ATLANTA,None — You've seen it before -- on your car, patio furniture and maybe even on your clothes if you sit still long enough.
Pollen is everywhere, and Georgia can be the worst place on the planet if you have allergies, especially if you have chronic problems.
But even the worst sufferers have avoided sinus surgery because of its bad reputation.
"I think it was a well-deserved bad reputation," said Dr. Robert Gadladge, an ear, nose and throat doctor.
Many people can get relief with allergy medicine. Others get allergy shots. But if that doesn't work, surgery is the only option left. Back in the 80s, doctors put 36 feet of packed gauze in each nostril. Recovery was terribly painful.
But the operation is much different now because of a little balloon.
Gadladge has performed a thousand of the surgeries, in which he aims for the frontal sinus.
Sinuses are a body's heating and ventilation system. The job: Heat, clean and moisturize the air people breathe. But if people are blocked up, that's where the problem starts.
Gadladge said sinuses "don't know they're blocked. Their job is to make a gallon of mucus every day. If they make all this mucus, but the air doesn't dry it up, then the mucus sits in the sinus like a swamp or like a wet basement, and that's where your mold and your bacteria grows in."
This is where that little balloon comes in. It goes up into the sinus.
First, they expand the balloon. There are small microfractures, but hardly any bleeding. Then balloon comes out. The sinuses can drain now, and in the future, thanks to the larger opening.
But the big question, how much does it hurt? Patient Tom Ferrin said that compared to the old type of surgery, it's a walk in the park.
"Dr. Gadladge gave me some pain pills that I really didn't need," Ferrin said.
Now, two years after his balloon surgery, said his sinuses are clear.
That makes Ferrin, who has had years of sinus trouble, very happy.
"The results were tremendous," Ferrin said.