Snorting And The Art Of Nasal Well-Being …

I’ve now had this bloody cold for a week. Just can’t seem to shake it.

Whilst in a discount price supermarket during the summer, I bought a 10-pack of pocket-sized paper tissues, thinking that they may come in handy one day. This only goes to prove that it pays to speculate.

Seven days of non-stop blockage clearance and I’m down to the last of the packets. So, as my both my patience and head were being drained, I started to think: where does all this snot come from and why on earth it it green?

Apparently, the green colour is due to immune cells called neutrophils. These cells are the first to appear when bacteria start infecting the nasopharynx. Neutrophils will engulf the bacteria (phagocytosis) and begin to destroy them within themselves using potent digestive enzymes. One of these is lactoferrin and other enzymes are dependent on iron for their activity. The iron, within, gives the colour – ferrous iron compounds are green. However, some think that its down to another powerful anti-microbial agent peroxidase. This just happens to be the same enzyme that gives wasabi its green colour.

Nice.

Bon apetit.

Bend Down For The Golden Rivet …

We’re only just into the second week of November, yet Mother Nature has plans for some of us mortals – but, hopefully, just for a short time.

I doubt that I have ever experienced such a miserable start to winter. Last week I was out in the countryside, breathing in great lung-fulls of crisp fresh air, getting plenty of exercise, scoring regular amounts of sleep and gently depositing nutritious goodies into my pie-hole. Now that’s a sentence I can be proud of.

Within 24 hours of coming back to the city, I had already contracted a nasty snotty face, a sleepless night with a kidney stone, rushed off to a clinic for an x-ray and an echo-graph, then some quack gave something to shove up my backside … for a sore throat.

Let’s deal with the snot-face first. Geez, Louise … where does it all come from? As I settled down to sleep I got the impression that some cowboy plumber had been tinkering with my hooter as it simply wouldn’t stop running – and we’re not talking a gentle drip-drip. No sir, we’re talking a full-flow downpour. Over the next 24 hours it only got steadily worse by blocking up every single tube higher than my neckline. So, lots of vitamin C and paper hankies to hand, I began to loose my hearing as I became increasingly more blocked. However, I was expelling more goop than you’d find in a nursery school playground on a January morning.

Then we move onto the events of the following night. Severe abdominal pain around 2 in the morning. No sleep from then on in. Walking bent double. Rang the doctors at 9am. “Come straight round”. He instantly gave me a pee test and confirmed that there was an xxx level of blood in my urine. He sent me straight over the road for an x-ray and an echo-graph and prescribed some painkillers and some ‘insta-dissolving’ pastilles to put under my tongue. “Don’t worry, you’ll piss it out in the next day or so”. The x-ray of my pelvis is fantastic and I may well have resolved one of this year’s Christmas present problems …

The next day, now consuming water and vitamin C, I popped into the local chemist for some some of those honey-flavoured Strepsil tablets, something to take the edge of my now rasping sore throat. They worked before, so why not again? “No, no …”, began the pharmacist, “you should be taking these – they really work!” With a knowing wink, he handed over the packet of suppositories and I handed over €5 (US $7). Imagine that, a personal endorsement from a local tradesman: “I’ve shoved them up MY arse, and they did me a power of good!” Apparently, a bullet that you push up your rectum is BETTER than an antiseptic that you suck NEXT DOOR to the infected area?

I know it could all be a lot worse but I’m getting somewhat bored of shelling out in a quiet work season.

Doctor €70
X-Ray & Echo-graph €124
Prescription €10
Suppositories €5

Grand total: € 209 (US $304)

Tomorrow, for the first time in nearly 2 years, I’m off to the UK to visit my family. A veritable picture of health stepping onto British soil … I can hardly wait to explain the portable pharmacy to the immigration people: “Now then sir, why don’t we start from the beginning, mmm?”