Open the floodgates!

The subject of this post is gross in theory, but hilarious in reality. Be warned. It's also oddly long, for such a subject as this.

So, I've been getting sick, right? In November I caught the sinusitis-bronchitis virus that everyone in my office had. I went on some ridiculous antiobiotic since I can't take normal antibiotics, and they didn't tell me I couldn't take ibuprofen with it... so when the antibiotic gave me headaches, I took ibuprofen... which made me essentially high, but in a very bad, motion-sickness kind of way. Eventually (as in4 days of motion sickness later) I figured it out after freaking out to my mom and bf on the phone and having a very long evening of thinking I'd totally fried my central nervous system, but probably just was having a panic attack.

So I healed, then two weeks later I had disgusting sinus drainage again, although I didn't feel sick - I was just "honking" a lot, as our visit coordinator called it, who could hear me blowing my nose in my office from the lobby. And then I healed up, and two weeks later I was sick again! Although this time I truly felt ill and took a day and a half (and a weekend) off of work.

Let it be known that I never get sick. Ever. My dentist asked me what antibiotics I can take, since I can't take the normal ones, and I said gosh I don't know, I never get sick. (Plus.. he's the one with the medical degree, he should probably be telling me, right??)

So I saw my doctor, who said "well, 'tis the season" and just sent me on my merry way. And I walked across the office and went to my allergist, who said "you're going back on two full weeks of that strong antibiotic because you probably never kicked the original virus" and "I'll see you in two weeks" and "if that doesn't work, we're going to have to do a CT scan."

Wtf. Radiation? For fluorescent green snot?

Anyway - that is still TBD. So I bought a humidifier, and also a sinus rinse. You may have heard of sinus rinses by their brand name, the Netti Pot... I bought the Netti Pot's less-cute cousin. And the POINT of this post is the sinus rinse.

First of all, I was highly skeptical. AK gets migraines and nosebleeds all the time, so he has had a Netti Pot for a while and always told me I should get one. It was also recommended by my mom and nana. But until the allergist threatened me with the CT and told me this might help, this was not on my radar.

Think of an eye dropper, but supersized, and that's what this is. I have to put warm tap water in it, dump in a packet of salt (medically certified salt, of course), shake it up, lean over the sink, put it up to one nostril, open my mouth, breathe normally... and squirt.

It feels a lot like those times when you were little and you accidentally snorted water up your nose when you were shooting into the pool from the water slide, you know? And it feels like it's running rivers through the crevices in your brain? Really sick. And it really makes a spectacle of my sink.

Yet it's strangely refreshing for my sinuses. My ears pop a little, but I can mostly go right on my way. They just told me not to use it less than an hour before going to bed, to give it time to drain out. Whatever that meant...

So one day this week I used it over my lunch break (at home! do NOT use such a contraption in the office's public bathroom, trust me) and went back to work more or less immediately. Several hours later, after work, I was bending down at my little microwave cart to get a cookbook out from underneath my b-e-a-utiful new Le Creuset pot, and all of a sudden... WHOOOSH there was water all over the floor, spouting from my nose!

I was utterly bewildered. I mean, I've always been very leaky from my allergies, but this was a flood. I wasn't even thinking at first about the sinus rinse - that had been at least 3 hours earlier!

Well, it turns out that the salt water likes to hang out in my sinuses for a while, but gravity really gives it a kick whenever I bend down or put my chin to my chest. It did it yesterday when I was reading applications at my kitchen table; I have a tendency to lean my head too close to my paper when I am writing something, and as I did that yesterday to take notes suddenly water was all over the salmon-colored sheet we take our app notes on. Whoops... sorry second-readers. And it did it tonight, I was sitting and watching a movie about an hour after using it, and I leaned forward to stretch my neck a little while I was eating some sorbet, and BAM there was water all over my sorbet. Gross!

But hysterical! I laugh every time. It's so typical for my life - the most random things happen at the most random times, even when I'm expecting them.

I'm not sure what it says about me that the newest joy in my life involves a sinus rinse and the resulting sinus fluid flood...