Stubbornness Prevents Giving In to Admit Illness
The Daily Corinthian   |   February 24, 2008
By Stacy Jones

Sometimes sickness snags you in its clutches, and you must finally confess your human vulnerabilities.

Tuesday morning when the first rays of light filtered through the bedroom window, I knew something was out of the ordinary. A scratchy sensation plagued my throat and I possessed that telltale tickling in one nostril, my left to be exact. I chalked up the experience to sleeping with the temperature in the house a little too high over the course of Monday evening, figuring the symptoms would fade after I had risen and begun the normal events of the day..

Of course, somewhere in my mind, I knew the climate simply could not be the lone culprit because, first of all, one must contract a germ in order to be sick. Second, my husband Mike, conservative to a fault when it comes to saving energy, never fails to set the thermostat somewhere in the mid to low 60s each night before we retire.

On Wednesday, I woke up once again with my throat ever scratchy and nose still tingly. Then the sneezing commenced. I tried again to deny that a slight malady had overtaken my body. Mike and I had to run errands around town that day. I felt the urge to sneeze as we drove along and gazed up towards the sun to help spur the process. After all, I told myself, I am a photic sneezer, the bearer of a genetic condition in which sunlight triggers the response.

I phoned my mother and had decided I was not going to tell her I felt a bit under the weather. Better not to, I thought, as it would only cause worry. After we had talked for a while, however, I decided to go ahead and tell her. After all, I wasn’t that sick and had not taken to bed full-time. She suggested the standard route any mother would offer: why don’t you take some medication before it gets any worse?.

Downing a few doses of an over-the-counter concoction would be the easiest route to allaying symptoms, I suppose. But when you are stubborn and don’t want to admit the inclination to sickness, taking medicine can feel like giving in.

I decided instead to attempt an alternative therapy. A couple of years ago, I procured a neti pot, a small plastic container that looks somewhat like a teapot with an opening on top and a spout on the side. The purpose of the neti is to wash out the sinus cavities. It is suggested for routine use, which I did for a little while after I first got it, but then I fell out of the habit.

I pulled my neti out of the linen closet, along with the container of salt. The instructions direct the user to fill the pot with lukewarm water and then drop in a pinch of non-iodized sea salt, the makeup of which is closely akin to the same saline composition of the sinuses.

When I first obtained the neti pot, I practiced a few times and easily mastered the task. The practitioner leans the head forward with the chin down, either holding her breath or breathing through the mouth like a diver. The spout is inserted into one nostril, and the water passes through the sinus cavity and out the other nostril. The process is repeated for the other nostril, and then, ideally, the sinuses are clean.

Maybe one doesn’t forget how to ride a bicycle, as the old saying goes, but neti pots aren’t bicycles. I began with the left nostril. I felt the water go in, but no steady stream of water trickled out of the right nostril. My nose cavity tingled even worse than before, and I felt the sensation of being underwater and trying to breathe. I switched to the right nostril and had the same result. I plunged into the closet, searching for the instructions that had accompanied the simple instrument when I purchased it, but could not locate the pamphlet where I thought I had placed it.

Now my head swam with water, which only complicated matters, as dark, moist places are breeding grounds for all manner of bacteria and viruses. I recalled enough from the instructional pamphlet to lean my head over, place tissue against the nostrils, and blow in order to extricate any remaining water. I did so and instantly felt much better. I’m not sure how much actual help the neti pot offered for me, since I was unable to use it correctly, but my head did clear somewhat after the experience.

By Thursday, the post-nasal drip appeared, or, as we say in common vernacular, my nose began running. (Any time anyone uses that phrase, I always recall a humorous moment in high school Spanish class when a fellow student mentioned that his nose was running. An exchange student from Brazil, unaccustomed to English idioms, looked at him with great surprise and asked, “Your nose? Is running?” To her, running was much more literal than the intended figurative use.)

I prepared to go out of town Thursday to attend a writing conference. Finally, I relented. Just before heading out the door, I went to the kitchen cabinet where we keep medications and gathered two different containers: a decongestant in capsule form and a container of antihistamine strips to be dissolved under the tongue.

I swallowed two of the decongestant capsules before leaving, and as we drove down the highway, I opened a packet of the antihistamines and placed a strip under my tongue. I had forgotten, however, that the strips carry one interesting but somewhat unpleasant side effect upon dissolution: they numb the end of the tongue. Now I had a scratchy throat, tingling nostrils, a runny nose, and a numb tongue. Fortunately, though, the antihistamine finally kicked in, and I slept peacefully through the afternoon drive, stoked with medication to alleviate the symptoms of an illness I could no longer ignore.

(Stacy Jones, a Southerner, is a Master of Fine Arts student in fiction writing at The University of Memphis. She is a native of Guys, Tenn., and her columns, which appear on Sundays, are archived at Southern-Drawl.com.)