I talked for months with Peter, a laser technician who worked in the aeronautics industry in Seattle. He’d scheduled a surgery, hoping to clear up some minor obstruction, and, against his permission, had 75 percent of his turbinates removed over two procedures. Within days of the first, he felt a sense of suffocation. He couldn’t sleep. The surgeons convinced Peter they hadn’t removed enough, so they went back in. The second surgery made things much worse. For years later, each breath Peter took shot a bolt of pain to his brain, as if it had been delivered from an air pump. Doctors told Peter
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