{"id":401,"date":"2003-09-20T20:31:50","date_gmt":"2003-09-21T00:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2003\/09\/20\/i-feel-your-pain-12\/"},"modified":"2003-09-20T20:31:50","modified_gmt":"2003-09-21T00:31:50","slug":"i-feel-your-pain-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2003\/09\/20\/i-feel-your-pain-12\/","title":{"rendered":"I feel your pain, 12%"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

If you could have one question answered, what would it be?<\/p>\n

In my case it would depend entirely on my sinuses. If I could have an answer to anything today, I would like to know what the point of sinuses really is. There are theories, certainly — I especially like the theory that it lightens bone mass: that if your skull, which has to be large enough to accomodate your big fat brain, were solid bone, it would be too heavy for you to hold up. Thunk. It’s certainly the case that in the midst of sinusitis, one’s head feels so heavy and sad that one would<\/i> like to lie it down and die.<\/p>\n

But why are there sinus cavities, really? Did you know that you have these cavities not only under and over your eyes, but above your ears (the sphenoids)? Popular literature typically leaves these little fuckers out, showing only the massive ones on your face; but the sphenoids are killer. For surgeons to clean them, they have to thread tools under and behind your eyeballs. No matter where they are, fill ’em with warm mucous and they’re the ideal breeding ground for bacterial and viral infection. <\/p>\n

What’s the link to being environmentally connected and having chronic sinusitus? Excess mucous triggered by allergens, susceptibility or exposure to viruses and bacteria: boom. Some of the worst sinusitises I’ve had were in summer. Chlorine absolutely sets it off, too: no swimming pools or filthy, chlorine-doused hot-tubs for me. Latex and alkyd paint, too. Industrial solvents. Anything<\/i>, it sometimes seems!<\/p>\n

How come folk humour implies a connection between the size of one’s nose and a man’s genital endowment? The bigger the nose, the bigger the … In German, the saying is, “An der Nase eines Mannes erkennst Du seinen Johannes,”<\/i> the name “John” serving as stand-in for dick. Freud’s erstwhile colleague Ernst Fliess developed an elaborate if whacky theory about blocked noses and their relation to sexuality, which Freud took on board to a certain extent and for a certain (limited) time. But what if there is a nose-sex connection? What if there’s a sinus-sex connection? Dr. Horowitz, my Mass. MD, knew of another theory about sinuses: that they helped modulate our speaking voices, allowing the voice to resonate and echo appropriately, and perhaps even modulating how<\/i> we hear (viz. sphenoids). Think Creole Love Call<\/i>, I suppose; and we all know that it’s very lovely to fall in love with your lover’s voice. I have a very nice voice. My husband has a big nose. But I still get sinusitis from time to time.<\/p>\n

What’s the connection between the nose, the sinus cavities, their chronic inflammation, and depression? And the eyes, whose socket-muscles seem connected to the tidal flow of inflamed matter above or below and beyond? And the neurons in the brain, whose morphology has to be shaped by pain as much as by pleasure? Chronic anything is extremely depressing, but sinusitis seems to have special relationship to mood, and sinuses, once sensitised, have a special relationship to environment (allergy alert! bing!bing!bing!). It’s been my experience that stuffy noses do not<\/i> have to accompany sinus inflammation. What’s that all about? Stuffy nose? Fergit about it. Right now, my nose is as clear as Puss in Boots’s boot polish, but I can feel the inflammation ringing my eyes and the region over my ears. Screw the pussy, buck the ass; I almost never have a stuffy nose (thank you, Dr. Fliess), but often wish I could unscrew my head. And swallowing that post-nasal drip is a drag.<\/p>\n

These are the variations of a question I would ask on some days, with the hope of finally fixing the problem, for myself and for the millions of people afflicted. Some estimates say 37million people suffer from sinusitis in the US. Let’s downscale to 30mil; downplay the population to 250mil., that makes 12% by conservative estimate. To the world’s 12%, wherever you are, believe me when I say I feel your pain. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you could have one question answered, what would it be? In my case it would depend entirely on my sinuses. If I could have an answer to anything today, I would like to know what the point of sinuses really is. There are theories, certainly — I especially like the theory that it lightens […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-yulelogstories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}