Since I try to write stuff to amuse or at least semi-amuse readers of this column, I naturally avoid talking about health problems. Yours or mine. Or surgeries. Yours or mine. However, I recently had a “procedure,” which wasn’t a surgery, so I can perhaps slip reference to it under the radar. The only reason I want to do that is it was a scary, somewhat painful procedure and I want everyone to know I was very brave. So there.
The procedure, since I’m sure someone out there asked, is called Clarifix, which involves a nine-inch long needle inserted up one’s nostrils over and over again. Its purpose is to relieve chronic non-allergenic rhinitis. Which is a fancy way of saying I had such a plugged up nose it was hard to breathe. And I’m rather fond of breathing. So I took myself off to a very nice doctor in Mason City who wielded the nine-inch long needle skillfully, if scarily, up my nostrils. Perhaps if I hadn’t seen the needle, which was attached to a pistol-like handle, it wouldn’t have been so scary. However, I did see the needle and so there was no way I could relax whilst being shot.
At one point when the doctor inquired solicitously how I was doing, I told him sadly, “Well, I’m not having much fun.”
However, this woeful, non-amusing tale has a happy ending – I can breathe again! Yay!
Don’t you love happy endings? I find the older I get, the less I want to read sad books or watch sad movies. I always root now for the underdog to be victorious, for the good guys to win and for the final scene to be full of laughter and upbeat music. I think I was scarred for life by watching Bambi (I never stopped crying after Bambi’s mother died), The Yearling and Old Yeller. I’ve written before about my experience watching Old Yeller with a cute Harvard boy the summer I worked on Nantucket after my freshman year in college. I’d taken great pains with the outfit I picked out to wear and I applied mascara oh-so-carefully.
At the end of the movie (spoiler alert: Old Yeller, a beguiling stray dog, dies) I was sobbing so loudly when the lights came up, my mascara was running down to my sandals. People were staring at me but I couldn’t stop weeping. My date couldn’t get me back to my rooms fast enough and I never saw him again. O well – he wasn’t nearly as cute as Bing, who came into my life later, and fortunately never took me to a sad dog or deer movie.
I think there’s probably a moral in here someplace. When I find it, I’ll let you know.