Booger

October, 2021

This one’s kind of gross, so if you have any aversion to dried snot projectiles, you should stop reading now. For those of you without such an aversion, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. On the other hand, who am I to judge. I write this stuff.

One of the worst insults I endure is the coughing fit. These spasms are likely caused by accumulating phlegm, aka lung snot, against the vocal cords. Because my muscles are so weak, I can’t expel the lung snot like normal people. So I sometimes go into coughing fits that won’t stop. These usually happen while I’m laying back. Because this is not a position conducive to to lung snot expellation, I get tilted back up in hopes that body body mechanics will encourage phlegm expectoration. My neck has the muscular integrity of a bobblehead doll so my caregiver lifts my head from my chest and places it against my headrest. During this operation, I continue to hack up a storm. This is where things get scary. Once I start going into coughing spasms, I can’t breathe. When I can’t breathe, I start to feel dizzy like I’m going to pass out. Mercifully, the spasms subside before I do, and, after a deep breath or two, I start hyperventilating. If I don’t stop hyperventilating, then my caregiver squirts morphine under my tongue, which tastes like the stuff Mom used to coat my thumb with to get me to stop sucking it. In any event, 40 minutes later I’m good and my caregiver and I can breathe normally again.

So what does this have to do with boogers? Hold your water you degenerate. I’m getting there.

So I start into stage one of uncontrollable hacking while watching the news one fine afternoon. Ronnie, my dutiful caregiver, asks me if I need to sit up. Seeing that I’m too engulfed in spasms to answer, he tilts the LazyBoy on Wheels forward so I’m sitting up. I’m still coughing up a storm as he places my head against my headrest. I’m starting to get real dizzy, as the spasms come relentlessly and I’m filling my respirator mask with toxic effluent. Thankfully, mercy comes to the rescue and I manage two inhalations and my brain wakes up. At this point I see something that looks like an oblong squirrel turd but with strands of hair mixed in.

It is a booger. But not just any booger. This one’s an award winner. As I lapse into hyperventilation, I can’t believe I didn’t feel this projectile blow from my nostril. I am known for my booger production. Just ask St. Laurel. But this was another level of hardened snot. Because I can’t blow or pick my nose anymore, this beast must have been festering up my snout for months. It was, quite simply, the biggest booger I have seen ejected from my nose. If I had thought of it, I would have weighed it and named it.

Ronnie the caregiver was incredulous. “What is it?” he keeps asking. I’m thinking “Ronnie, I haven’t been able to speak for over a year, but since you asked, it is a booger.” Through my labored panting I’m able to get the eye tracker to say, “It’s a booger.”

His incomplete but serviceable english didn’t include the word booger. Wisely he chooses a tissue to give me a close up. “Where did it come from?” he asks through my incessant gasping. I manage to get the eye tracker to say “From my nose.” He doesn’t believe me. “Too big.” On closer look he notices the hairs. “Look, nose hairs. Proof that it come from nasal cavity.”

This is what my life has become: Gasping for air while my caregiver obsesses over solidified olfactory ejaculate.

Ronnie is so fascinated he takes a picture. I am still in full huff puff mode when St. Laurel arrives from work. Seeing and hearing my condition she asks if I need morphine. Once the eye tracker spells mo, I’m getting a squirt of off the chart bitterness under my tongue.

Ronnie, barely able to contain himself, shows St. Laurel the prize booger. She takes one look at it and says, ” It’s not as big as the one that came out of your nose in the shower yesterday.”

The next morning Ronnie is still fixated on the booger. He tells me that he told his wife about the booger and, when she said she didn’t believe him, he showed her the picture. For you Doubting Thomases out there, leave your email address in the comments and I’ll send you the picture. If I have your address, a simple request will do. I honestly thought of including the booger picture with this blog, but then I thought better of it. Even I have my standards.

See you next time.