Before I went away, the night SA came back from his trip, I was tucking Trombone in to bed and he had his head on his pillow all sweetness and light and I leaned in to kiss his cheek and he suddenly remembered something and WHACK! and BIFF! he did headbutt me in the nose.
My nose just twitched when I typed that.
It really hurt. Like, I put both hands over it as if to hold it in place and backed slowly away from Trombone, my eyes wild and watery, before I realized that he was pretty scared so I managed to say, “It’s okay, it was an accident, good night,” as I left the room but I was afraid to take my hands away because I was pretty sure one of two things would happen a) my nose would fall off my face or b) blood would start pouring everywhere and we have white (esque) wall to wall carpet.
When I got downstairs I was stunned to see that my nose was still attached and not bleeding. I get a lot of nosebleeds. I am the person who gets a funny look from a well-dressed stranger and her nose starts to bleed. But I guess blunt trauma is different.
(I also have had more than my share of nose trauma, starting with the time my mom kicked me in the nose because I was tickling her foot even though she warned me not to. That one bled a lot.)
I sat with an ice pack on it all evening and the next day it was a little sore but OK and then the next day it was back to normal and I didn’t think too much about what had happened because I was going away and it was happening and nothing was stopping me and hoorah!
But while I was away I did have a stuffy nose. The whole time. I blamed the hotel air and then I blamed the fresh air and then I blamed my proximity to the provincial government seat. I blamed that I was staying up till 10 and getting up at 7 and I blamed all the wine and beer – gosh I sure look puffy, I must be an alcoholic with these two drinks a night – and then by the third day I thought, oh yes, the boot to the head. I bet my nose is swollen. I bet the area around my nose is swollen.
It is so big, you see, that a bit of swelling doesn’t really make a difference. And I look tired all the time anyway. And yeah. I’m slow to figure things out.
I came home from Victoria on Friday. The children were underwhelmed, but Saint Aardvark was glad to see me, not least because he had come down with a cold in my absence and it was waiting until my return to really SOCK IT TO ‘IM. Then it socked it to me, too, but only halfway because that is just how I roll.
(I can’t stop saying that! “That’s how I roll.” Am I Snoop Dogg? I think we all know the answer to that.)
So I got SA’s cold virus in my swollen nasal cavities and you know what that means. SINUS INVOLVEMENT! (I prefer “involvement” to “infection,” I find it doesn’t make people make the ick face. But not bad sinus involvement. Not the orange snot kind. Just the always stuffy / kind of tired / headache, holy hell, the headache! kind that keeps me irrigating with salt water long after the dolphins have left the building.
No, I don’t really have dolphins.
I believe they call it Chronic Sinusitis, as opposed to the more malicious Acute Sinusitis that comes out of nowhere and ruins your Christmas.
My nose, however, is not broken. I know that much. I shudder to think of how much THAT would hurt. And then I think about the guy I went to high school with who is an Ultimate Fighter (thanks to Facebook I know this and many other things about him)(and his girlfriends)(and many other people who never even saw me in high school) and I imagine getting my nose broken seventeen times a year. For fun. And then I think about something else.
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