This is really just a continuation of the last post, but I thought I'd give it a post of its own, since it's an anecdote I've been hiding for 25 years.

It must have been about 1976, because it was the original cast of Saturday Night Live, way back when it was funny. There was this skit starring Jane Curtain and I'm not sure--I think John Belushi, but that part is fuzzy. All I remember clearly is her tirade.

The gist of the skit was that he was this incredibly careful, conservative guy. (Conservative in the behavioral sense, not the political.) At the climax of the skit, she went off on him with a list of absurdly conservative behavior, culminating in the charge that he would never leave the house without kleenex.

That line really unnerved me. Kleenex? Most people left the house without Kleenex?

I would have been a sophomore in high school, meaning by definition I was self-conscious about everything, but suddenly I was labelled some sort of freak. I was terrified of leaving the house without Kleenex. How would you clean your nose off when you got to school?

I stuffed one in each front pants pocket every morning, and a handful in my coat in the winter, when I needed them more. Those were the backups--in the wintertime, or the three to five times a year I had a monthlong cold, I packed my pockets to bulging, and made every available pitstop in the bathroom to replenish.

Didn't everybody do that?

From then on, I started hiding it. Not only did I have to keep a supply on hand, I had to camoflague it somehow.

Last month was the first time I can ever remember going a day without blowing my nose. I can breathe deeply now. I thought I was breathing deeply before, I just didn't realize what it meant. I can breathe clearly, meaning I feel nothing flapping around in there at all, just unobstructed air flowing through. I don't think I have ever felt that before. Didn't know you were supposed to. Had no idea that's what you were all feeling with every breath.

I like it.

hehehe. I do enjoy writing those titles sometimes.

I apologize for taking six weeks to report back on my surgery. Thanks for all the emails asking about my health.

It went great. I was writing again within the week. (Been writing like crazy.)

The weirdest thing is, I can smell things. I've always had a pitiful sense of smell, never realized it was related to all those constant, interminable, insufferable "colds" I got.

It's like getting a whole new sense. How come we have words for deafness and blindness--a whole slew of words: myopic, tunnel-vision, near-sighted, far-sighted, blah blah blah -- and nobody even bothered to create a term for lack of smell. (I'm sure they did, actually, but find me someone who can name it.)

Of course that's not always a good thing. hahaha. I have definitely noticed that most of the new smells are on the unpleasant side. Can't wait to take a walk in the woods and finally discover what this pine-forest thing everyone talks about is all about.

Yes, I have smelled it, faintly, when I stick my nose right up to pine tree, pull a branch in so it tickles my upper lip and then suck in like I was going to have to live off that breath underwater for 30 minutes.

I can actually feel air in all sorts of places in my head when I it when i breathe now, places I had no idea air was supposed to travel. Although I'm starting to get used to that, have to remember to notice it already.

(Skip over this paragraph if you're queasy. He scraped way more out of the inside of my face than he expected to. A huge cyst was filling my entire left maxillary sinus, and I had a long roll of pollops on the right side. He said air had not gotten into a lot of those places in decades.)

I can't tell you how great it feels to be healthy again. He said I'd be at risk of infection for six weeks as it all heals in there, but I'm almost out of that. And I'm still (more disgusting stuff: hacking out blood from the deep recesses every day), but just glad to have all systems operational inside my face again.