All my life, I’ve had problems with my nose. It constantly runs, intermittently feels like my nostrils’ breathing passages have sealed over, and often talk like I’ve got my nose pinched. People think I’m just doing my best impression of Placebo’s Brian Molko most of the time.
Sexy, I know.
But it’s just something I’ve learnt to live with. Carrying around a handkerchief at all times certainly does make me feel like a grandpa, but there’s absolutely no telling when my nose is going to flood like a faucet. Has it happened during a job interview? ABSOLUTELY! Does it happen when I’m trying to do something romantic and it spoils the moment? YOU BET! Did it happen when I was dancing with Andrew W.K. on stage at a concert? YES, BUT HIS SWEAT WENT ALL OVER ME SO NOBODY NOTICED!
You get the idea. Sheerly random. If you ever saw You Can’t Do That On Television, it’s kinda like that – except with my nose, and I haven’t yet worked the trigger phrase for the sliming.
But it’s not just the snot (I know, you’re probably getting right horny reading all this, but there’s a reason I’m explaining it all). The nasal passage issue is more embarrassing than you may think. Rather quickly, my nasal passages can almost completely seal over for no reason, and I’m forced to start mouth-breathing, which makes me look like nothing other than a complete doofus. This can put me in some tricky situations – for example, when I was recently having a massage, and was lying face-up with the masseuse not too far away from my face. Rather than start breathing through my mouth up in her biz-ness, I thought it’d be an immeasurably better idea to hold my breath until she moved away. So here I am, turning cyanotic while I wait for her to focus her attention elsewhere on my body… and she doesn’t. She just stays there with little knowledge of what lies ahead.
What felt like hours passed, and I couldn’t keep it in my lungs any longer. “PWWWAAAAAAAAHHH!” I exploded with a gasp that blew the hair away from her face. Try explaining that one away to being ticklish during a massage.
There’s also the issue of my speech. When my nose starts suffering the symptoms above, I plain can’t speak clearly. Imagine having a peg on your nose while you speak. Now imagine Kyle Sandilands sitting on it while you speak. That’s more or less what it’s like – it just turns me into a mumbling nub. Which, for someone who worked in community radio in their yoof, is fairly hilarious. “You just heard Rip It Up by 28 Days, and coming up nerrrrxxt weeev geet fofioff smurrg snnaiief”.
Truth be told, most people had that reaction listening to 28 Days back in the day, but you understand the point I’m trying to make, right?
This week, a workmate recently proclaims loud and clear that I’ve got enlarged adenoids. That’s my problem. HOT, I think. That sounds super sexy, enlarged baby, oh yeah! Except it turns out it’s rather horrible, if easily fixed.
Perhaps what vexes and bugs me is that most medical websites talk about this problem presenting itself in children. My behaviour can be infantile at the best of times, but really, universe? This is what I get?
Many websites I’ve looked at (HEY, THE INTERNET IS TOTALLY A MEDICAL DOCTOR, OKAY) also mention that it’s common for the tonsils to be removed at the same time as your adenoids are fixed. Which, by the way, is equally as bad: as far as I can tell, they drill out the outer layers of your adenoids. Mmm-mmm.
The only way I can see out of this mess that avoids an operation is drugs. Either enough amyl nitrate to burn out the next few layers of my nostrils, or enough coke to burn everything out. I may lose my septum during the process, but that’s the price to pay.
If anyone else is suffering these symptoms, don’t be a knob like I was and wait until you’re almost 30 before you do something about it. You can live snot-free and speak clearly too! At least, I hope so. I’ll be right shitty if I’ve still got the symptoms after getting half of my head ripped out of my nostrils…
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
You don’t even want to know what I’m thinking…
Oh, OK then. What if your mouth is, ahem, full? How do you breathe? :-b
*slinks away, ashamed at own inane crudeness*
Take the cocaine option
It is indeed a fine doctor…
I’d be tempted to go the Amyl option. Good times, once I worked out that sex shops had no issues selling it to 16 year old chicks. I think there was something about us asking for “Thrust!” that might have cheered them up.
I have no recollection of it helping with breathing. But I don’t recall an awful lot of those times except a foggy ‘good times’ haze. Like the fluffy nightclub smoke that smelled like strawberry.
Always amuses me how they market that stuff. VCR Head Cleaner! Room Deodoriser! etc.
Not that I’d know. *tosses hair*