaking, meeting. Those, even when I am severely down with a sinus infection (the bottom-out phase), are my best days. No bad thinking allowed--too busy. Too exhausted at the end to care.
When I got here to Indiana, I only got sinus infections on the end of some virus--maybe 3-4 times a year, max. Then somewhere in 2006, it just got more frequent, probably when this cyst in my left maxillary sinus began. 2007 just got more frequent. 2008, through all that marathon book effort, just got pretty much on or off, as in, I either had one or I didn't, but those were the only two settings I knew.
But I was giving so many speeches, and trying to be present on those days when I was home, which was rare enough, and I kept blaming it all on air travel, which may or may not be much of my causality (the big mystery that awaits me post-surgery).
And then last December, I just got lost. Infection around the 15th, and ten days of Levaquin, a very strong antibiotic. Went to SF with the family on Xmas day, and the Levaquin ran out. Five days later, I'm heading south and sick over New Years. Do another 10 days, then rinse and repeat around the 15th of Jan. Tell myself, I've got to get it in order, because I'm debuting the new brief here and there and the tour is just around the corner. Pick up the old back issue (injury from marathon training almost two decades ago), and then I'm adding relaxants to the antibiotics, but since I'm sick most of the time with sinusitis, the exercising and stretching is hard.
Start all over just before the tour with infection #4. Gut it out across the tour, fighting through fog every f--king interview, every appearance, every conversation, every every.
#5 around mid Feb, then #6 at start of March and #7 halfway through. Try other antibiotics and it's the same deal: clean after two weeks, maybe 2-3 days of normal, and then I feel the darkness in my head and it's all back again.
#8 and #9 in April. #10 in early May, surrounding my Istanbul trip. Get into late May okay, and then fly DC and get #11.
Immediate segue into #12 in early June, as I get the new one while still finishing the Sulfa on the last one! #13 another immediate follow-on. I try taking antibiotics surrounding flights in early July and get #14 like clockwork, but by then, the intense daily effort with yoga finally clears up the back.
Mind you, all this time I'm writing two columns a week, about 6-8 blog posts scheduled per day, and doing a speech once every 10-12 days, plus the usual Enterra travel and business, so no slacking per se, just burning out.
I get #15 almost immediately after #14 in mid-July, and tell my doc I have to see a new ENT, because the last one he sent me to said maybe I should experiment with just letting the sinusitis "run its course." I remember staring at him like he was the dumbest f--king moron on the planet. I felt like saying, "How about I come by your house every night and hit you on the side of the head with a ball peen hammer, and we just let that baby take its course?"
By now, I am having a lot of truly bad nights, and I'm beginning to realize that I'm not having a midlife crisis, or suffering depression, or losing my mind. I'm having very black thoughts because I'm having constant infections that never actually leave my skull. I survive primarily because from about 10am to 6pm (more like 1-4pm these past five weeks), I can simply put all the bad feeling out of my head and scrunch up my brain really hard and just get the whatever done--still going long whenever I go public or travel.
So I try hard to set up with the new ENT, who starts coming to my county hospital--finally--in early Sept. I have #16 and #17 in Aug, and am on #18 when I see him in early Sept. He asks when did I last have a CatScan. I say, 1996. So we sked one. He gives me more Levaquin so I'm truly clean when I have it. I basically take Levaquin all of August and Sept--and now through the 29th of Oct too (battling what I estimate are infections #19, #20 and #21).
Because I travel a bunch in Sept, I cannot get back to see the guy after the CT, until I finally sked for the 5th of Oct and then have to bump back to the 12th because of short-notice travel. When we meet on the 12th, he scripts me enough Levaquin for another ten days, because I think he can tell by examining me that I'm going to be right back at it again, even through I just finished 25 days straight of Levaquin.
He ops on Thursdays and I'm seeing him on a Tuesday. I would have had the surgery right then and there--two days later. But he's booked. Same for the next Thursday (today), when I instead go to the hospital for all my pre-surgical testing.
Sure enough, I have to use the Levaquin that Tuesday, the 12th. I had just stopped on Saturday and three days later it's back. So I end up calling the doc's office and get an extension on the Levaquin through the surgery next Thursday, because I know full well that once I stop--boom! And I'd be dropping just as the date approached.
I finish the ten days on the 21st and I start the extra pills today, and this round is going worse than ever before. I take the pill every day, I do all the right stuff, and I'm borderline bedcase every single f--king day. Can't fly til two weeks after the surgery, and I luck out, because I'm not doing anything until the Kellogg event on the 9th, but I gotta tell you, I feel like I am limping to the finish line here, and I would have given damn near anything to have had the surgery today than waiting another GD week, because I don't think I'm going to recover whatsoever. I think I'm in this limbo-purgatory of quasi-peaking infection that will not go anywhere. Because the minute the right side clears, I feel the familiar pain above the left teeth and it starts up again on that side. And once that clears about five days later, it shifts back to the right, and I'm chasing this f--ker around the block, Sisyphus style.
Why not reach for the miracle drug? Buddy, Levaquin is a GD shotgun. I'm blowing zombies up left and right here, but they just keep on coming. I've tried others in that caliber range, and none even do this well--unfortunately, so I'm way out on the plank here. I'm more than happy to jump.
I know this much Levaquin is tempting fate. It causes tendon ruptures, and by now, my Achilles tendons are stiff as hell every time I get up to walk. I exercise very carefully, and when I shoot buckets or throw baseball with my son, I just take a pass on any explosive movements. There are no illusions here.
And I'm just so exhausted from doing this for ten months--damn near straight. I think I've been good maybe 15 days since mid-Dec, and I mean, days when I don't think at all about my skull or my sinuses or my ears or my throat or the fog in my brain. I last remember feeling good driving home from a XC practice with Jerry where we raced, in stints, about 5 miles, and I was clear as a bell and it was a beautiful evening. I think it was maybe August 20. Before that I remember some good days in the middle of May. Before that, I remember the beginning of December.
But I don't remember much of anything before mid-December--in terms of what it feels like to be healthy, or not stalked all the time, where I can feel this monster getting close or just leaving. I just don't remember what the normal me feels like. I get glimpses when I write something intense, or whenever I'm on stage, but they're maybe 30 to 40 minutes max, and the window feels smaller each time.
The odd thing is, I've been working out like a maniac since the cross-country season ended. I do the elliptical 50 mins. I Bowflex damn near every day. I do yoga 2-3 x a week. Body-wise, I haven't been this solid in a very long time. It's just that I feel like I'm coming down with the flu, above the shoulders--almost all the time. Hell, I barely noticed the swine flu. I kept saying, "I'm not sure I'm having it or not." It barely registered. Frankly, it was a nice change of pace.
I have no idea how I'm going to make it to next Thursday. Three columns, and I will blog a lot, many conference calls, several interviews for upcoming speeches, gearing up for a magazine piece with Esquire, pumpkins to prep, etc. Already put most of the Halloween decorations up.
But I find myself absent-mindedly planning movie marathons in the home theater (Godfather, Star Wars, Star Trek, all the Packer wins to date on DVD, etc.). I don't think I've ever wanted a surgery so bad in my life. I am looking forward to the new forms of pain, the drugged out state, the barely there feeling. I'm Roy Scheider in "All That Jazz" and I just can't wait to get my arms around Jessica Lange.
[As a side note, today I had to list all my previous surgeries for the nurse at the hospital: #1) adenoids out and tubes in ears at 7,
#2) ear drum reconstruction right side at 14,
#3) benign golf-ball-size lymph node out of neck at 14,
#4) ear drum reconstruction on other side at 19 (another blow-out with heavy hearing loss, restored by the reconstruction),
#5) "basket" attempt to grab kidney stone (failed) at 21,
#6) "basket" attempt aborted once doc realized I passed stone day or two before surgery at 28,
#7) lithotripsy at Mass Gen with original pioneer at 28, back when they dipped you in water for sound waves that shot through your side and crushed your stone {the chair I was suspended in was on chains and was moved with a small crane: as they lowered me into the huge tub, I said to one talkative intern, "I hope you don't expect me to talk," and he replied, "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!"--funny that}
#8) the cyst resected in right maxillary sinus at 34
#9) turbinates in nasal passages cryrogen-a-something shrunken at 38, and I start actually breathing out my nose for the first time in my life!
#10) deviated septum repaired at 39
#11) tonsils out and uvula given uplift for snoring reduction at age 42, about a month before I wrote PNM, and so
#12) is next Thursday].
So fear of surgery, I have not.
Right now, I just want to escape this prison, and once out, I will be very grateful, and seemingly a whole new person with a whole new lease on life.
Or, if not, I have no idea what I'm going to do.
But that's just a dark thought. I saw the CT. The cyst is huge, taking up most of the sinus cavity, and my sinus passages desperately need the roto rooter. They don't look anything like normal (my only normal one being where the first cyst was resected a dozen years ago and the openings widened). I mean, the causality isn't just staring me in the face. it's right behind my face.
I know all this. I know where all the dark thinking and anger and depression comes from. It's all so blindingly clear.
But I am simply so burned out from this journey.
So I choose to view it as the Great Cleansing after the Great Suffering. I passed a big stone when I wrote my senior honors thesis at the UW. Did several more when I wrote my Diss at Harvard (became a bit of a tradition with me--suffering to write!). Lost my Dad while finishing PNM. Then Art Cebrowski with BFA. Then my brother-in-law mentor Steve with GP.
So why go through this now, fate-wise? Why is God testing me in this way?
Because the next book is already done, and Warren's close to a 50k excerpt, and I need to pen a killer, f--cking synopsis to shop around.
So the Resurrection (of the only sort that matters to the creative type) is already deep in the works.
Anyway, that's how I killed the 0100-0230 hour tonight. I knew it would be worth it to write it all down. Writing for me is pure purge. I can walk away from anything (although I won't be blogging Favre til we hopefully kick his ass in Lambeau three days after my surgery, but the narcotics should help if that plan backfires . . ..), just so long as I have the chance to vent on the blog.
And I really love that. I haven't done much of this stuff lately because I've simply been too scared to--just felt too dark. But as the surgery approaches, I see the light at the end of the tunnel, so it felt great to come clean, even if my sinuses won't for quite some time.
So dark thoughts banished, I feel pretty good except for the skull-splitting pressure, and I return now to bed. Gotta get up in 3-plus hours and drive one son across the county for an internship with the sheriff's detective unit, then collapse, then interview by phone, then plot column, then staff conference call, then write column, then hopefully work out before I feel the nightly flu symptoms coming on . . ..
Anyway, I thought it would be cool to archive it, because I will definitely black all this out once I reach the other side. No looking back for the forward thinker. My favorite emotion is anticipation.
Reader Comments (6)
Many prayers. You need a Vacation. Someplace warm with lots of clean salt air. Do NOTHING for two weeks. No email, blog, business, work, etc. Ok...you can watch football.
Did this in 1994. My sinus problems have been much better since. Mental health as well.
A trick for flying. Sterile saline nasal spray. Use early and often.
Here's to the day you can retire your trusty "Fisherman's Friend" tabs. ;-)
As for vacation, I tend to take very vigorous vacations. I don't handle inactivity well. It actually depresses me if I pursue it too long.
I have learned some things in 47 years of this ENT wilderness, but I always welcome further suggestions. . .
So again, much appreciated.