Resistant sinus infection

I have been fighting an infection in my upper nose since Thanksgiving day. It is not dying. Worse in the past I easily became allergic to antibiotics breaking out in hives and having anaphylaxis. There is a limit to how long I can take any antibiotic or any med for that manner. My immune memory thinks all kinds of harmless and even helpful things are a grave enough threat to go into overdrive with hives, angioedema, syncope, and anaphylaxis--nuts, eggs, bees sting, aspirin, the list goes on and on. I guess I was born with defective T regs that are supposed to stop those reactions.

My nose was CT scanned yesterday and it showed a small concha bullosa in the area where the infection is occurring. My readings about concha bullosa indicate that it is a hollow structure with an air pocket inside that can become infected but antibiotics cannot get inside where the air pocket is. So infections reoccur over and over in some people.

I have never before had a nose infection or sinus infection. Very weird it should happen for the first time at age 56.

I have taken three doses of a new to me but very very old antibiotic, a sulfa drug,sulfameth TMP that can lead to very terrible problems called Stevens Johnson Syndrome and a worse one called TENS. The skin comes off the body in a wild autoimmune attack on the skin where the sulfa drug gets stuck. The patient usually dies of infection. There are no good treatments. Solumedrol usually given to stop a immune reaction is contra indicated. Cyclosporine is used and IVIG. No good treatments.

I itch all over right now. I was prepared to itch for a while if the bacteria would just die. My hope was that with a few days of the sulfa drug the bacteria would die. But I can feel that the obstruction in my nasal passage that I take to be the concha bullosa is feeling full again and I have bright red blood in my right nasal passage again. Both bad signs.

I have had repeated hospitalizations for antibiotic reactions so right now the out look seems guarded especially since the infection does not feel dead.

My wife had to go to work. No work, no medical insurance for our son. She has taken four days off already.

Today there is no one home to care for my son. She left him with several small bottles of water with less than a half inch in each. They are for him to get water as he gets thirsty. He can barely pick them up with both hands. Luckily he can with the help of a cane get to the bathroom and back by himself.

I am in the master bedroom suite with the heating vents pulled closed and painter's tape all around the double door cracks. We are trying our best not to let any of my bacteria out of the room.

My son is on immune suppressants--Remicade and Imuran and he can not be exposed to an infection. It would run through his body very fast.

I am going to post without comment a few other articles that I found interesting. Do with them what you will. I am trying to distract myself from the itching and from the worry that there will be nothing I can take that will kill the bacteria.

Weird I even got an infection in my nose. I never go out in public except to the dentist twice a year for cleaning and filling any cavities and the dermatologist once a year to cut off skin cancers. I have not met anyone face to face in months, not even with a mask on which I always wear even to work in the yard outside. When I see a neighbor I run inside the house. They all must think I am pretty strange. I clean and alcohol all surfaces in the house that are touched by my wife who has been shopping or coming home from teaching third grade at a nearby elementary school.

Also weird it is just one nostril probably because of the concha bullosa. The infection has not spread to my sinuses or throat.

I thought our lives were pretty sad already with my once college newspaper editor, youngest son, confined to a chair or his bed and unable to even use his hands to work a computer let alone get food or much water.

Then three weeks ago our family suffered a terrible tragedy, the lost of our first grandchildren, triplets, at six months just a little too early for any of them to survive.

Now I am sick with an infection that will not heal. I cannot take care of my youngest son who needs constant care. He is alone in the family room waiting for his mother to come home at her lunch time to give him food and water. I should be helping him.

So awful. Life can sure suck sometimes.

It is raining finally. Great news for southern California and our long drought. But somehow it seems to me that today the sky is crying. I do not feel the enjoyment that rain usually brings to all of us here in southern California.