Snot

All my life I have had a runny nose.  Whether it's allergies in the summer or cold in the winter, I've always had to use a tissue at some point during the day to blow my nose.  It's been a pain-in-the-ass all my life.  I've been even bullied about it junior high.  Not good times.

Ever since the start of this week, however, I've become a snot machine.  You know those travel packs of Kleenex?  I think I'm on my third one in as many days.  Good thing I bought those in bulk recently.

I do something many of you would find nasty and, just maybe, is very unsanitary.  I reuse my tissues.  Have no problem with blowing my nose into a tissue a second time.  There's so much available space in there.  If I don't, and just toss every tissue once I use it only one time, there won't be any Kleenex left.  That's the God's-honest truth.  I was told by a teacher once that inhaling snot from a used tissue only reintroduces the virus/bacteria into my nose.  That may be true.  Still don't care enough to change.

It gets to the point where I have a pile of used tissues on the nightstand next to me.  So I will either use every available square inch of Kleenex before I have to throw it away, or I do something I started several years ago: I stagger two tissues so that the bottom of one overlaps the top of another, I put a third tissues behind those two, and I blow into the top two tissues.  I believe I eject my snot into the open faces of the two top tissues, which I then throw away.  I reuse the third, bottom tissue; that's there to backstop any snot that my blow through the overlap of the top two issues.  Can you project the image in your mind?  I think it works.

I have had colds/sinus attacks before.  I probably get them each winter.  But there's something about this one that stands out from the ones before.  Maybe it's recency bias; that because it's happening to me now, I feel this is by far the worst cold I've ever had.  It's just that this snot-making has come on so suddenly that makes me think that I've got something, and it's not just the cold and dry air that makes me so miserable.

Nevertheless I am miserable.  Oftentimes I just want to stay in bed and wish this cold away.  Hope this doesn't affect me tonight, when I have a screening and dinner with friends, and, hopefully, some sexytime at a party in St. Paul.

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Woke up about a couple hours ago and felt this huge ... mass, I guess, in my nose, specifically up my left nostril.  That affirms something that was pointed out to me by a dentist some time ago.

In getting x-rays for the back of my teeth, the dentist noticed this, uh, thing up my nose.  And he noticed that it is only one the left side of it, not my right.  It appeared to be some inflamed sinus, something that could be removed.  I have the x-ray still, somewhere, but I have had only fleeting thoughts of having surgery on it.

But that diagnosis made me realize something: The snot that comes out of my nose mostly comes out of the left nostril.  That makes me think that my nose isn't truly symmetrical.  In fact, I might have a deviated septum.  This pounding hulk of snot just waiting to be unleashed as soon as I woke up and stood up confirms just as much.

This week I've thought about getting a check-up.  I should do that, and I should talk to a doctor about this.