Oh, it’s been an enchanted Xmas here. Ariel is getting over her cold but at this point I feel like I have an elephant sitting in my sinus cavities. I have taken absolutely everything that everyone has recommended, and at this point it’s just laughing it off. Kath is supposed to come home with the baby today after spending Xmas down in Atlanta with her family. I begged her to stay down there and the heck away from the house of germs, but she’s determined to come back. At least Caroline had a flu shot before they became scarce.
We did manage to get our act sufficiently together to go out to a movie, which we traditionally do on Xmas. We saw “Big Fish.” It’s easily Burton’s best film since “Scissorhands,” but it was about a dying father who’s always making up stories so, y’know, it was just the thing to put me in a good mood.
PAD
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Did you have Chinese food for dinner, too? That’s our Jewish tradition for Christmas here. Movies and Chinese food, except both the theatre and restaurant were packed with gentiles. It was odd. They’ve stolen our traditions.
I have been waiting for BIG FISH to open here since December 10th, which is when it opened in New York and L.A., I think. Then it opened a little bit wider yesterday, but still not here. I gotta wait til freakin’ January 10th to see it. At least it’s good, right, so I know it’s worth the wait.
Please take this in the spirit in which it is intended, but I don’t want hear about the problems with your sinus cavity… I guarantee my sinuses are in much worse shape at the moment.
Re: the sinuses…have you tried a WaterPik with saline solution? Manual irrigation of the sinuses is a bit extreme, but it’ll give you at least a little time with opened sinuses.
Last time I was in Britain, came down with a bug. It went away, but left me with a very stopped up nose. So I went to an Indian
restaurant I’d previously patronized, and asked for their hottest vindaloo and a stack of paper napkins about a foot high.
Cleared out my sinuses, nostrils, mouth, esophagus, stomach, colon, and both intestines.
Seeing as sudafed in any form is the only OTC decongestant on the US market, I’d go with the saline idea. Pseudoephedrine is in everything, unless it’s herbal/homeopathic or “decongestant free”. Either saline, a quick trip to Mexico for something that’ll WORK, or checking with one of them “M.D” types. I chose door #3.
Feel better, and at least it’s not the Cardassian Flu, nu?
I would think you would go see Peter Pan. I am curious what you think of how it is adapted vs the Disney version
No meds before bed, instead a big mug of Hot Tea, no milk/cream or sugar, but one tablesppon each Honey, Lemon Juice, Whiskey.
That helps my wife and me when we get sick, you wake up feeling much better….
Well, if the solution is going to involve alcohol, who needs anything else? 🙂
My condolences. I had the same thing last year, or at least it had the same resistance to medication. I advise lots of Tylenol PM and hiding the screwdrivers, lest you surrender to the urge to drill a hole in your head to relieve the pressure.
The Water Pik/saline solution is one I’ve been using for years. There is a device sold on the Internet (just type in “sinus headache” and you’ll find it eventually) that plugs into the Water Pik. It has a rubber cone on the end. You put one teaspoon of NON-iodized salt into a tank of water, turn the Pik on very low, pump it into one nostril and let the water run out the other nostril and your mouth. Then alternate. While leaning over the bathroom sink, of course.
I have NEVER found anything better for eliminating sinus headache. It may take a full tank of water, but it works. Also, if I’m still congested, washing out those sinuses means that any nasal spray actually contacts the skin, not a layer of mucus,and works more efficiently.
In my case, what helps best against a cold is a nice hot bath.
I hope the host and webmaster both feel better soon. And to add my tips to the list, aside from rest, drink plenty of fluids. And by plenty I mean a whole gallon pitcher of orange juice or water or something of that variety, rather than pop (or soda–whatever y’all call it). Fill it up and drink it thru the entire day. Yeah, you’ll urinate a lot, but it clears your system quickly and efficiently.
Chris
Peter had no choice in his cold. Glenn chose to have his nose broken during the holidays. I have broken my nose 3 times but never on purpose.
Kath
Well, it had to be done. Three times, Kathleen? Oh, right– you had brothers.
I loved Big Fish, and not just because it was filmed around where I grew up- the circus scenes were four miles from my house, the scene with the giant was two miles, the fire was at a close friend’s house.
I not only caught the flu after Thanksgiving, I caught pneumonia! I sympathize with ya, PAD…best wishes for a quick recovery.
So, Glenn, getting a deviated septum fixed? I had that done some years back and my nose has been much better ever since. (Apparently, many of my allergies were due to one side of my nose being almost closed and easy to irritate.)
And good luck to Peter with the sinus infection! I usually take generic Actifed when I need to dry that sort of thing out. In addition to the pseudoephedrine, it’s also got triprolidine HCl, which I find to be a very effective antihistamine. Unfortunately, you can’t seem to buy it separately…
Why “Xmas”? Is it for length? Nah, people type out Thanksgiving..which is longer than Christmas..you never see “Xgiving”.
I had Chinese food today around 1:30. By 2:30, I had a migraine headache starting. By 4:00, I was in bed in an attempt to sleep off the migraine. Got up at 7:30. Migraine finally quit at midnight.
It was a buffet, so I had a number of different things. I loved the taste of all of them, but I sure would like to know which item or items caused the migraine.
The blue conical sinus irrigator made an appearance at my house recently when my SO had sinus surgery.
He claims it was considerably unpleasant and that it can just stay in the medicine cabinet, thanks, but I think he was insufficiently bold regarding it. If he’d stuck with it, it might’ve gone a little better over time after the initial bout of alarming-amusing choking noises from the bathroom… 😉
I usually score a Flonase inhaler when I’ve got a sinus infection (that’s a scrip-only steroid nasal spray thing), take lots of DayQuil, do the saline-spray in the nose (but not the conical blue nose thing), and take my pills with as much orange juice as I can stand. If you can get your hands on a humidifier, Peter, you might try steam as well… good luck.
This is Snot a fun tread to read…(ducks!)
None of my siblings are responcible for the nose breaks. The first happened when I got roped into playing forward in a rugby game in college. The other two happened during my time as a stage manager. One by walking into a lowered lighting pipe. The other by the misstep of an actor with a piece of set.
Peter,
Try the new Vapor shots by Breathe Right. My wife is in the middle of a nasty Sinus infection, and they seem to help clean out the sinuses. Cant hurt, might help
Re: BIG FISH vs. PETER PAN, I’m a big PAN fan and have been looking forward to it for months, and plan to see it in the next few days.
That said, if it were playing here, I’d be seeing BIG FISH first. I love almost everything Burton does, and this one looks pretty special. And if PAD’s calling it Burton’s best since EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, well, THAT has me intrigued.
Re: Chinese food-induced migranes, Alan, do you have — or have you in the past had — a negative reaction to MSG? If you had a migrane after eacting Chinese, I’d consider that the likely culprit — it’s not at all uncommon. Try to frequent restaurants that make a point of noting that they do NOT add MSG — many restaurants note this in their advertising and on their menus.
PAD, sorry you and yours aren’t feeling well this holiday. Hope you’ll all feel better soon.
Whatto do is get VICs vapor rub and put some of it in a pan of water and let it heat up on your stove. Put a cloth over your face and inhale the VICs. Trust me, it will work! That’ll clear your sinus. and help you to breath.
Take care PAD. Colds suck.
PS: Don’t cook (VICs) it to a boil. Just let the VICs simmer in the pan and it will soon smell up your kitchen a bit if done right. This is what we do in our house. Keep it on your stove for about an hour. 🙂
Get well soon PAD and Ariel.
I got ‘No Limits’ for X-Mas and am enjoying it thus far.
I, too, hope you all get well soon. Sinus problems are no fun at all. 🙁
I’ll second both the spicy-food trick and the nasal irrigation. I haven’t used a Water Pik, myself, but I have used a neti pot to deal with sinus problems. I know it sounds crazy, but it does help.
Peter, a few days ago it was maentioned that Al Gore III’s pot bust spoke well of his chances for the presidency later on in life…seems the Dean campaign wants in on the “criminal-children-means-winning-the-White-House” action….seeing as the they got Dean’s son to knock over the liqour supply house of a country club last spring
K
I hope you’re all doing well, PAD and Kathleen. I’ve had sinuses myself before, and it’s nothing great to have to deal with.
As for the new movie, Big Fish, well, the premise of a father who’s a big fibber and a contriver, it reminds me of some weirdo I once encountered on another forum over a year ago, who said that he worked for a computer company in Seattle, Washington, who claimed that he was “raised as a Jew”(as he himself put it), and converted to Christianity later on.
Well aside from the fact that he never gave any genuine proof that he had ever been born or raised Jewish, his family name, from what I know, was not Jewish either, and in fact, now that I think of it, I’m almost %100 certain that he was just making it all up, get this, in order to fortify some arguements I’d been having with him, including one about stereotypes, which he considered legitimate, even racial ones(!), and I might also add that he had acted like a know-it-all and was fairly crude in some cases too. He even took to pointlessly criticizing the ZOA as an unreliable source, which was ridiculous and laughable too. Must I point out that the legendary Dr. Martin Luther King was one of the greatest friends of the ZOA in his time, and that many of his followers continue to do so even today?
As far as I’m concerned, this phony, whom I’m very disappointed with for trying to justify stereotypes, was very easily a real-life paralell to the protagonist in Big Fish, and do you know that it’s insulting, and, in fact, degrading, to pretend that you’re Jewish? For pete’s sake, it’s even more so if a Jew were to pretend that he or she had been raised as a Christian and then converted to Judaism if you ask me! The nerve that individual had in pulling such a foolish masquerade.
Maybe the lesson to be learned in Big Fish is not to pretend to be (or that you were) something you’re not. And what I’ve put forth here is but one example of something that should not be done in real life, lest you end up making yourself look ridicluous. Saying you’re Jewish, if anything, does not mean that you know everything and anything, and I for one certainly don’t, nor do I claim as such.