Dripping, Blowing & Sneezing!

 

By Dick Weinman - The Thin Edge of Dignity


Herbert, Forsythe, and I live in the same ALF (Assisted Living Facility). We are table mates. Herbert and Forsythe are both 95. I’m a young 82. At our advanced age, we have been stricken with rhinorrhea, common in the geriatric population.

As we sit to eat, Herbert’s nose often drips, sometimes non-stop, into his food; he occasionally blows, and often sneezes – three straight sneezes is usual several times a meal. I sneeze a lot, too – also three in a row. My nose drips occasionally, and I blow regularly, usually following a sneeze. Forsythe, luckily, doesn’t sneeze much; drips infrequently; hardly ever blows.

We need something to control our rhinorrhea, some way to relieve our distress, a kind of Imodium for the nasal species of …rrhea. Antihistamines help, but they only comfort the symptoms – and may make us sleepy. As old folk in an ALF, who don’t do much more than sleep, we certainly don’t need that.

No, until a cure for rhinorrhea is found – not many research dollars are put to this noble gerontological end (it’s all going to Alzheimer’s research) - we have to rely on some kind of expedient, just for our symptoms, without the side effects of drowsiness. We could rely on a rolled-up-often-used-cloth-handkerchief-stuffed-in-a-pants-pocket. But the side effects would be gross. No, we’re stuck with mollifying the symptoms. We have to settle with a temporary answer. And that means a product designed and manufactured for that purpose – the eponymous Kleenex – or its generic name: tissue.

Sad to say, the ubiquitous boxes of house-brand tissues have been removed from the tables in our ALF’s dining room. We are a rhinorrhea-amelioratingless assemblage of tables – naked in our misery. You might say we are Mucus Invictus, without the invincibility.

So what is our “false prophet?” – to place the situation into Biblical proportions since it sometimes appears that we at our dining table need a Noah and his Ark.

We rely on our napkins.   In fact, at the start of each meal, Herbert asks the server for three extra napkins. (We get one napkin for wiping our hands and mouth.)

We have two dissimilar products and functions here. A napkin, according to Wikipedia, is a small piece of cloth or paper, usually square, for use in wiping the lips and fingers and to protect the clothes while eating. I would add other real uses at our table: to clean up spills, to spit tough meat gristle into, and other barbarous acts. OK! In case you’re a fact checker: to be entirely truthful and contrary to my argument, in north England and Scotland, a napkin may mean a handkerchief. But only there!

A tissue (facial) , according to Wikipedea, is a piece of soft and very thin paper that is used for nose blowing.

Boxes of tissues, with their delicate flowery designs, once adorned our dining room tables. Now they’re gone; a casualty of budget cuts, or, more likely, as my hidden camera investigations have discovered, the administrative desire for cleaner table tops. “This (the dining room) is not a mess hall,” residents were told. I could weep; but there are no tissues to wipe my eyes or blow my nose.

As my memory floats back to the wondrous past, I hear the plaintive dining table request, “Please pass the tissues.” And these were the sandpaper house variety. To use them, one braved red eyes and nostrils, but they were better than a napkin or an overused and dried-out handkerchief.

But what good does it do to present a rational analysis of the current situation? This is the third blog to plea for returning tissues to the rhinorrheatic residents. My failure to bring change to my fellow drippers/blowers/sneezers should be a myth-breaking reality to the ancient aphorism that the pen is mightier than the sword.

Not my pen and the mighty ALF sword.