"It is noon. You sit at work and feel overly tiered and have severe problems to focus. You feel a light pain in the back of your head and your right eye aches. You have had a light diarrhea for the last 3 days. You feel lightly agitated. Yesterday, you suddenly woke up with toothache, but it disappeared during the day. Pull the safety line now, my friend."
Goals:
- To list and describe symptoms you might have before an acute sinusitis starts
- To remind you that any unusual symptoms must be taken seriously
- To make you understand that illness requires slowing down your life until health is fully restored.
One in Seven?
In the US, about one in seven people suffer from sinusitis every year. Have you had a sinusitis a few times until now? Or are you currently sick? Then this chapter is for you, because it will help you to reduce or avoid this illness in the future. I know how stressful and frustrating it is to have sinusitis or to feel it developing.
However, I have found out that there are – at least to me – a hand full early warning signs – symptoms I could look out for. I know this might sound a little Vodoo to you. Trust me, this is something that helps me today and I can only encourage you to memorize early symptoms and be sensitive to this.
These are the symptoms you should be aware of:
Symptoms associated with pain emanating from the sinuses
- Aches near the inflammation center: There are in fact three different types of aches I regularly experienced even before the sinusitis was present. Let me give you this warning: The following symptoms, especially in combination, were for me the last warning sign posts before a sinusitis started. Sometimes, it only took another day and I could feel the fire spreading out behind my nose, into the back of my head and up to my eyes.
In my personal opinion, the special nature of the aches will sometimes make people think they have something else: The aches do not occur where the sinuses are or within your nose. Instead, they frequently are felt somewhere else. If you have a problem with your heart, you might have pain in your left shoulder. If you develop a sinusitis, pain can often be felt in the eyes, at the back of your head and in the teeth. The following symptoms might warn you in the future.
Do you feel a light headache in the back of your head, or on the side? It often gets more severe if your heart rate increases. Then the pain starts to pulsate. You might think this is a plain vanilla headache and you might take a Tylenol® (Paracetamol) or Aspirine (Acetylsalicylacid) against it. Big mistake. Instead, try to take a decongestant nasal spray. Does the headache, the fatigue and the concentration problems go away? Yes? Then the pain might well be coming from the inside of your nose.
- Toothache: Do your teeth in your upper jar hurt? It might feel like a fowl tooth. The ache can be very strong. Often, it will just be on one side. What does the dentist say? Nothing to see? Is it stronger in the morning, when your nose is as dried out like a sheet of paper because it is wintertime and the heating is sucking the last drop of water out of the air in your sleeping room? You might have an inflammation in your lower sinuses. A decongestant nasal spray might change it all within five minutes. If it does, go to an ORL. If it doesn’t, see an ORL – it is urgent. He or she can do a sonography and assess what is happening.
- Aching eyes: Do you feel a light pain under, behind or “in” your eye? It will often be only one side, but this could happen with both eyes in rare occasions. If you press lightly on your eye with the tip of a finger, with your eye closes, does this hurt even more? Do you have the feeling that the pressure in your eye is too high? Do you also feel tired? The pain could also be in your forehead, just above one or both eyes. In many cases, this will feel like having a wall in front of you, and when you try to concentrate or work, you are struggling against the wind or a thick soup of mist.
Early warning signs: First aches near the sinuses are often felt elsewhere.
Kind regards,
Marcus
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