Fall Cold: Searching For Sinus Solutions

Well, I’ve come down with a fall cold this week.

It all started Monday night when I had a huge sneezing fit while watching a movie with Jen. Luckily we were at home so I only had her to shower with my microbes.

Anyway, it’s the stuffy nose head cold type of jobbie. I actually thought it was allergies at the start, but 2 Benedryls did not stop the stuffy action… it went all night long. So I have concluded that it is a cold¹.

I decided on Tuesday that I wanted decongestant. You may think that after hundreds of years we, the human race, could have located more than one substance to use as a systemic decongestant. But no, it is not true, we have not. The only thing we have discovered are ephedrins. These compounds basically stimulate the adrenal system to give you an adrenaline high. This high causes your blood vessels to shrink up, and that helps your congestion for some reason.

Adrenaline, what a great thing to give to someone who is prone to anxiety attacks these days and who can’t sleep because of a stuffy nose. Hmph.

So I went to the pharmacy on my way to work and talked to the pharmacist about this problem. She recommended Sinusalia. This is a homeopathic drug whose active ingredients (albeit in infinitesimal quantities) are: Belladonna (a notorious neurotoxin), Bloodroot (causes heart failure) and Wormbush (also causes heart failure). So I bought and ate a few doses.

As you might imagine for a sinus draining pill which is a blend of three powerful poisons diluted over and over and over again until the quantities are too small to be poisonous — and whose potency is accounted for by “potentiation through succusion” (shaking the diluted poison in a tube) — it drained nothing except for my pocketbook.

I went back to the pharmacy after work and talked to a different and better pharmacist who suggested the topical option of using Otrivin. I have never used Otrivin in the past because I have heard that your nasal system can become dependent on it. That means that your problems come back way worse when you stop. The pharmacist explained that you should taper your usage off to avoid this problem. Also, he said three days is enough to build a dependence but my favorite drug information site says 2 weeks is the accepted time. I bought the Otrivin.

All success was not assured, however, as the bottle I bought was the you-squeeze-it-through-the-hole-in-the-top-of-the-bottle-to-make-a-mist type. I got it home. I positioned my face according to the directions on the bottle. I squeezed the bottle, expecting a soothing moisturizing spray of decongestant goodness…

I don’t know if my bottle is defective or what, but when I tried to use it it squirted a strong stream of Otrivin right up my nose (probably 10 times the normal dose), and down the back of my throat. Damn, Otrivin tastes bad. And you know what? It stimulates the adrenal gland when absorbed through the stomach. So I got a nice little buzz off of that — and avoiding that is why I bought the damnèd Otrivin in the first place. Argh.

The Otrivin, however, did work wonders on the congestion front. Today I’m going to go to the pharmacy and buy the kind of Otrivin that delivers a metred dose. That will remove the guesswork and keep me on track.

I hate sinus colds.

¹Correct punctuation and grammar are optional when you have a cold.

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