What It's Like To Not Be Able To Breathe

Those of you who enjoy the privilege of being able to freely inhale oxygen through your nose all year around can kiss my flat, jiggly non-bootylicious ass. For real.

I cannot recall a time when I've been able to breathe completely through my nose. And one would think with a nose THIS SIZE I'd be able to get my share of air and then some, right? Wrong.

I'm always stuffed up. Always. And when spring rolls around it worsens by 100%. And when it's a full-fledged cold/fever it worsens by 1000%.

Someone once suggested I get my sinuses drained, but when I looked up the procedure 1- it looked like some sort of medieval torture routine and 2- it's not a permanent solution. Meaning in as little as 2 years I'd have to go back and have it done all over again. NEGATIVE!

Didn't Chris Rock tell us this? The medical community don't want a cure... there's no money in a cure. The money is in the come back.

So fuck all them hoes... there will be no sinus drainage for me.

In the meantime, let me take you through what I go through with my damn nasal passages ALL THE FREAKIN TIME...

1- I begin to notice that my usually semi-stuffed nose is completely closed off on one side. I apply Vick's at night and hope for the best.

2- Then both nostrils decide to completely shut down for about 87% of the time I'm awake. HOWEVER, there is the added bonus that said shut down nostrils will still drip like a leaky faucet. I apply more Vick's and take steam baths. My vitamin C & hot beverage consumption increases.

3- I start sneezing. This usually starts at about April and ends in June... lucky me. Sometimes I'll sneeze so much that my chest will begin to hurt, as will my head. I load up on packs of tissues.

4- The headache gets worse, especially right behind my eyes and it makes it hard for me to see w/out squinting. At this point my body starts to shut down because it wants me to go to sleep so it can fight the sickness. Enter drowsy, medicine head feeling- w/out the damn medicine!

(my body is good/bad that way... GOOD because it can fight off anything on it's own effectively w/out drugs, but BAD because I need to be asleep for this to happen. Not cool when you have kids & a job & responsibilities n shit)

5- Vertigo decides to join the damn party! The real downside of any ear-nose-throat(ENT) problems I encounter is that it's made worse by the fact that I have vertigo. So any tiny allergy fit or head cold is magnified by the fact that the room will start spinning once I try to move.

6- Appetite goes buh-bye. I can't smell which means I can't taste PLUS I have a belly full of post-nasal drip and the vertigo makes me nauseous... yeah, food is not a priority for me during this time. Which is saying a lot because y'all have seen my belly. You know I love to eat.

7- On rare occasions I will also lose my voice. This doesn't usually happen until the winter months but it does happen every year like clockwork. That's when I get the trifecta of sickness: sore throat, stuffed nose and vertigo... an ENT doc's dream come true!

8- I inevitably have to take a day to just sleep it all off. Sometimes it works like gangbusters and other days, like today, it makes me re-think my NO DRUGS policy... like maybe if I downed a whole bottle of Benedryl or NyQuil or something I could be me again.

9- While on said day off I'll either A- get stupid, work-related phone calls that drive me up the wall or B- have wayyyy to much quiet time with The Voices, in which they proceed to tell me about every thing I've done to fuck up my life. Nice, right?

10- Finally, after many applications of Vick's, countless steam baths and packs of tissues, and forcing myself to take some pain meds for my headache, I reluctantly rejoin the world. Still stuffy and drowsy and dizzy, only this time wreaking of eucalyptus and high on Aleve.

Yay, Life!

But PS- Don't sit next to me on the train if you know what's good for you...

*smooches...but from a distance, in case I'm contagious*
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and now I'm going back to bed FOR REAL, because I think Lady Estrogen and her minions forgot a few points to mention in their "1,001 Reason Why Raquel Ain't Shit" speech.