Continuing with the focus on things that people don’t realize I can no longer do.
I miss, being able to blow my nose.
Something that I realized kind of recently and it makes me sad is that I do not have the strength in my body/lungs to blow my nose anymore. I mean, REALLY blow my nose. It is something that I never realized and now, it makes sense.
I have been told that, “All Rioses sound the same when they blow their nose. I think it was a friend who told me that when I was younger. They were speaking of my immediate family. I remember commenting that, “That’s ’s NOT good because I am the only girl!!” But sadly, it IS true. I sound just like my brothers when I blow my nose! It has been a huge HONK for a long time!
I remember the math teacher from across the hall when I was The Reading Specialist. My classroom/office was located on the second floor and she would laugh every single time I blew my nose and she heard it in her classroom! I also remember telling my students on the first day of class as I gave them the lowdown of being a student in my classroom. I used to tell them that I am going to have to blow my nose a lot and it is loud! I’m not embarrassed! I’m just telling you that because I have to, “Take care a binness!” It would get a laugh on the first day of class but I eventually showed him that it was true!
But now, I do not have enough strength to muster up a good nose flow. I only can blow my nose when I sneeze. Then, the air is forced out of my nose. I have figured out that I sneeze twice and if I don’t catch it one of those two times, very rarely do I get a third shot. I have and keep a folded piece of toilet paper in my possession. Usually in my hoodie pocket in the front.
I can’t have a box of Kleenex around me because as Kleenex get used, I can NOT pull it out of the box easily because I can’t control my hands that much anymore. But, I have always been just a little bit, “Ghetto.” I used to hold a Kleenex box raffle in the beginning of the year to get my students to bring in boxes of Kleenex. And for each box, they would get a ticket. Then, I would ask the class what they wanted for a prize. Usually, it was a large bag of hot Cheetos. I would keep a roll of the one ply toilet paper they had when we ran out of Kleenex and I would tell them that, “If you are not proud, you can use this!“ as I put it on my table. We usually ran out of Kleenex boxes in February.
I was thinking about this with some fondness. I actually sleep with three rolls of toilet paper on my nightstand to use during the night. At least one roll ends up on the floor by my bed every night but sometimes all three end up on the floor! I think it’s crazy that I can no longer do the simplest things. Maybe the word should not be crazy but, “sad” instead. But it makes sense. I can no longer fill my lungs up to sing so why would I have enough strength to fill my lungs up to blow my nose?!