See title.

Today was fairly solid. Between a thrilling (vicarious) athletic victory and a homework assignment going much more swimmingly than it might’ve, I was kinda chillin’.

On the other hand, I’ve been tired. In a phonecall yesterday, my sister seemingly solved the issue: she asked me what was wrong with my voice. I said some version of “Nothing.” or “Whaddya mean?”. With prompting, though, I was able to determine that perhaps something was wrong with my voice. I had been feeling tired for the past week-ish, but I chalked my tiredness up to simple sleepiness. I’ve been COVID-testing biweekly, so I was (and remain) fairly sure it wasn’t that.

Today, though, my voice still seemed off, so I elected to pop some Sudafed (purely non-recreationally – see this post for my stance on imperilling my personal health), or at least the generic version. My nose began to run almost immediately (so immediate as to suggest some level of a placebo effect rather than an active-ingredient effect), and I felt better.

Until 40-ish minutes ago.

When I am congested, a fairly disgusting thing happens: rather than exclusively running out my nose, a disproportionate fraction of boogies make their way to my stomach. Stomachs, of course, are not meant to house boogies. If you don’t know what happens (and want to know), I’ll tell you:

  1. My stomach gets boogies in it.
  2. My stomach begins to swell up.
    • I am not sure of the mechanism responsible for this, but I get fairly bloated, at least by my lithe standards.
  3. My spit starts to get more plentiful, more watery, and simultaneously more viscous.
    • I am forced to decide whether to spit. I often do.
  4. I continue to suffer like this for, ordinarily, hours.
  5. Finally, my stomach is so bloated and ill-feeling that something (at this point, you can likely guess what) needs to change.
  6. My stomach (euphemistically) empties.
  7. I feel better, but not for long.
    • Why? Because I keep swallowing boogies.
  8. They drip, they accumulate, and my stomach – which, like most stomachs, is not made for holding boogies – fills.
  9. Rinse and repeat.

I do not have any sort of understanding for why this process ends. It’s not a process of weeks, or even a week: ordinarily, it’s a process of days. How (and why)? I have no idea. Interestingly, it seems to be stress-correlated, or at least “high likelihood that a similarly situated person would be experiencing stress”-correlated. I don’t really think I’m stressed now but, if I take a step back and consider the due dates, other deadlines, and various responsibilities that I have right now, I realize they are greater than usual. Am I stressed? I have no idea – aside from evaluating running exhaustion, I am very bad at evaluating my well-being in the moment.

Examples: I experienced this during AP exams in my senior year of high school, during the second half of my freshman spring in college, during April 2020 (OK, I also ate a bunch of doughnuts that day), and – I think – during some part of the semester in April-ish 2021. Usually, I’ve experienced this during the spring, so I had chalked it up to allergies. The current instance marks my first time experiencing this in November.

Here’s hoping the process gets going fast so it can get finished fast. At this point in the week, I’m fairly well-positioned for a sick day. I’d prefer to be able to dedicate the later (and latter) part of this week to work.

Update (2:41 a.m.): we gettin’ closer, (gender-neutral) boys…