I’ve had a cold for about a week now and I’m at the point where I’m blowing thick, green snot out of my nose. Had a shower this morning and that got things moving a bit deep in my sinuses.
You know how you can sort of suck stuff out of your sinuses and into your mouth and then spit it out? I was trying to do that but it was so thick that it was making me gag. I could tell there was something in there that felt like a string or something but it wouldn’t blow out so I crammed my fingers up my nostril and was able to grab it and start pulling it out.
Pulling it out with both hands, finger over finger, it just kept coming. It was like a green worm, about 5 inches long. It was so thick and solid that it got stuck in the drain and I had to push it through with my toes.
Thoroughly disgusting but also very impressive! And I can kind of breathe again out of that nostril so win win.
Snot seems to generate in long strings. Usually it crochets itself into a big ball, and you can hork it out. If you are generating quarts of green glop, see your doctor. You probably have a sinus infection.
And as a doctor patiently explained to me, the sinuses are damned close to the brain.
~VOW
I had one of those about 30 years ago. The memory kind of sticks with you. You don’t soon forget pulling a big green worm out of your nose. Gross, and impressive, and I kind of wish I could do it again for the 'ewwwwwww, but wow!" moment.
mucinex is what my doc used to recommend …not the 12 hour cough sryup the ones that look like cough drops… thell thin it down…just be sure you have a box or 3 of tissues handy tho
Mucinex will do a lovely job of thinning the gunk. REGULAR Mucinex, not the DM, and don’t screw around with any combo pills that have Tylenol, Benedryl or whatnot.
Sudafed will open up your sinuses to let the gunk out. Hot packs on your face and drinking hot things–tea, coffee, even hot water–will loosen things up.
~VOW
(veteran of more sinus infections than I can count)
Mucinex every 12 hours, a shot of nasonex every morning coinciding with my morning dose of mucinex and copious amounts of water, chicken soup, hot ginger lemon tea - my signature treatment starting the instant I get a particular tickle on the right side of the back of my throat [indicating the start of a rhinovirus] If I follow the dosing schedule pretty much down to the minute I can suppress the symptoms almost completely. I get at least 2 RV every winter season almost like clockwork. If I don’t bang the schedule perfectly, I get hit with the snots, a raging sore throat and sinuses that ooze gloop.
I had one of those snot strings back in about 1994ish, mrAru’s favorite corpsman [on the USS Miami actually] had the same issues I did and he developed that protocol and gave us the stuff to do it with, and it worked [also adding in the neti pot, forgot to mention that but I do that every morning cold or not] and I have kept it up ever since. The neti pot is what dislodged the Green Menace from my nose that time. Yuck!
I have taken to sleeping with paper towel under my pillow to catch the hairballs I’ve been horking up. I feel great, no cold, just thick, icky hairballs of white mucus.
