This is long, but if you have questions about sinus surgery, this may
give you some info. On February 18 I was told by my ENT surgeon that
I would have surgery on all my sinuses, to remove polyps and to widen
the drainage areas. I began prednisone at 60 mg two weeks before
surgery, to shrink the polyps to make surgery easier and faster. This
was my prednisone schedule:

60 mg x 6 days
40 mg x 3 days
20 mg x 2 days
10 mg x 2 days

The prednisone cleared my sinuses from day one. It also made me
jittery during the day and wakeful at night. It also got my sinuses
draining, and I developed a sore throat and ear ache on the right
side. One of my friends sent me super duper Vitamin D.

The surgeon told me that if I were to bleed too much during surgery,
he would have to shorten surgery and also fully pack my sinuses.

I found an article that declares that doctors discovered that patients
who bleed overmuch in surgery are low on Vitamin C and patients who do
not bleed much have high levels of Vitamin C. I became a C/D devotee.
Vitamin D is a sort of precursor to antibiotic activity in the body.
It seems to call up some type of peptide that has anti-viral,
anti-booger (take "booger" as a wild card term) properties. I ingested
4,000 IU of Vitamin D daily and considered trying to saturate myself
to 10,000. I'm not advising anybody to do what I did. I was
experimenting. If you experiment, you could hurt yourself.

I read some web sites about Linus Pauling and Robert Cathcart and
their endorsement of megadoses of Vitamin C when you are sick or goign
through traumas like surgery. I decided to try to find my limit of
tolerance of Vitamin C.

Feb 28 - Thursday
Pretty sick last night. I maxed out on Vitamin C and gave myself
diarrhea, but at least I know my limit.

Had my pre-surgery physical. Dr Spears' eyes got bigger and bigger as
I described doing 20 - 60 minutes per day, 3-4 times a week on the
ellipitcal trainer at the gym on high settings, walking 3 miles to
work and 3 miles back in the autumn with my office stuff in my
backpack. "Those lungs sound great!" he exclaimed as I breathed for
him. Great heart, great lungs, BP a little high from stress but not
too bad: no addictions, no diseases, no infections, no medications
apart from pre-surgery prednisone. End diagnosis: a superb candidate
for surgery. Sort of like being the best bird in the flock at
Thanksgiving.

He says there is a lot of drainage from my sinuses, and I need to
rinse better and more often. That is what has been irritating my ear
and throat. He also checked the sinuses and saw only one polyp, a sign
that the prednisone has been quite effective.

And yet today the irritation lessened a great deal, even before I did
the sinus rinse. I think those massive doses of Vitamin C/D may be
kicking in. I got to 3,000 mg of Vitamin C and 10,000 of D. But I did
the rinse as well.

29 - Friday

Took 10 grams of Vitamin C today. Slept very well last night and ear
and throat feel better. Today I am down to 20 mg prednisone. I have
moments of fear and dread and cope with them by faith, by prayer, by
EMDR technique, or by shucking them off if I can. Thinking about it
neither hastens nor postpones surgery.

Reading up on Linus Pauling and Vitamin C. Very interesting stuff.

March 01

The Lord has also graciously given me the means to research the
anesthetic process to the nth degree, and I do see that it is way, way
less risky than it was even 20 years ago. Five deaths per million, one
or two of which may be attributable to improper intubation, but the
majority are caused by underlying conditions in the patient that make
them high risk. Risk wise, if you go by just the stats, it is safer to
go under general (ie, deep) anesthetic than it is to drive to the
hospital during rush hour.

This may be of no comfort to me at the appointed time, but it helps
right now.

The prednisone, much as I have dreaded it, has opened up my sinuses
and enabled me to breathe (and sleep), for which I am very grateful.

More on Vitamin C: I did a lot of reading on Linus Pauling and Robert
Cathcart on Thursday and Friday nights. These guys were scientists to
the core. Pauling won two separate Noble Prizes, which he did not even
have to share, because his work was so brilliant. They both advocate
Vitamin C in megadoses when people are sick. A person takes it every
hour until diarrhea hits, and then he or she stops for a few hours and
resumes at a cut back level.

I'd already felt somewhat better on 10 grams/day. But yesterday I went
all the way to 22 grams and felt really normal for the first time. In
fact, today I am much more my old self.

The idea is that my body will burn through the ascorbic acid very
rapidly as it deals with certain infections or toxins (READ: Boogers,
the catch-all phrase). So the body is continually excreting it as it
uses it up. Humans cannot make Vitamin C. We have to ingest it. If we
can keep up with what the body is doing to correct itself, clean up
infections, we get better. There does come a point, of course, where a
body is so ravaged by disease that Vitamin C has to be given
intramuscularly/intravenously, because ingestion is not fast enough.

I don't know that Pauling and Cathcart have cornered all the truth on
Vitamin C, but their results, well documented, show that Vitamin C
dosing is beneficial. I don't know how I can get it into me on the day
of surgery, but as soon as I am able to drink fluids, I intend to
start glugging it down.

March 2

Today is my last day at 20 mg of Prednisone. Hooray! And oddly enough,
my sinuses feel better than ever. Yesterday I got up to 22,000 mg of
Vitamin C, following the "titration to bowel tolerance" method
advocated by Robert Cathcart.

March 3

25 grams of Vitamin C today. Did briefly consider the likelihood of
not being able to breathe at all through my nose after surgery. What's
the use in thinking about it? I can't change the outcome any more than
what I have done in following the vitamin protocol.

March 4

Read that massive doses of Vitamin C interferes with some anesthesia.
Stopped taking it at noon to give it 24 hours to clear before surgery.

This is how much I have taken, but I do not advise anybody else to do
this. Go read Linus Pauling.

On March 4 I had about 12 grams of Vitamin C
On March 3 I had about 27 grams of Vitamin C
On March 2 I had about 25 grams of Vitamin C
On March 1 I had about 22 grams of Vitamin C
On Feb 29 I had about 10 grams of Vitamin C

On March 5th itself, I took only two grams, about ten hours before
surgery. Surgery lasted 2-3 hours, and I was put under general
anaesthetic. I was afraid to go under, but they let me sit up while
they put in the drip, and I prayed, out loud, as I always do when I am
afraid. The last thing I said was, "Lord, help me to know you are my
shepherd," and then I knew I would say no more. I opened my eyes, and
it was over.

In recovery, I came around crying from pain (have no memory of this)
and requested pain medication, which I was given, and it worked
quickly. I do not remember that much pain, and by the time I arrived
home, it was a minor headache. But I was very weak and slightly light
headed, with some problems keeping balance (as the ENT warned).

I had been given 2 grams of dilaudid orally, followed soon by another
two grams at 4:30 PM, and the pain lessened significantly. Once home,
I started taking six grams of Vitamin C at a time. Between
approximately 4:30 PM and 10:30 PM, I took 54 grams (54,000 mg) of
Vitamin C. This took me to (and exceeded) bowel tolerance, (but not
severely). I had some diarrhea, about once an hour, but it was not
painful, and it may have helped me recover by walking to and from the
loo every hour.

The swelling around my sinuses was supposed to increase. By 11:00 that
night I did not perceive any increase in swelling. My nose was packed
with a small amount of post-op packing, but I could still breathe
through my nose, around the packing. I experienced no nausea. Bleeding
was supposed to be occasional, and it remained so. I had to wear a
"drip" pad of gauze under my nose. I felt that the bleeding met with
the surgeon's expectations of a normal recovery.

Over the next three hours, the pain went in a sort of sine wave,
peaking and dropping. I had moments of being mildly aware of pain. And
then bit by bit the pain would slowly coalesce into radiating pain in
my nose and the headache would get worse. But just as it would get
really bad, it would subside. After about 8:00 PM, the pain cresting
stopped and it was more a dull ache in the forehead and sensitivity in
my nose and ethmoyd sinuses. Breathing comfortably around the packing
preoccupied me more so than the pain.

At 11:00 PM, I took Cephalexin 500 MG (4 x a day). I then took 2 mg of
Dilaudid, which was half the allowed dose and was sufficient for the
pain. I dozed and woke, dozed and woke all night.

I took pain med every six hours, and dozing was peaceful, but I would
keep waking up. In the morning, I did not detect any new swelling. But
the crusted blood was uncomfortable. I used a post surgery ointment to
add lubrication to the nose/sinus.

On Day two, I cut back on the Vitamin C because I felt like I was
almost at bowel tolerance from the moment I woke up. I decreased the
bolus from 6 grams to 2 grams, ending at 1:45 PM at 13 grams total for
the next several hours, when I reached bowel tolerance. Throughout the
morning, I did notice swelling, so I drank coffee. I thought that the
swelling increased and then decreased slightly. I did not have to
resort to mouth breathing.

Pain increased slightly. I could still get by with one pill, but every
five hours instead of every six.

Everything worsened in the late afternoon. The night was marginally
more uncomfortable than the previous night. I took more Vitamin C,
reaching a daily total of 18 grams for Thursday 3/6.

The next morning (Friday 3/7) I felt markedly better and started on
Vitamin C right away. I got a shower and changed into real clothing
(instead of pyjamas). And then I conked out. I slept all day and
could do very little else. Every time I woke up, I took more Vitamin C
and stayed on my schedule of 1 dilaudid every 5 hours and one
antibiotic every six hours. All I did all day was sleep. I ended the
day with a total of 16 grams of Vitamin C. Friday evening, swelling
seemed worse, and I had to do some mouth breathing for an hour or two,
but then things opened up enough for me to breathe through my nose.

On Saturday 3/8, I puttered around more. I took 18 grams of Vitamin C
for the day. The bleeding/oozing stopped. Swelling was worse,
definitely. Pain was the same. Late Saturday night or early Sunday
morning I had one of the most hellish nightmares of my life and I
stopped the dilaudid right then. (Last dose at 2:30 Am in the morning
of Sunday 3/9).

I have had no pain since discontinuing the dilaudid.

My recovery has tracked along on what is considered ideal normal
lines. I would regard Vitamin C as a help to keep me on track, but I
have not experienced the miracle benefits others have cited.

Again, I am not writing this to prescribe Vitamin C. I am writing this
to tell people what sinus surgery was like for me. Do not take mega
doses of Vitamin C because I did. You can give yourself diarrhea up
the wazoo. I wanted to experiment on myself, and I did.