Dr. Sekula saved my life. My condition goes back to 2017 when I had a glossopharyngeal shock in my throat as I was in a banquet environment, lasting maybe 5-10 seconds. From that point on, once or twice a year, I would get a similar attack, each time getting more severe. I nursed things along like swallowing from the other side of my throat or being careful with how I was eating. In the early stages, I went to an ENT doctor who did a lot of testing to see what was wrong with my throat. He was pretty sure I had glossopharyngeal neuralgia. While I knew what I had, I didn't know it would get to the point it did when I met with Dr. Sekula. I was in excruciating, debilitating pain. On a pain-ranking scale with 10 being the worst pain you’ve ever had, I would put this at a 15. It was horrendous. I had lived with the pain, but I wasn't going to be able to live with it much longer.
Somehow, some way, my son found his way to Dr. Sekula. He reached out to Dr. Sekula on a Saturday, who called him back that day, then we were on a plane to New York that week.
My appointment was with Dr. Sekula at 11 in the morning, and Dr. Sekula’s team pushed me through Columbia Medical Center’s emergency department despite there being thousands of people in there with me. Amazingly, somehow around 4pm that very afternoon, I was in pre-op.
So much of this seemed impossible. I had access to the most renowned top surgeon in the country for this very rare condition. He dropped everything to help me--his upcoming schedule included presenting a paper in upstate New York the following day and a professional commitment to fly to San Francisco. He found not only one blood vessel on this glossopharyngeal nerve, but two, and moved them out of the way. There are not a lot of us out there. If I had known what I know now, I would have addressed this earlier than letting it get to the last stage. I would do anything to help them get fixed by people like Dr. Sekula and to know that there is a solution out there.