As much as I love cooler weather in the fall and spring, it plays havoc on my sinuses. I suffered excruciatingly when I was a kid from sore throats on a regular basis and I’m pretty sure had my tonsils just been removed (and me given lots of ice cream during recoup), that I’d have led a much less painful childhood.
Anyway, about five years ago, I had my sinus Roto-Rootered out by my ENT, and what I would classify as “the most uncomfortable 6 months of my life” followed after that. The surgery itself is simple and pretty painless, but it’s the routine visits afterwards that kill you. They go in with a long-hosed shop-vac and suck all the junk out of your sinuses; it’s a real pleasure. But the coup-de-gras is when they numb you up, and then reach in with the tool used by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall
to remove the tracking device in his head, and the doc pulls out these clips they left in your head during the surgery. You hear crunching sounds; the doctor literally holds your head and “POP!” out come these huge-mongus things you didn’t even know existed.
These days I keep my sinuses clean and clear with the help of a daily steroid spray and an occasional saline bath courtesy of a re-purposed bulb snot-sucker that I absconded from my kids (I know, the mental imagery is astounding).
The funny thing is, many people I know, do the same thing, only with a device called a “Neti Pot.” It’s basically a gravy boat with a nasal-sized spout on the end that you stick up your nose and pour the gravy saline rinse through.
I was IM’ing a friend about it this morning and while looking around online, I came up with this little jewel of an instructional video, courtesy of my mom’s local Himalayan Institute (their HQ is about a mile from my mom’s house in PA).
Feel free to laugh along with me:
Postulates & Pastimes 