more blech
Oct. 27th, 2005 01:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wombat1138 Still haven't re-spelunked to install the shiny new straight dryer ducts which I haven't bought yet, but I am now in what feels like the second millennium of a cold. (I think it actually only started a few days before my last entry; the initial phase had tapered off enough by then that I was feeling healthy by comparison.) I spent most of yesterday (and possibly also the day before-- my timesense is really blurry) feebly honking out bloody snot and attempted to ameliorate the sitation by steaming my sinuses for nearly an hour.
To steam your sinuses, get a large bowl, fill it most of the way with boiling water, and lean over it with a towel draped over your head and shoulders to keep the steam in. Be careful to keep the steam from scalding you at first. It's a very boring process, though you can toss in an herbal teabag or something else to make the steam smell nice (but you probably won't want to drink the herbal tea afterwards, since your face will have been dripping sweat into it) and turn on the radio to give you a sense of elapsed time as well as something to listen to.
So that wasn't so unpleasant, but all it seemed to do was make the bloody snot runnier. I guess several quarts of chicken soup or herbal tea per day wasn't enough hydration already. (As a completely self-indulgent whine, I would like to say that when the wombat-consort stays home with the flu, I always end up making chicken soup (though not as much from scratch anymore) and bringing him a bedtray with juice and crackers. Even if I already have the same exact flu. Does anyone bring *me* bedtrays of soup and juice? Noooooo.) Over the course of the day, I evidently dehydrated again until the bloody snot had reverted to large chunks rattling uncomfortably around the back of my nose until they emerged in a trumpet fanfare of clots.
While poking at our HMO's website to figure out how long my cold would have to progress until they'd consent to see me, I looked through their page of home remedies. "Nasal irrigation", one listing said, mostly in the form of saline spray, but apparently the weird yoga practice of pouring liquid into one nostril and out the other has been legitimized after all. Hmmm, I thought. And yuk. But how much worse could that be than what I've got already?
As it turns out, I guess it's not so bad in the grand scheme of things. I seem to've correctly followed all the directions for making a more-or-less isotonic saline solution, getting it to a comfortable temperature, and breathing through my mouth with my head at the right angle to avoid drowning. And my assortment of random containers ended up including one with the right sort of capacity, spout, and squirt pressure. But it's still really, really icky.
First of all, I would guess that we're just hard-wired to sense a noseful of liquid as a really bad idea, even if it doesn't hurt. And the feeling of warm water squirting (even gently) up against the nostril walls is so alien to everyday experience that it would feel weird no matter what. But the really oogy bit is when you see all the stuff that washes out, and then about a half-hour later, realize that even more stuff has peeled off the back of your sinuses and will need to be washed out again because it's shy about handkerchiefs. (I do not even want to talk about my revolting pile of petrified handkerchiefs, though I must say that this is one of those cases where it's good that they were tie-dyed beforehand to camouflage some of the accumulated new colors.)
I've heard about "cleansing" retreats where people spend a week giving themselves enemas while on a strict diet of vegetable broth. They probably involve an even strong version of the same sense of revolting discovery, poised between "Oh, neat-- look at all that stuff that was sticking around inside!" and "Ewwww-- you mean this stuff has been sticking around inside all this time?"
To steam your sinuses, get a large bowl, fill it most of the way with boiling water, and lean over it with a towel draped over your head and shoulders to keep the steam in. Be careful to keep the steam from scalding you at first. It's a very boring process, though you can toss in an herbal teabag or something else to make the steam smell nice (but you probably won't want to drink the herbal tea afterwards, since your face will have been dripping sweat into it) and turn on the radio to give you a sense of elapsed time as well as something to listen to.
So that wasn't so unpleasant, but all it seemed to do was make the bloody snot runnier. I guess several quarts of chicken soup or herbal tea per day wasn't enough hydration already. (As a completely self-indulgent whine, I would like to say that when the wombat-consort stays home with the flu, I always end up making chicken soup (though not as much from scratch anymore) and bringing him a bedtray with juice and crackers. Even if I already have the same exact flu. Does anyone bring *me* bedtrays of soup and juice? Noooooo.) Over the course of the day, I evidently dehydrated again until the bloody snot had reverted to large chunks rattling uncomfortably around the back of my nose until they emerged in a trumpet fanfare of clots.
While poking at our HMO's website to figure out how long my cold would have to progress until they'd consent to see me, I looked through their page of home remedies. "Nasal irrigation", one listing said, mostly in the form of saline spray, but apparently the weird yoga practice of pouring liquid into one nostril and out the other has been legitimized after all. Hmmm, I thought. And yuk. But how much worse could that be than what I've got already?
As it turns out, I guess it's not so bad in the grand scheme of things. I seem to've correctly followed all the directions for making a more-or-less isotonic saline solution, getting it to a comfortable temperature, and breathing through my mouth with my head at the right angle to avoid drowning. And my assortment of random containers ended up including one with the right sort of capacity, spout, and squirt pressure. But it's still really, really icky.
First of all, I would guess that we're just hard-wired to sense a noseful of liquid as a really bad idea, even if it doesn't hurt. And the feeling of warm water squirting (even gently) up against the nostril walls is so alien to everyday experience that it would feel weird no matter what. But the really oogy bit is when you see all the stuff that washes out, and then about a half-hour later, realize that even more stuff has peeled off the back of your sinuses and will need to be washed out again because it's shy about handkerchiefs. (I do not even want to talk about my revolting pile of petrified handkerchiefs, though I must say that this is one of those cases where it's good that they were tie-dyed beforehand to camouflage some of the accumulated new colors.)
I've heard about "cleansing" retreats where people spend a week giving themselves enemas while on a strict diet of vegetable broth. They probably involve an even strong version of the same sense of revolting discovery, poised between "Oh, neat-- look at all that stuff that was sticking around inside!" and "Ewwww-- you mean this stuff has been sticking around inside all this time?"
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no subject
on 2005-10-27 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-10-30 04:13 pm (UTC)However, my nasal irrigation technique is getting better. Yay.
no subject
on 2005-10-31 04:34 pm (UTC)The Thai food sounds most delicious. Maybe I will have Thai food for lunch!
Your nasal irrigation technique is disturbing, yet intriguing. Perhaps I will try that...sometime.
no subject
on 2005-10-27 10:57 pm (UTC)