Sap Happy

Bronchitis. That's what it must be. Nothing else would adequately explain the violent and persistent fits of coughing. The lush, green, verdant quality of the mucus. Walking pneumonia perhaps. But, then, there would be the expectation of a fever, weakness, a worrisome shortness of breath. Instead there is only phlegm. Lots of it. Colorful gobs of green. For some reason, which still remains a mystery, the night continues to carry on in a way that is always enigmatically gloopy. Sleep, acting in direct opposition to expectation, demonstrates a cruel capacity to produce in the nasal cavity a surfeit of sinus sap. And it does so with extreme prejudice. Slowly dripping, faucetlike, snaking post-nasally down the length of the throat, thick globs of the stuff ooze into unsuspecting grooves of the lungs. There the snot begins to make a green, swampy, home away from home.

Vacationing in the lungs, in small, almost imperceptible increments, the slow bacterial accretion grows, creeping ever outwards and colonizing the boggy breathing apparatus, until, all of a sudden, while in the midst of a pleasant, restful dream, there is the abrupt return to wakefulness inside of a darkened room, clutching at the chest and coughing as slime is ejected out of the lungs and back up into the throat, only to arrive as garnish on top of a sleepy tongue. An odd kind of reverse peristalsis. The whooping and coughing that follows more closely resembles barking than breathing. To hear it one would get the impression of a walrus in danger, crying out in mortal terror. Things go on in this way all night; sleeping and choking, coughing and sleeping, choking and coughing. What an uncanny ability the body has, to produce such quantities of sludge.

Water doesn't seem to help much, other than keeping the body hydrated. Perhaps what's needed is sustained dehydration. A desiccation of the nasal passage. This could be a solution. There is no phlegm in the desert. Vitamin D, it is said, and echinacea, ginger, herbal teas, spoonfuls of honey, soup and warm baths, all are supposed to help. But none of them do, not much. Time is the only cure. And it is also the curse. One cannot fully appreciate a good night's rest until it is lost to sleeping in interrupted winks and starts, tosses and turns.

Actually, I think I feel the fever coming on now. Sweet delirium. The nasal icecaps are melting.