 So my doctor pulls up the CT and goes, there's actually a lot going on in here. Like there's a lot that's wrong. And my initial reaction was that of like pure elation and joy, finally. Oh, hi, hello, are we, oh, we're gonna have a shepherd in our lap for this video. Hello there, my beautiful, lovely, delightful internet friends, welcome back. I have an answer, I have an update and I'm really excited to be able to share at least part of this with you. A few weeks ago, if you're new to my channel or you missed the video, I posted a video called Help. In this video, I talked about my experience over the past 12 months now of getting sick and sick and sick and sick over and over and over again with a lot of very similar symptoms, always having kind of a low to mid grade, occasionally high fever, just feeling awful and then kind of getting better and then getting worse again. And it's been this weird spiral that no doctor has been able to up until this point properly identify. And in that video, I asked for your suggestions, anything I could bring to my doctor, any diagnosis that were maybe weird or random or out there that I could look into, thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for everyone who took time to think about that for me and to write responses and make suggestions. It was honestly very helpful. And now I'm finally able to tell you after much ado and much too long, I think we have a piece of the puzzle. I was referred up to an allergist immunologist, specialist who also deals with sinuses. And my initial thought was that that appointment kind of felt like a waste of time because I was like, my sinuses aren't really a problem. Like, yes, I'm always stuffed up. Yes, I'm congested a lot. Yes, I get sore throat when I wake up in the morning. Yeah, I can always get pressure in my head, but that's not sinuses, that's exactly sinuses. And while I was there, I had this test done where they like poke your back with a bunch of needles to see what you could be allergic to. Like, was I dealing with allergies? Was I dealing with environmental things? But during the course of the conversation, I asked if I'd ever had a CT of my head, of my nasal passages, of my sinuses. And I said, no. And so they're like, well, let's just take a look, right? Let's just see what's going on in there. I can't tell you how good it felt to have a doctor walk in after looking at my scans and be like, something is wrong. Like the normal reaction to something is wrong is not joy and elation and excitement, but when you don't have answers for something and you keep going to doctors and you just start feeling like a crazy person because nothing is ever wrong, but something is very wrong. Like hearing her say, yeah, there's definitely something going on. Huh, just was such a relief. So essentially behind my skin, all of this is real messed up. Apparently I have a double deviated septum, which makes me feel extra special because having two is pretty rare. And one of my nasal passages is like blocked by a bone spur. Additionally, I have a system there. And additionally, I have something called sinusitis, which is basically a chronic sinus infection that really messes things up in here and can cause fever, fatigue, generally feeling like crap, headaches, sore throats, a wide variety of things that were laid back to a lot of the symptoms I was experiencing. Those are just the things that I remember the names of. There were a couple other things that aren't quite right, that need to be fixed. So apparently there has just been an infection chilling in here for a very long time. It can flare up, it can kind of get better. Antibiotics never knocked it out. Steroids never knocked it out. So what they have to do is, unfortunately, surgery. This is not the answer that I wanted to hear. As you guys know, I have gone through many surgeries in my life. I'm not new to this, but it's kind of my life goal to avoid future surgeries, but it doesn't look like 2021 is gonna be the year for that just yet. In early April, they're gonna go in and fix all of that. I think it will be a fairly easy surgery compared to some of the other ones that I've gone through. It's gonna look like I've had a nose job done. It'll kind of look like this from my understanding, but there's a lot in there. They are going to be fixing. So recovery probably won't be the most fun, but won't take too long. And apparently you're supposed to be able to breathe through your nose if you're laying on your back and get enough air. Little did I know that that was supposed to be something humans could do. So I'll be going in for face surgery. I think it's technically called the sinus procedure in early April and getting all that done. I'll probably be out for at least a week, maybe two, depending on how things go. So that is the first thing. And it's a fantastically simple answer in the grand scheme of things to things like the fever and some of those recurring symptoms. However, it doesn't explain everything. And over the last couple of weeks, due in part to some suggestions that were made here and also speaking with my doctor, thank you again, guys. I want to see a rheumatologist. Rheumatologists deal with things like arthritis, immune issues, autoimmune things. And I'm not gonna share the diagnosis in this video just yet, because that's not something I'm at a place to do. But I spoke with this rheumatologist and I'm never sure how to say this in a way that doesn't sound like I am just complaining, but I've never felt good. Like since I was 13, 14 onward. Like even though there were specific things wrong with my body, like having ankle surgeries, like, you know, my neck is messed up. There have always been so many unexplainable random things that I usually have never even brought up to anyone because it doesn't make sense that they could be interconnected. Things like having to pee all the time. Things like having random abdominal pain that just, it doesn't have an answer. I'm not having digestive issues. I just hurt. Things like waking up many mornings and feeling like I got run over by a truck. Like my whole body's exhausted and hurts. But there's no reason for that. So I'm like, you're just crazy, Joe. Just keep going. And my whole life getting sick and when I get sick, I get really sick and I have a hard time recovering. And the migraines and just deep fatigue even though I'm able to sleep for the most part even though I should be a fairly healthy person, I just never have been. And speaking with this doctor and having him really ask in-depth questions and be a specialist in this, at the end of our conversation, he looked at me and said, I need you to know you're not crazy because they kind of expressed that feeling of like, there's all this stuff that doesn't feel good but it's never showed up on scans. So I don't know, it's probably just my fault, right? So to have a doctor be like, you're not crazy. This is actually a thing. This is actually something was the best doctor's appointment I've ever had in my entire life. Now, the implications of what is going on with all of this are not particularly fantastic. They're not life-threatening. But I need to gather a bit more information and process this on my own a little bit more before I'm willing to talk about this publicly and I hope that's okay. I expect within a couple of weeks I'll probably be talking about the bigger sort of overarching thing. So a number of puzzle pieces seem to be coming together. I'm very much looking forward to being done with this next surgery and hopefully having it fix the kind of fever thing that keeps happening and maybe being able to like actually breathe through my nose. The last couple of weeks have still been very kind of up and down hit or miss. Yesterday I felt like I got hit by a truck and I had a low fever and I was on the couch all day and today I feel very functional. So it's still coming and going but this is temporary and frankly if I know something's temporary it's so much easier to deal with. To anyone who's watched any of these videos or left comments, I hope that you know that I'm very aware of the time and the energy that you are giving to me. Like I don't personally know you but so many people took time out of their day to write like detailed paragraphs about something their friend was dealing with or they spoke with a doctor about something similar and here's the information they got or sending me articles. Like for you guys to do that for me I don't take that for granted. Like that's amazing. Really truly thank you and everybody who just took time to express care are concerned. Thank you. You have all helped make the last two weeks feel a little bit more manageable and give me honestly the hope that it took to make more doctor's appointments to go see more doctors when I thought I was just gonna hear the same thing over and over and over again if everything looks fine. When you hear that enough it kind of kills your motivation to want to spend money seeing doctors for them just to say everything's fine when you know you're not fine but your comments honestly gave me the motivation to follow through with those appointments and do what I needed to do and seek out the specialists who actually helped. So thank you. Also as always a gigantic thank you to all of my patrons over on Patreon especially during this time when it's been a challenge to work. I'm very, very, very grateful to be able to work from home I can't overstate that. Truly grateful for all of your support as I kind of get through this time. My eternal gratitude to all of you and to you watching this video right now thank you for spending a few minutes out of your day. Here with me today you could be anywhere else in the world doing anything else and you chose to hang out with me for a few minutes and that means the world to me thank you. I love you guys I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video. Bye guys. I just want to take a second to acknowledge the fact that I got through a whole video without spilling any coffee. Bye guys. And her from the sky.