Hello. I'm 21 years old, male, and I've been diagnosed with nasal septum deviation and turbinate hypertrophy. The only test I had done on me was a CT scan, I will attempt to translate the results from spanish:
- Deviation of the nasal septum to the right.
- Mucosal thickening of turbinates (predominantly inferior)
- The rest of the paranasal sinuses are pneumatized
- Light mucosal thickening of the lateral wall of the left sphenoidal sinuses and in the right posterior ethmoidal sinuses.
- The rest of the paranasal sinuses show no alterations.
- Cavum (is that a thing in English?) and mastoids show no alterations.
- Permeable ostometeal complex (I had no idea how to translate this, the original is: "complejos osteomeatales permeables").
Sorry for the poor translation, as a math major I have little idea of what this means. As I understand from reading it my septum is deviated to the right and there's a bunch of lumps that difficult my breathing.
As for symptoms, I've basically been exhausted constantly, all day long, since I was 14. More specifically:
- Trouble sleeping.
- Daytime sleepiness
- Very low libido (this was always the case. all throughout my life).
- Headaches
- Very bad memory
- Severe mood swings.
- Frequent urination (at day and night).
- Dry throat.
- Anxiety
I had no problems before 14 years old, which is quite odd. All the problems started there. I deal with it though: I'm doing fine in school, I'm working in a consulting company, eat a balanced diet and swim five times a week. Usually I can breath about 20% out of one cavity and 80% from the other, but that is purely speculative, and it changes (sometimes I breath more from the right, sometimes I breath more from the left).
The doctor says he wants to do surgery, for both problems (correct the nasal septum, make the turbinates smaller). He's confident that I will feel much better once I do it (I'm not, I tried all kinds of things for my problems and they never work).
Questions:
1- Should I ask him to do a polysomnography? If I have sleep apnea that's valuable information, and it should be easy to tell with the test, right? I thought I might have it and mentioned it to two doctors, and they both said that I didn't fit the "physical criteria". That is: I'm very skinny and apparently most people with sleep apnea are fat. Besides, they usually ask if my nose is clogged all the time and if I often have sinusitis, which I don't. So that settles it to them.
2- How dangerous is the surgery? Could I end up worse than how I started? Could I die?
3- Do you think the surgery would clear my problems? I know two people who had nasal septum deviations, got surgery, and noticed no change at all.
4- Could I have a cosmetic surgery while I'm at it? Does it add much more danger? My nose is quite big and I'm attractive otherwise, so I've been thinking about this for a long time.
Thanks in advance. Again: I know next to nothing of this matters so don't shy away from explaining obvious things. I can borrow the digital camera from my sister and try to get a decent pic of the scan if it would help at all. It may take a while though.