If God should ever redesign us

                                    Let’s pray that He leaves out the sinus…

     Cold sufferers, lend me your clogged-up ears.

     Truly, has there ever been a more wretched winter than this one as far as the beleaguered mucous membranes are concerned?  They say that without the sinuses our heads would be as heavy as watermelons, but I still contend that these hollow pockets of misery will ultimately go down in history as the Edsel of human anatomical design.

     I am just wrapping up my third cold of the season, which has now segued into an acute flare-up of sinusitis, a condition that is very similar to a cold, though not nearly as enjoyable.  My sinus cavities have been under continuous siege for so long at this point, I feel like I’ve spawned my own internal weather system.  Here in Northern California we are in the midst of the worst drought in our state’s recorded history, nothing but relentless sunshine day upon day upon day, but in the dank grottos of my throbbing skull it’s been drippy and overcast since late November, all part of a stagnant system that feels like it extends from the region above my eye sockets to someplace well south of my Equator, finally petering out in the vicinity of my upper intestines, where I’m sure my body is having a fine time doing whatever it usually does down there.  I wouldn’t know.  I’m trapped up here in my stuffy head like a top-floor resident of a fogged-in high rise, blithely unaware of much that goes on in the world around me.

     Have you ever tried to taste something with a clothespin clamped to the end of your nose?  That, in a nutshell, is my gastronomic experience these days.  My sense of smell vanished even before the last remnants of the Thanksgiving turkey disappeared, and since then my life has been little more than a vast olfactory wasteland, with only visual cues to guide me in discerning the difference between a prime porterhouse steak and my dog’s two-day-old bowl of Science Diet.

     My romantic life has also become a tad barren without a sense of smell, since I am no longer under the mysterious but undeniable influence of my mate’s pheromones.  Believe me, if I can’t even detect the odor of rotting chicken parts in the back of my refrigerator, there’s little hope for anything as elusive as a floating chemical transmitter penetrating my nasal ramparts, even if it is crooning “Let’s Get It On.”  Not that anyone would want to engage in even so much as a little heavy petting with a person in my condition.  Mucous was designed, of course, as a weapon to keep unfriendly microorganisms at bay, a task it performs rather poorly in my case, but what my nasal secretions lack in germ-fighting capabilities they more than atone for in their power to repel sexual advances.

     This past Saturday, pushed to the breaking point, I finally decided it was time to bring out the big pharmaceutical guns in an effort to the break the dreaded inflammatory cycle we sinus sufferers are so painfully familiar with.  In other words, I was ready to play the steroid card.  Since it was the weekend, and I couldn’t reach my ENT, out of sheer desperation, I turned to my rainy day stash of dog prednisone, leftover from a beloved pet’s epic battle with cancer four years ago.  Thus far it hasn’t brought any relief, however, and I’m having second thoughts about the wisdom of taking medication that bears a prominent label reading “FOR VETERINARY USE ONLY.”  This morning when the propane guy came by to fill our tank, I had only just begun wagging my tail when I found myself seized by an overwhelming urge to bury my snout in his crotch.  Fortunately, one of our remaining dogs got there first.

     Millions of Americans suffer from sinusitis, yet we get very little sympathy.  No one holds cure-a-thons for us and no well-known stars perform on our behalf.  There are no tiny green ribbons worn in our name.

     And so we suffer along, drinking our tea and sucking our lozenges and clutching our wads of Kleenex.  But we will not go down silently.

     HONK!  HONK!  ACHOOOOO!