Allergies, you gotta love 'em

A million years ago while on a patrol in a small town near Al Jahrah in Kuwait I stopped my unit prior to enter what we thought was an abandoned house. I told my sergeant that we had contacts in the house.

"Can you see them?" He said to me in a whisper.

"Nope" I responded. A tilted smile on my face.

"Then how the fuck do you know someone is in there AC ?ß(nickname given to me..close friends will understand)"

"I can smell them" I smugly replied….and I was correct.

After the mission I was praised heavily for the use of my olfactory ability. I was very proud that my overactive snout had saved me from a possibly difficult situation.

….A million years later…

I woke up this morning with my tongue literally stuck to the roof of my mouth. It would appear that the muzzle I was so proud of in Desert Storm has turned on me! Now, in a pathetic state of affairs, I have allergies worse than any mortal should have to suffer.

My nose was so clogged that I had been breathing through my mouth all night and I had dried my tongue out which had subsequently applied itself to the roof of my mouth. Luckily for my lady I would imagine that the amount of snoring I created had surpassed normal decibel levels long ago and now would just feel like one of those cheap vibrating hotel beds.

I wish I could give all of you standard breathers an idea of how difficult it is to pry your own tongue off the top of your palate, but it is not as easy as you would expect. You can't just close your mouth and create saliva to release it. For all you normal respireteurs picture if you will, there is no moisture in your mouth. The only way to create spit at this point is to close your mouth and move your tongue around to stimulate whatever the hell is stimulated to create spit. Which, of course I can't do. It's an evil catch 22 in this case. Not to mention that if I try and close my mouth and give my tongue a swirl (learned this lesson the hard way), I can't breathe through my nose and I have to take short little gasps for air every couple of seconds. When you have your tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth and you are trying to take short little gasps of air you tend to make unusual noises. Much like that of a puff adder on Benzedrine (if you don't know…don't ask). Thus my only option at this point is to get up and get some foreign form of moisture into my mouth.

Usually I keep a glass of water by my bed for just such an emergency. However, on this fine day…no such luck. I was gonna have to get up if I wanted to continue breathing with any form of dignity. Of course not only does having allergies affect your air intake/outtake process. It also causes an entire slew of other issues. The biggest of these issues I now faced. My eyes were glued shut with some kind of….well, some kind of something. I pried one of my eyes open with my fingers and although this solved the problem of my eyelid mutiny it did not help me to see any better. Ya see, when you have allergies waking up in the morning is a bit like coming out of hibernation for a bear. Everything is very blurry and your hand eye coordination just sucks. So like a retarded, far sighted, Cyclops I began to navigate the children's toy landmine field between me and the bathroom. Stepping on what I am sure was every single freaking toy my son owns I limped up to the sink.

No cup.

I one eye scanned the local area which was about as effective as Braille on the drive up ATM window. I turned on the faucet thinking I would simply drink direction from the spigot. However, once I turned my head upside down to drink my head did, what can only be described as, depressurizing. The shifting of snot in my head was extremely painful, so much so, that I abandoned the upside down head drinking idea completely.

I needed a new plan. As I stood there trying to come up with a new idea and simultaneously also holding portion of my still shifting snot filled head hoping it would not explode, I noted that the cap to my deodorant had a depression in it large enough to hold some water.

"SCEEET" I exclaimed. Nice thinking I thought to myself.

It was not.

What happened next happened fast. I filled the cap up with some water and quickly drank from it. Swishing it around my mouth until my tongue was finally released. Now, although my tongue was already a bit swollen from the ordeal I noted that it felt funny…..real funny.

In a hydration/dehydration moment it rapidly occurred to me that residue from my Axe "Antiperspirant" had obviously been attached to the cap and was now leeching all the moisture out of my mouth. As a secondary effect it was also making my lips numb. Now, I have been to the hospital enough times to know that your lips' being numb is nothing to worry about. However, the sensation of all the moisture leaving my mouth was almost as bad as having my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.

"Phlit!" I angrily said.

There was only one thing to do now. Like a James Bond movie with a really crappy plot I began to slowly work back through the toy minefield while the moisture continued to slowly leave my mouth. After carefully stepping on all the sharp corners of my son's toys I finally found my cup or parking garage for a matchbox car as it was now being used. I took the parking garage and with the speed and grace of a 3 toed sloth I darted back to the sink. Narrowly missing a soft piece of carpet on my return. I filled the glass and began to long tooth brushing, rinsing, rehydrating action needed to make my mouth normal again. Eventually my eyes cleared up and I was able to open them and the sub commander in nasal passages finally blew the ballast and allowed my head to depressurize. All was finally better.

Well, if you don't count the 483 sneezes that followed.

Yep…thank god, I had the super active sniffer. I loves me some allergies!