My special Lindsay

  Lindsay has been getting migraines ever month or two, to the point that she throws up.  When I had gone to my neurologist, I mentioned it to her and she told me it would be a good idea to bring her in to get checked out.  We made an appointment and took her to the doctor.  They wanted to do an MRI scan of her brain to rule out any tumors or anything that would cause her migraines.  She was so cute when we went in for the MRI.  She wanted me in the room with her, and she could barely fit in the thing because she was so small.  She thought the headphones with music that she got to listen to was fun.  She did great, and thought it was so cool when they gave her a printout of the MRI to bring home to show to her class at school.  We got the results from her doctor, and she told us that the scan looked really good, except for her "sphenoid sinus" was really full she said, and she recommended that we take Lindsay to an ENT to be seen about it.   After researching it, the sphenoid sinus is the sinus the furthest back, behind your eyes.  It is the rarest kind of sinus infection to get.  So I called to try and get an appointment to a really good ENT close to home, but they were really busy and could not get her in for a few weeks.  I didn't know who to have her see, so I looked up doctors in Utah and found one I could get her into sooner.  

Joe and I took Lindsay down to Utah to see the ENT.   They didn't believe us when we told them that her sphenoid sinus was full.  He told us that in all of the years of being an ENT (and this guy was old) he had never seen someone Lindsay's age with their sphenoid sinuses full of fluid.   They had us do a CT scan of her brain, so that they could see the sinuses better.  It was really neat, they let Lindsay have a printout of what her skull looks like. 

  

After the scan, they took us back to the room and had us wait for the doctor to come in and talk to us about the results.  After waiting a while, the doctor came in and told us that her results were abnormal, and they were trying to figure out what was going on.  At this point I was concerned, but was not freaking out.  The nurse came in the room and told the doctor he had a phone call, so he got up and walked out.  He left the door open, and I could hear him talking to someone about Lindsay on the phone.  I could not hear everything, but I knew they were talking about Lindsay.  The doctor then came in again, and said very vague things, like her sinuses were abnormal, and that they were working on figuring it out.  You could tell he was flustered, and did not want to give us information.  I was mad.  I asked questions, like what did that mean, and the nurse came in again and he had to leave the room again for another phone call.  He came back in, and told us that we needed to take her to Primary Children's to see a pediatric ENT specialist that specializes in children.  He was so vague, he didn't explain why or anything.  At this point I am freaking out.  We had been in the doctor's office for over a couple hours and knew that something was wrong, but we had no idea what. 

We left and went to Primary Children's hospital, and when we got there the nurse greeted us and said "Oh, we have been waiting for you guys, you are the ones with the sphenoid mass"  At this point I really started freaking out!!!  I mean mass--what the hell does she have a tumor?!  She told us that the doctor was in surgery that day, but was coming out special for us to see Lindsay and check her out.  I was so glad when Dr. Parks came in and he was nice, he talked us through the situation and was very informative.  He looked at her CT scans and told us that he was pretty sure that it was just fluid in her sinuses, but they would get the MRI scans from the neurologist and rule out the "sphenoid mass".  

The doctor called me about a week later and told me that it was not a tumor, and that her sphenoid sinus was completely full of fluid.  She has been on antibiotics and nasal spray, and we go back to the ENT for another CT scan in a month and a half to see if the sinus has cleared up.  If it hasn't, then we will look at surgery to drain the sinus.  It was quite the emotional rollercoaster for me in January.  There is nothing worse than the feeling of thinking there might be something really wrong with your child.  I don't know what it is about Lindsay having unique things happen to her, but they seem to happen to her!  When she was 1 an had the flu with bells palsy it was the same thing!  The doctors had never seen that happen before!  I am so glad and so thankful that it's just filled with fluid, and there is nothing really wrong with my sweet sweet Linds.  <3