Mouth Breathing

I have been feeling a little bit under the weather over the last couple of days. By that I mean, I spent the weekend whining from the couch with a cup of hot tea in hand, wrapped in a blanket, wearing no make-up, with two tissues twisted and stuffed into each nostril to prevent nasal dripage, sporting sweat pants compliments of the dirty clothes hamper, and the ever attractive and sensually scented glow of being lathered in Vick’s Vap-O-Rub. I know…I am dead sexy and my husband is a lucky man.

While quarantined to the couch area I watched hours of television, took naps, and occasionally removed the tissues dangling from my nose long enough to slurp down a bowl of soup. Somewhere between a Bravo! marathon of Kath & Kim and the intro music to The Godfather (great TV programming, really) I lost any and all abilities that had previously allowed me to breath through my nose. Total nasal airway blockage had officially set in. When hearing of this occurrence, I’m sure many would say remove the dangling tissues from your nose and go blow the blockage into a fresh one. Well, I tried. I blew my nose until I cried a little and almost passed out then I did what any accomplished nose blower would do, I looked into the tissue to get a full appreciation of my work, only to find…absolutely nothing. Not one iota of snot. It was clogged.

To some, a fully blocked nasal passage is tolerable. To me it means only one thing – mouth breathing. Mouth breathing automatically deducts 3,000 cool points from any persons score and places them in the same category as Simon or Newt or Violet or any other snot-bubble-blowing, glasses-taping dork. My breathing suddenly sounded like an oscillating wind turbine. I kept getting distracted from the subtitles at the beginning of The Godfather because I was watching my deep mouth breaths rustle the fringe on the corner of the blanket I was using.

Sleeping with complete nasal blockage inevitably leads to three things: 1. Snoring 2. A sore throat and 3. extra thick wool socks on one’s teeth in the morning. So, Monday I added tired, a sore throat, and halitosis to my list of symptoms and started a strict regimen of two DayQuil tablets, a throat lozenge, glass of water and a mouth wash swish every four hours. I am happy to announce that today my nose is dripping again and has allowed enough air to flow through that I did not have to leave my mouth hanging open ¼ of an inch to breath. To ensure my own health and well-being as well as the comfort of those around me I am going to continue the previously mentioned regimen for a couple more days but I think I’ll be breathing fully through my nasal passages again in no time.