Sneezing & Other War Crimes 

The first, post surgery sneeze is a horror best to be completely avoided; much like brushing your teeth only to find a stink-bug has
taken up residence in your toothbrush bristles, or wearing a shoe all day with a dead lizard in it, or eating leftover pizza, thinking it tastes off, then observing that what you thought was blue cheese were actually live maggots.**
**NOTE: These things actually happened to my best friend, Martin. In real life. While I am deeply sorry for his misfortune, I am however not sorry enough to not post about it on the internet. It’s just the kind of loving friend I am.

In any event, sneezing with a healing sternotomy is an excruciatingly rancid task. I managed to go a full four weeks without having to experience one of the dreaded events. Actively trying to avoid a sneeze is a balancing act of manically blinking away watery eyes, warding off deep sinus tickles with excessive lip pouting, face rubbing and nostril flaring. It basically makes you feel like you are hosting some sort of epic sea anemone dance off inside of your face. It is neither pleasant nor attractive.

http://youtu.be/_jNwWQtLeY4

This is actual video of what happens inside your nose during a pre-sneeze.
(the sound track is also 100% accurate)

But eventually the gatekeepers of my nose hairs were finally defeated and I experienced the involuntary, suddenly violent inward and outward flexing contractions your chest and ribs succumb to during a sneeze or intense hiccup event. (But not burping for some reason, you can burp your face off just fine. And you should.)

The first time I sneezed it brought me to tears, the pain in my sternum radiated fresh and new, it felt like being kicked in an open wound by a donkey wearing salt block boots. The fractured, burning, stinging sensations lathered up internally with pepper spray like intensity. I can assure you that this is a tedious sensation to endure at the best of times. Having been completely off of all pain medication at that point, I was able to feel the extensive range of healing that still needed to take place down the center of my fractured sternum. The second and third sneezes, on subsequent days, also resulted in blackout inducing pain. But, as with any other life experience, there is always something to be said about the power in memory based experience and somehow knowing what to expect made those slightly easier than the first. “Screw you healing bones; I have got a point of reference on this sneezing malarkey.” I yelled triumphantly  (kidding, I never said that, I actually just folded in half each time, groaning out 80’s power ballads while rocking myself in the fetal position.)

I try to keep things in perspective – when I am not regressing into an embryonic state – and I do thank every star in the heavens and every piece of plankton in the sea that I didn’t have my surgery two months later on in the year. Because in the last few years, for the first time in my life, I have developed a seasonal allergy to some late April flowering bloom that, for two solid weeks, leaves me in sequential attacks of eye reddening, throat itching, nose running, sneezing fits, or as I like to call them; Sneeizures!

Allergies and Sneeizures would be like drinking hot garbage soup when you have recently had your chest cracked open.
Trust me.