An Unnecessary Surgery

When I went to an Ear, Nose  & Throat doctor for ringing in my ear, I ended up with radical sinus surgery and a nose job. I was made a nasal cripple, my face and my health were destroyed. I was shocked to discover that other doctors didn’t care. In fact, they covered it up. And I couldn’t even sue. It could happen to anyone. It could happen to you.

Scorpion: The True Story of a Woman’s Victimization by the Medical Industry

My book about my unnecessary turbinate reduction surgery resulting in Empty Nose Syndrome and my subsequent patient blacklisting is now available from Amazon Kindle.

http://amzn.com/B006GIV74I

Download a free app for reading Kindle books on a PC:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000426311&tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=7893047648&ref=pd_sl_3ies3d4yuc_b

The Treatment Trap

“In debates over health-care reform, a missing element has been the failure to confront the over-use of medical care. Politicians and the health-care establishment don’t want to talk about it. One person’s overuse is another person’s payment for college tuition or a mortgage on a McMansion.”[1]

Two people who are talking about it are authors Rosemary Gibson and Janardan Prasad Singh. The name of their book is The Treatment Trap: How the Overuse of Medical Care is Wrecking Your Health and What You Can Do to Prevent It. Gibson and Singh cite medical research and share insights gleaned from doctors, nurses, hospital CEO’s, patients and their families.

“Health care insiders confirm that medical care that doesn’t make people better has become more prevalent in the past decade…A seasoned nurse observes, ‘Health insurance used to be about giving people access to health care. Now it’s about giving providers access to patients.’ The former CEO of Johns Hopkins Health System, Dr. James Block, says about over-use, ‘My God, there’s so much of it, you see it everywhere.’”[2]

“In November  2008, the National Quality Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization, released a list of prescription drugs, lab tests, diagnostic tests, and surgeries that are overused. The list includes antibiotics, x-rays, cardiac CT scans, heart bypass surgery, back surgery, knee and hip replacement, prostatectomy, angioplasty and hysterectomy.”[3]

“Dr. James Weinstein, director for the Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at the Dartmouth Medical School, calls overuse an epidemic…One doctor calls it ‘the green monster.’ It lurks in every crevice of the system; its appetite is voracious, and it is obese…It wants to keep you in the dark—it doesn’t want you to know that so much of medicine is guesswork. Under the guise of benevolence, it wants to sell just about anything to an unsuspecting public even if it doesn’t help and may possibly harm. Its greatest enemy is truth.”[4]

“In 1976, a House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations heard evidence and concluded that 2.4 million unnecessary surgeries were performed annually, resulting 11,900 deaths.  The annual cost of these surgeries was estimated at $3.9 billion. Since 1976, no new estimate of overuse has been calculated.”[5]

“The term ‘over-use’ was first coined in 1991 by Dr. Mark Chassin, a physician and researcher; and now president of the Joint Commission, the Chicago-based organization that accredits and certifies sixteen thousand health-care organizations. In an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, he defined it as providing a treatment when its risk of harm exceeded its potential benefit.”[6]

An anesthesiologist tells the story of “Mr. Goode,” an elderly patient in surgery for a total knee replacement. The surgeon on the case replaced the anesthesiologist with a different one. After the surgery, the patient was back in surgery in dire condition. The anesthesiologist read the patient’s chart and saw that his EKG suggested significant coronary disease. In talking with the patient, the anesthesiologist found that his symptoms were suggestive, not of arthritis but, of poor blood flow to his legs. He realized that the surgeon had replaced him as anesthesiologist, on the case, because the surgeon knew he would have stopped the surgery. “Mr. Goode” died later that day.  When the anesthesiologist complained to his superior, the chief of anesthesiology said, “No one important dies.”[7]

A doctor who practices medicine on the east coast has this to say:  “It’s a bit graphic, but over-use is like the nature programs on PBS television. When the tigers or lions kill their prey, all kinds of creatures come to share in the feast. This is what happens to patients. I see it every day. When a doctor admits a patient to the hospital, he might call in six, eight, or ten consultants. Each one bills the patient. No one questions whether the procedure or whatever the consulting doctors do benefits the patient. It’s a feeding frenzy.”[8]

“He continues: ‘Not far from here a group of doctors refer patient to each other. They do all sorts of things to them, and give each other kickbacks. The patients think it is good care, but they don’t know enough to know otherwise. It’s not good care. It’s exploitation. It’s assault and battery. It happens every day in doctors’ offices. The government allows the doctors to be crooks. It’s a form of organized crime and no one does anything about it.’”[9]

“Overuse increases the cost of health care for everyone and causes health insurance premiums to skyrocket. Millions of people are denied entry to the health-care pasture because they cannot afford the price to enter. If unnecessary grazing were curtailed, more people could enter the pasture to receive the care they need.”[10]

---

[1] Gibson, Rosemary and Janardan Prasad Singh. The Treatment Trap: How the Overuse of Medical Care is Wrecking Your Health and What You Can Do to Prevent It. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2010.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

http://www.treatmenttrap.org/

I Smile and I Cry

I have been criticized because someone saw a recent photo of me smiling. This person had seen me crying because of my suffering from Empty Nose Syndrome and severe pain in my face and teeth caused by three unnecessary surgeries—a Caldwell-Luc, a septoplasty and a turbinate reduction.

Since the surgeries nearly three years ago, I have cried almost every day. That is an increase of about 9,000% over the number of days per year that I cried before the surgeries which I estimate to be about 4. “Cry now smile later,” this person said, “One face two personalities.”

Two thoughts no connection.

I have never met a person who cried all the time. All day every day. Not even people who were dying. That’s not the way we’re made. I’ll bet that even people on death row smile. Even on their last day. As long as there is life, there is the possibility of joy, however fleeting. Is there anyone who has never witnessed a smile break through a flood of tears? Or anyone who has never striven to bring about that smile?

I’ve smiled in the midst of childbirth, in the midst of divorce, and in the midst of years of unrelenting suffering from unnecessary surgeries. Did any of this smiling mean I was not in pain? Not in the least. It meant I was still alive, still capable of a range of human emotions.

The first time I heard my own laughter after the surgeries was a shock to me. I was suffering enough in that moment to cry. And yet, something touched my heart in a place that brought forth peals of laughter. I think it was one of my daughters being funny which both of them are. Both of them have the ability to mine the smallest morsel of humor out of the bleakest circumstance. They got it from me.

I think the feeling of most new Empty Nose Syndrome sufferers is that they will never enjoy anything again, never smile, never laugh, never savor a bite of food or languish over a dream. It’s not true. You might not experience these things for a month or a year. You may never experience them, again, at the frequency that you did before. But you will experience them.

People don’t either laugh OR cry. People laugh AND cry. The only difference is in the percentage.

Before the Surgery

I remember back to before the sinus surgery– I have to go a little further back to before the carbon monoxide poisoning. The carbon monoxide poisoning led me to the office of an ENT with a complaint of ear ringing. The ENT responded by performing a radical and obsolete sinus surgery called a Caldwell-Luc, a turbinate reduction and an aggressive septoplasty that destroyed the appearance of my nose and face. His surgeries resulted in “atrophic rhinitis,” according to his records. They resulted in acute and chronic antibiotic-resistant infections in my sinuses and eyes and breathing problems. They resulted in facial collapse and pain and ongoing tooth loss. They made my tinnitus worse but they netted the ENT a handsome profit both for himself and for the surgery center of which he is part owner. These surgeries have cost the medical system hundreds of thousands of dollars and will continue to be expensive for the rest of my life.

Before the CO poisoning and before the surgery–I saw my GP about three times a year. These visits were primarily for the monitoring of my thyroid medication and routine mammograms and pap smears.  In the five years prior to the carbon monoxide poisoning, I had no infections, no sinus issues, no referrals to specialists.

I suffered no agonizing quandaries about antibiotics: their side effects, effectiveness, long-term effects, natural vs. pharmaceutical, antibiotics for antibiotic-resistant infections. I had no concerns about heavy-duty painkillers.

I treated my auto-immune disorders with supplements and natural remedies. It wasn’t that expensive. Only about one fourth of what I spend on supplements since medical intervention destroyed my health. Before, I did everything I could for my health. I read and researched, ate a vegan diet, meditated, walked, practiced yoga.  Now it is almost beside the point.

Now I lay in bed, tortured by tinnitus made worse by the drilling of holes in my head and by heavy-duty antibiotics and pain killers I suffer severe pain in my face and teeth due to the unnecessary surgeries. The ENT created an invalid of a patient seeking treatment for ear-ringing.

I will never be what I was before. I don’t look the same. I had more bone structure in my face. My nose was  blissful. I had no facial pain. I almost never cried.

Before the surgery, I remember standing outside my apartment building talking to a 98-year-old neighbor. I told her I was seeing an Ear, Nose and Throat doctor. Her eyes got big.  “Don’t go to doctors,” the old woman warned. She looked around to check if anybody was listening. Then she whispered, “They’ll ruin your health.” Silly old loon, I thought as I walked away.



Patient Blacklisting

I have been trying to get into the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Dept. of the teaching hospital in my city since May 1. This is the same teaching hospital where the truth about my iatrogenic injuries was buried by an ENT in 2007 and 2008.

The right side of my face has caved in since the unnecessary Caldwell-Luc performed on me in October 2007, and I have had five antibiotic-resistant infections in my sinuses and eyes. Since December 2009, I have had unbearable pain in my face and teeth. I have lost a three-tooth bridge and have had three root canals.

Around the first of May, my teeth became misaligned. An ENT called in a referral to Oral Maxillofacial. The office manager, J, told the office of the ENT that I was already scheduled for an appointment in June. I had made this appointment in April for a tooth extraction.

I called Oral and Maxillofacial to confirm that this information was correct.  I said, “But I would think that I would need a referral. Are you sure that I don’t need a referral? This is a separate issue from a tooth extraction.”

“No,” J said. “You do not need a referral. You have an appointment so you are already in the department. You will be seen by an Oral Maxillofacial surgeon as well as a resident on June 15.”

Around the first of June, I called Oral Maxillofacial to confirm again that my appointment on June 15 would serve to initiate treatment for the problem with my face and teeth. The pain was worse now.

“A” answered my call. She immediately stated that my appointment of June 15 would not have anything to do with my face and teeth. “You need a referral,” she said in no uncertain terms.

“Oh, don’t tell me that, I said, panicking. I explained what I had been told.  “No, absolutely not,” A said. “You will see a resident for your tooth extraction. This appointment will not get you in to see a maxillofacial surgeon. You need a referral for that.”

“Oh no,” I said. “I can’t wait for another six weeks. I can’t. I am so much pain. What do I do?”

“Go to the emergency room.” She said.

So I gathered up some records and went to the emergency room. Dr. K gave me a referral to Oral Maxillofacial. He said that the ER staff would make the appointment the following day.

The following day, “E” from the ER staff called and told me that the appointment could not be made. “I have discovered something,” E said. “You were seen by an otolaryngologist here in 2007 after your surgery. According to his notes, you were fine. Therefore, your records do not support this referral.”

That’s right. The hospital had tracked down some medical notes from 2007 that said I was fine. Therefore, my ER referral in 2010 was invalidated.

I called both the ENT and my GP and asked them to make referrals for me to Oral Maxillofacial. They did.

I appeared at Oral Maxillofacial on June 15 for the tooth extraction. I waited an hour and no one came to get me. I was in a lot of pain. Finally, I went to the window with tears rolling down my cheeks. “Please,” I begged. “Please, I need to see an Oral Maxillofacial surgeon.”

“You will see a resident,” J said.

Finally, a resident came out and got me. I begged her to help me with my pain and teeth misalignment. She sent me downstairs for an x-ray. I carried the x-ray back upstairs to her. It was just of my teeth. The resident put it up on the wall and showed me that my sinuses were falling into my teeth. “You need a special ct scan,” she said. “We can’t see enough about what is going here. I’m going to talk to my supervisor this afternoon and then I’ll call you. Meanwhile, I want you to go downstairs to Graduate Prosthodontics and make an appointment to have a bite made to hold your mouth in a better position.

“They won’t see me,” I said.

“What? Why?” she asked

“I don’t know,” I said. “They won’t tell me why.”

I was given another appointment for the tooth extraction at the end of July.

The resident never called. Several weeks later, I called and spoke to J. She told me that the resident had left the state to start her practice. “What about my referrals?” I asked.

“They’re pending,” J said.

A week later, I called again. I asked J if I had been given an appointment, yet. “You have an appointment July 27!” she chirped.

“That’s for a tooth extraction,” I said.

This same conversation was repeated each of the next two weeks.

Graduate Prosthodontics, meanwhile, kept promising that the head of the department was going to call “next week” to explain my rejection, but she never did.

July 27, I appeared for the tooth extraction. “What about my referrals?” I asked J.

“Pending,” she said.

The resident, Dr. P, said he would make an appointment for me for a consultation regarding my teeth pain and misalignment following my tooth extraction.

“I don’t think [J ] is going to let you do that,” I said.

“Sure she will,” he said.

J was missing when Dr. P escorted me to the front desk.

I hunted down the office for the clinical administrators where I was able to speak to a woman named M. M was appalled at my story. She wrote her name and phone number on a piece of paper. “I will get your chart tomorrow,” she said. “And I will give you a call and explain what is going on.”

The next day, M was unable to get my chart, and the following day, she went on a vacation.

Several days went by. Dr. V called.

I told him about trying to get in to Oral Maxillofacial since May 1. Dr. V said that he saw a referral by a Dr. P on June 6, and that I was seen on June 15. This observation was disingenuous as no one is seen in Oral Maxillofacial in less than six weeks. I told him I had made the June 15 appointment in April for a tooth extraction.  Dr. V said that I was seen by Oral Maxillofacial on June 15, an x-ray was done, nothing was found, and this completed my evaluation. I disagreed saying that the resident had told me I needed a special ct scan.  Dr. V said my evaluation had been completed. I realized after this conversation that Dr. V was suggesting that my treatment had been completed without me ever being seen for a follow-up or told the result of my “evaluation.”

I told him my pain was all over my face and the x-ray had been just of my teeth. He said, “I am looking right at it and I can see your eye sockets.”

I said, “That’s weird. I saw it. It was just of my teeth.”

I told Dr. V about going to the ER and being given a referral to Oral Maxillofacial by the ER doctor. I told him about “E” in the ER, refusing to honor the referral the next day, because a staff ENT had found me okay three years earlier. I repeated this story to Dr. V several times and he made no meaningful response. At one point, he said, “You talk as if there is some kind of plot…”

I repeated the story of the ER. “I’m not making this up,” I said.

“No,” he said. “I’m not saying you are.”

On July 30, I was having pain from the July 27 tooth extraction. I returned and saw the resident, Dr. P. I asked him about the x-ray in my file. I told him I had spoken to Dr. V who’d said that the x-ray showed up to my eye sockets. Dr. P said that the lower part of my eye sockets were just visible but that nothing but the teeth area was in focus. The rest was blurred out and not useful for any diagnostic purpose. I told him that my worst pain was in my cheekbones. I said, “So they could not have diagnosed that there was nothing wrong in the area of my cheekbones from this x-ray?”

He said, “No, they could not have.”

Monday, August 2, I called to ask a question about an appointment I had set up the week before for an evaluation for a crown. “Oh, I see here that we can’t see you,” the receptionist said.

“What do you mean you can’t see me?” I asked. “I have an appointment today. I made it last week.”

“Well, now, we can’t see you,” she said. “It says so right here.”

Patient blacklisting “is not always…subtle…Sometimes it is one physician blatantly telling another physician to find nothing wrong with a patient, to give no tests that could uncover injuries, and no referrals that could help the patient because anything found could indict a fellow physician.”

http://www.patient-safety.com/blacklisting_patients.htm

How Much Is A Human Life Worth?

I was reading my own blog the other day, and I was struck by the absence of something. I hear that the writer is suffering a complex of painful symptoms caused by an unnecessary surgery and that the blog is also a protest about faults in the medical system. Detaching myself from the writing, I can easily imagine the writer airing her grievances over lunch with a friend.

Or is it just me? Because the writer is me?

I don’t see the rumpled bed I lie in day after day. I don’t feel the loneliness and isolation. I don’t grasp the shrieking exhaustion, the pain and confusion of facial bones and teeth displaced and a nose disintegrating. I don’t smell the necrosis. I don’t feel the heat and humidity and hopelessness.

I am acutely aware of my separateness from the mainstream today because recently I joined a women’s group. As I listened to each of the women sharing a bit of her life, I sensed the line of demarcation separating me from a normal life. There are no graduations, vacations, plays, musical events, retreats, get-togethers, or plans in my life. None of that “summer is so busy, you know.” I know. It means I have to keep getting up to close the window when another lawn mower starts up. The vicarious normality was a breath of fresh air. But now, I am more acutely aware of my isolation.

I am not sure who reads my blog. I know some of my readers have Empty Nose Syndrome. Some may be doctors. And some may be ENT’s. For these, I want to move the focus of the conversation away from a clinical viewpoint and onto the patient. A botched nasal surgery is not just a matter of dryness, paradoxical obstruction, overly patent airways, and missing turbinate tissue. Many doctors seem not to grasp the scope of disability caused by these physical indicators. A botched nasal surgery is also a matter of missing friends, family and life. It is a loss of pleasure, of activity, of engagement in life. It is a loss of everything human beings cherish: health, happiness, friendship, work, leisure, creativity and love.

In the past two and a half years, I have missed opportunities to visit family in states I have never seen. I have missed a graduation and a wedding. I miss most holidays as I am too sick to do much but lay in bed. Family and friends have retreated from my life as there is so little I am able to do and to give. Potential love interests beat an even quicker retreat once they hear about my life. I have even lost the pleasure of my own company which once was a feast of good books, healthy food, meditation and nature. Not even curling up in bed is a guilty pleasure. There is no pleasure. There is only pain.

Aggressive and unnecessary nasal surgeries are not just medical failures. They are living deaths to their victims. I have often said it would have been a blessing if I had died on the operating table. Any ENT who performs turbinate reductions or other aggressive nasal and sinus surgeries routinely sees the results in his or her office as well. We are not just a parade of damaged noses. We are a parade of damaged lives. It reaches beyond comprehension that doctors who have once brought this devastation, fear not to bring it again.

How much is a human life worth? Surely it is worth more than the fee for a turbinate reduction.

Separateness

I pulled into a parking space at the local Kroger. Just as I was pulling in, a young woman hopped into the car next to mine. She stuck a cigarette in her mouth and lit it. I watched her multi-task, turning the key in the ignition, and talking on her cell phone as the cigarette bobbed in her mouth. For a moment, I was taken back to nearly three years ago, right after the surgeries that destroyed my nose.

One of the painful side effects of having my nose gutted was being suddenly and sharply separated from the rest of humanity. I experienced myself as noseless freak moving about in a sea of happy breathers. I am not normally a jealous person, but I was sick with envy of everyone else’s nose.

I remember receiving my People magazine in the mail. On the cover was a gorgeous, bikini-clad Jennifer Love Hewitt beaming a brilliant smile. She was engaged and about to be married. The only thing I could see was her nose. I had to lay down before I fell down. I was weak and sweaty with jealousy of Jennifer Love Hewitt’s nose. I knew that nobody smiled like that unless their nose was moist and happy. I myself would never smile like that again. It wouldn’t matter if Paul McCartney came calling. It wouldn’t matter if I finally wrote that bestseller. Nothing could ever make me smile like that, again. In fact, love was even out of the question. Love requires a full capacity of senses. Romantic love is an explosion of the senses.

My grown daughter came to visit around this time and suggested a trip to the local video store to stock up on movies. What followed was a session during which I was relentlessly tortured by movies about healthy noses. I don’t recall any of the titles. In one of the movies, there were throngs of men in short dresses. I guess they were gladiators or something. All I really remember is how many healthy noses there were in those crowds–hundreds and hundreds of healthy noses. Why not just throw me a party and make me watch other people eat?

For a long time, one of the hardest things about leaving my apartment was moving among all those healthy noses. Watching a father walk through Target, holding his son by the hand. Watching a mother argue with her children about why they couldn’t have more toys. Watching couples strolling affectionately. People sharing leisure over coffee. Women chatting with their friends. I had once done all of these things. I knew I would never do any of these normal things again, without being distracted by the screaming drought and emptiness of my nose. Empty Nose Syndrome is like living life through a straw. You can’t get very much in because the reception is painfully reduced.

Two and three quarters years later, My ENS has improved. I believe the bones around my nasal cavity have grown inward to close the yawning gap created by a surgeon. I am not normal, by any means. I still spray my nose with saline many times a day. I still irrigate. I still become breathless on the phone. I still suffer. I can go out into the world, without wanting to die from the envy of other people’s noses.

Unfortunately, other iatrogenic conditions caused by the surgeon have come to occupy the space left by the improvement of my empty nose. The pain in my face and teeth caused by an unnecessary Caldwell-Luc has more than taken up the breathing space that would otherwise now be mine. So I am still just as separate from healthy people as I was before. Years of suffering this separateness has slowly lessened the pain. I have come to live with the reality that I will never again travel, fall in love, or enjoy a casual afternoon of hiking, swimming or laughing with friends.

I have become more aware now that there are quite a few human beings who don’t get to enjoy these things. As I was unloading my cart at Kroger’s, I observed the woman ahead of me. A morbidly obese woman with thinning hair, she was confined to a wheelchair. She had a breathing tube in her nose. It was obvious from the pallor of her skin that she was really sick and not just overweight. As I stood there sweating, I thought about how I am not separate from all other human beings. I am a member of the portion of humanity that suffers and it is not such a bad group of people to be among. There is a lot of strength and courage in this group. I watched the sick woman juggle her bags of groceries and oxygen. “Wait a minute,” she said, as the clerks loaded her up, “Where are my hugs?” Both the checker and the bagger hugged the woman with obvious affection.

Just a few short years ago, I would have wondered how that woman could get out of bed every day and face the world. Now I know how.

My Sinuses Are Falling Into My Teeth

I guess I didn’t believe her. The Maxillofacial Surgery resident ordered an x-ray. Then she put it up on the wall and showed me that my sinuses are falling into my teeth. This was several weeks ago. I left angry that I wasn’t given a full facial x-ray. The worst pain is in my cheekbones and temples. The right side of my face is caved in. I wasn’t interested in an x-ray of my teeth.

It took until today for this information to really sink in. My sinuses are falling into my teeth.

Two weeks ago, I was given a root canal of an upper premolar on the right side of my mouth. Afterwards, the pain woke me in the night. I called and was given a prescription for Vicodin. I was upset because, as anyone who reads my blog knows, I don’t need any more conditions requiring pain control. The roto-rooted tooth continued to ache for ten days. I have never had this experience with a root canal before. Does it have anything to do with my falling sinuses?

I was taking a walk just now and I was thinking about the assumptions I held before these surgeries were done to me in October 2007. I assumed that doctors knew what they were doing. I assumed they had a better understanding of the human body than I did.

Based on these assumptions, when an ENT told me he was going to remove some sinus polyps, I assumed I had nothing to fear. Because this was 2007, I pictured the ENT snaking a wire through a microscopic hole in my mouth into my sinus and snipping a polyp, using some form of guided imagery. I assumed that the anatomy of my nose and face would be carefully preserved. After all, this is only common sense. You don’t have to be a doctor to know that drilling giant holes into the facial bones of an asymptomatic patient is crazier than eating glass. You don’t have to be a doctor to know that cutting bone and mucosa out of a healthy nose is dumber than lopping off toes.

What I have learned is that you do have to be a doctor not to know these things. Who would ever have imagined?

I went to an ENT for tinnitus or ear ringing. I had never seen any doctor for any nasal or sinus problem in my life. At 55, I looked like a young woman. I had strong bone structure, smooth skin, a beautifully-shaped, healthy nose.  The ENT found polyps incidentally on a scan. He said he was going to remove them. He performed an aggressive and unnecessary septoplasty, an unnecessary Caldwell-Luc, and an unnecessary  turbinate reduction. He drilled tunnels through my sinuses.

Afterwards, I was in such horrific pain, I feared what this doctor had done to me. I calmed myself with the knowledge—excuse me, assumption—that he could not have caused me serious harm because there are laws and agencies in place to prevent doctors from harming patients. He would have surely been careful or he would be in trouble. He could be sued. Wrong, again. No other doctors will document that any wrong has been done. In fact, they will not document conditions caused by other doctors. They document that the patient is crazy or had these conditions before the surgery.  Being unable to collect damages is the least of your problems. You can’t even get a doctor to treat you. You may as well have leprosy if you’ve been harmed by a doctor.

I no longer have a functioning nose or sinuses. My nose is dry and miserable. I have frequent infections. My face has caved in, more on the right than on the left. My right eye droops. I am in unbearable pain. I have lost a three-tooth bridge and have had numerous root canals. My teeth hurt and they crash together. My face is destroyed. The cheekbones are gone. My face is asymmetrical. My nose is too short and too large for my shrunken face. I have had hundreds of doctor appointments since these surgeries, most of them useless because most doctors will not help me. Before the surgeries, I saw a doctor about three times a year.

This ENT redefined my life. I was applying to grad school when this happened. Now I live in bed next to a humidifier surrounded by nasal products. And my sinuses are falling into my teeth.

The Twilight Zone

It is that magical hour of the day when the sun goes down and the birds sing a little more sweetly. A silvery gold mist lightens the side of the armoire. I enjoy the evening blue of the sky through the window from my bed across the room. This has always been my favorite time of day.

I remember sitting on my back porch savoring this delightful hour with my husband and some friends about ten years ago. I recall the sensations of my body, mind and face, maybe because I took a snapshot of the moment and filed it away. In those days, I felt the surface of my self keenly. I recall the velvet blue sky brushing my face and arms, a warm light on my hair, my legs tangled up in a long cotton skirt. I recall the gathering of friends, the co-mingling of thoughts and feelings, the sense of being right here, right now, forever.

I never considered that the essential sense of my being might change. I thought that I would grow older with the same body—only the age would change. I thought my mind, body and face would continue to evolve along a timeline, the older added on like the rungs of a tree. Before October 30, 2007, when a surgeon cut away parts of my nose and my skull and drilled tunnels through my head, I was at home in my body. Everything fit together. I remember taking a yoga class when I was eighteen, moving easily into a half lotus, an older woman saying, “Her body is made the way it’s supposed to be made.” It was.

It  no longer is. A surgeon playing God remade my face and nose, drilling enormous holes into the cheekbones, shortening my nose, narrowing the bridge, removing a portion of the turbinates. I no longer move through the world at one with my body. This recreation is a foreign thing, not my natural habitiat. It is a sick thing, oozing with infection, throbbing with pain, worrying my mind. I can’t relax into the joy of being. My jaws don’t fit. My teeth are misaligned. There’s an unnerving pressure in my teeth due to gums that no longer fit them. The right side of my face feels as if it’s been hit by a baseball bat. This skewing of my physical self jars the weaving of mind and body so that my edges are blurred and jittering.

I remember how it used to be. That’s all I have of the beautiful human being that God created. Sometimes, on nights like this, I take a Vicodin to ease the pain and twisting sensations. I free my mind from the prison of pain created by a doctor who was healing what wasn’t ill but now is. I can no longer experience myself fully. The choice is between pain and numbness plus less pain. I can’t feel the velvet blue of sky on my arms, but I can see and I can remember. It is not the same as living it. The light is dimmer here in the twilight zone.

Pain

I have learned a few things about pain in the past two and a half years. For example:

There is only so much pain that a human being can take. One day of intense pain takes a certain toll on the mind-body system. One hundred days of intense pain takes an exponential toll on the mind-body as each subsequent day, there are fewer resources for coping than there were the day before.

Different kinds of pain exact different tolls on the mind-body. Right now, I am coping with five kinds of pain, four of them due to unnecessary surgeries done to me by an ENT. I have facial pain, a deep insistent aching in my cheekbones and temples. This pain wears me down, on a daily basis, and makes me want to cry. Then there is the grating sense of tooth and jaw misalignment. It feels as if my face has been broken and left to heal in the wrong position. The aggravation is worse than ten thousand flies buzzing around my head. For this pain, I am continuously stifling a primal scream.  A third kind of pain is the irritating, bone dryness of my nose. To this pain, I feel an eternal sense of slavery, a never-ending spraying, oiling, irrigating, and moisturizing, done with a feeling of drudgery,  like tending a sick patient whom I do not even care for. The fourth kind of pain is tinnitus or ear ringing. Before I went to the ENT, I could not imagine anything worse. The ear ringing was, in fact, what led to the office of the ENT. The ear ringing would be an insistent reminder that I am not normal and can never again live a normal life if it were not for all the pain caused by the ENT which has forced this horrendous suffering into the background.

Another thing I have learned about pain is that the last people on earth who will show any sense of comprehension or sympathy for my suffering are doctors. Doctors do surgeries like this Caldwell-Luc on patients who go to them for ear ringing. Doctors somehow do not expect that drilling giant holes into the faces of asymptomatic patients will cause them any pain or future difficulties. If such patients present with horrific infections after being mutilated, their infections are denied by doctors or blamed on herbal or other natural remedies the patient may have used to try to heal them:Liars and Thieves Or the pain and infections may be blamed on a personality disorder. For example, I was accused of being histrionic: Personality Disorder. Have another look: Caldwell-Luc Should the term “histrionic” be placed beneath that photo? How about this: “This is the photo of a histrionic patient.” Certainly, the giant holes drilled into the patient’s face have nothing to do with subsequent infections, pain or crying.

Certainly, those massive holes drilled into my face have nothing to do with the pain and collapse of my face two and a half years later. Why, those holes would be the last thing that would cause any sort of pain or facial collapse. Those holes are a “medical procedure.” That stuff’s good for you. Just don’t get any honey anywhere near your face or your face might collapse and you might end up in horrible pain like me. You might become histrionic.

Six months after my face started melting and two oceans of tears later, I have an answer as to what is to be done for me: Drugs. I need lots and lots of drugs. My tooth and jaw misalignment are of no concern. There is no physical problem causing my pain. My pain is not related to the fevers, sweats and nausea that began at the same time. It’s not related to the ongoing collapse of my face or the misalignment of my teeth and jaws. Of course, it’s not. If it was, a doctor would be responsible and lots of doctors’ patient notes and medical decisions over the past two and a half years would appear questionable. Therefore, my pain and facial collapse have nothing to do with those holes drilled into my face. Or with the five antibiotic-resistant infections I’ve had in those holes since they were drilled. My pain and facial collapse have to do with a mental condition which I don’t yet have, but which is currently being arranged by the medical profession. It’s another “medical procedure” with another antiseptic name–it’s called “pain management” in the medical industry. Elsewhere, it’s called drug pushing. I am about to become a drug addict. And as everyone knows, you can’t believe anything a drug addict says.

A few years from now, those giant holes in my face won’t even be a footnote in my medical record, or it will be assumed that I drilled them into my face myself while high on airplane glue. And this is the worst kind of pain of all–The Lie that replaces who you are.