Honor Your Nose

Last night I was lulled to sleep with a lecture on the nose. One of our local cable channels is dedicated to SCOLA; most hours it is a direct feed to live international television in the language of each country; the other hours are dedicated to health and wellness. Often this includes medical lectures to the Nebraska University Medical Center students.

Breathing is meant to be done through the nose. It gives our brains a different experience than mouth or tracheotomy breathing does. It gives us a feeling of being right. My mother was big on breathing. Often we stopped mid-conversation to, as she put it, "breathe." I still enjoy a moment or two of breathing.

I appreciate my sense of smell and those little sensors are a treasure. Smell is all tied up with memory, as many of you know. The smell of a mother's cooking, the smell of baby chicks and little kittens, the smell of horses and tack, the smell of an old boyfriend's aftershave and the familiar scent of a husband. I once lived in a small town with no central air. In summers windows were opened and during the dark night, I could smell the after-lovemaking cigarettes of my next door neighbors. Perfume lingers in my living room days after company has gone, reminding me of that pleasant visit.

Sometimes the sense of smell goes haywire and some unfortunate people smell very bad odors continually. Sometimes they have to have the nerves that connect their noses to the brain severed. Occasionally this gets wired with schizophrenic tendencies. The learned doctor stated last night that those unfortunate folks never continually smell a pleasant odor, it is always very disgusting ones.

I never knew that the ingredient that oils our digestive system is the quart of snot that we swallow each day, not exactly the trivia one might relate at a Christmas party.