Thank you for your comment. I am sorry to hear about how affected you are by Silent Sinus Syndrome. I didn’t have the orbital reconstruction surgery, but the wideness in my eye definitely lessened when I had the sinus surgery alone. My advice would be to take the first step of getting the sinus surgery, and then if you are still bothered by the wideness of the eye, then you can always do the orbital reconstruction surgery later. I hear it’s a more risky procedure, so I was hesitant to do it myself. I was only going to go through with it if my eye stayed wide.

I will say that it was hard to convince people that there was something wrong with me because they didn’t notice the difference in my eye until I pointed it out. I had to print out before and after pictures to show the doctors when I was trying to get a diagnosis. They didn’t notice that much of a difference and told me that “no one is perfectly symmetrical”. So I know how frustrating it is to know that something wasn’t right, but nobody else notices, but on the other hand, people probably don’t notice it as much, so cosmetically, you are probably not as bad off as you may think.

I hope that you can get through this difficult time. If you are in the DC/MD area, I would greatly recommend Johns Hopkins.

I was diagnosed with SSS back in 2/2002 and at the time there was little known about it. Mine was due to a wisdom tooth having grown in my max sinus, which caused a sinus infection that I couldn’t clear. When my body tried to reabsorb the tooth, it also reabsorbed the bone under my eye. I had the endoscopic sinus surgery done in April 2002 and the orbital reconstruction done in June 2002, both at Johns Hopkins. Both surgeries went great, with a slight complication on the sinus surgery (bleeding that required an ER visit). The reconstruction was much easier than I anticipated and I would definitely recommend it if you have any functional problems (eye stays open when sleeping — mine did) or cosmetic ones. I had 8 mm difference sinking back, and 6 mm difference sinking down — and now I only have 1 mm difference sinking and 1 mm difference higher. My doctors were Dr. Marion Couch (ENT) and Dr. Elba Pacheco (Ophth) at JHs, and both were excellent. If you have any questions, I’m happy to help!

I wasn’t aware that there were reports of Tatiana losing 50 lbs in 2 years and there’s a possibility that the tiger was underfed in order to make a better show at feeding time.