I had a fistula form and some brain damage, though since this happened in 1967, and all they had was old fashioned transillumination x-ray imagery back then -- there is no imagery extant where the damage shows up. But I felt it when it happned, over the course of a few hours, one day.
Since then I have had chronic facial pain, due to nerve damage of my facial nerves. My facial muscles on my forehead were partially paralyzed for awhile, too. I get continued sinus infection due to permanent damage to the mucus membranes.
Steroids make my condition better for a few days, then it gets worse -- they are only good for allergies -- the increase the risk of infection, including serious brain-damaging infections. Stay away from nasal steroids unless you are absolutely sure it is just an allergic reaction, that is causing mucus discharge or stuffiness or both, and there is no infection whatsoever.
Yes I have found nasal douches to be very helpful. Indispensable. My nasal passages swell, and I cannot breathe thru my nose at all unless I use 12-hour nose spray. Before these came on the market, the old-fashioned 3-hour spray was useless, so I underwent dramatic improvement around 1976 or so when the 12-hours appeared. Plus the brain damage prevented me from understanding what was happening, so I never got any treatment until the early 80's. Because I didn't eat flesh, my family assumed I was crazy, rather than brain-damaged, an they had no interest in helping me get medical, for the continuing sinus condition, just psychiatric treatment, which of course could not possibly help a sinus infection.
Nasal douche. I empty out a nose-spray bottle, the kind with a metered dose and a check valve (which prevents nasal mucus from entering the bottle, and reduces the need for adding preservatives to the saline solution or changing it every time you use it), and fill it with saline. I think it is better to use pure salt with no additives, and not to use iodized salt or "free-flowing" salt. I use diamond crystal kosher salt. No other ing. but salt.
Abt 1 teaspoon per cup of water approximates normal saline.
Avoid all air pollution. Staying away from cats and dogs and from rooms with fireplaces and from smelly cities, helps me avoid acute exacerbations -- I don't want to have more brain damage. To prevent this, I do whatever I have to to keep smokers far away from me, when indoors, and keep any smoke they make blowing away from me, when I am outdoors. Tobacco smoke played a role in my condition developing in the first place. It is important to keep cats and dogs away from me too, in indoor spaces. I won't go to people's houses if they have indoor-living cats or dogs, or any large mammal like that.
I use hot soup with hot pepper or pepper sauce like Tobasco sauce. This stimulates mucus production, and the increased mucus production tends to clear out the sinuses and nasal passages, and enable you to breathe thru them, and reduce the likelyhood of tissues becoming infected. It washes out the old, thick, decaying mucus, and replaces it with fresh healthy mucus. I hightly recommoned pepper stimulation -- unless you are totally and completely clogged (rarely the case), in which case the new mucus won't push out the old mucus, but will simply add to the old mucus, and increase the pain.
Yes, I smoked for awhile, from age 14 to age 19 approximately. I had to because they did not have nicotine gum back then, and I was made a nicotine addict by my father, as a result of his smoking in the house, the care, etcetera. When he was away at work, and my atmosphere was not infused with nicotine, I needed to smoke cigarettes myself, in order to avoid nicotine withdrawal symtoms.
I consider parents who expose their children to tobacco smoke to be comitting felony child abuse.
Because my brain injury happened when I was only 19, most of my mental abilities that I suddenly lost, as a result of the injury, eventually returned -- slowly, over a period of about 12 years. So I have pretty much normal mental ability now, but I still have facial pain (treated medically). Of course I fell behind socially and economically over those 12 years, and never caught up.
