Swollen importance

I'd like to divulge a secret to you. I'm normally not a secret-keeping girl, so I have to come clean. This revelation might come as a shock; it does to nearly every doctor I encounter. Every time doctors find out, they react with some degree of shock.

I have hideously, abnormally large tonsils.

Now, many people with enlarged tonsils have them (and their adenoids) out when they're kids. For a few different reasons, I didn't. And every time doctors ask me to say "ahhhh," they follow the tongue depressor placement with a, "Wow!" or a, "Goodness me!" or my personal favorite, the low whistle.

"Yup, they're huge, right?" (I've come a long way since my first few adult doctor's visits, when I thought a doctor's shock at the inside of my mouth meant something really serious, like there were grasshopper eggs or cave paintings in there.)

"You didn't have those out when you were a kid?"

"Nope."

Now, as I related this recurring scene to a friend, she asked me where the tonsils were inside the mouth.

Except that mine are generally about four times that size. Six, if I'm sick or in the middle of allergy season. I'll spare you the pictures, because that gets gross. But when I showed my friend, she had a similar reaction: *gasp* "Yours are huge!"

When I asked Jonny if he knew where tonsils were, he asked if a tonsil was that hangy-down thing in the back of one's throat. You know, the uvula.
 

Oh well...I guess I can forgive him, since not everyone has been plagued with tonsil problems since birth, and is therefore not as acquainted with the back of their throats.

But when I was in middle school, my father brought home something from the pharmacy that changed my life forever. Aspergum. A gum, with Aspirin in it. While you chewed a piece, the Aspirin coated the tonsils and made the pain STOP. I mean, sure, the strep throat/sinus drainage/tonsilitis was still there, but at least it made my tonsils feel normal-sized again...even if only because they were numbed, not actually smaller.

Whatever happened to Aspergum? Discontinued in 2006, apparently due to slumping sales and a worry that kids would chew it, thinking it was just regular gum. In medication-like foil/plastic packaging. There are gums that come like this, I know - like Eclipse. Seriously, though - you didn't chew this gum for the taste.

But when I'm sick in bed like today, and I've had three bowls of soup and four cups of tea and I've blown through (*snicker snicker*) two handkerchiefs and half a box of Kleenex, there's nothing I want more than a piece of candy-coated, Orange Tang-flavored gum to make my tonsils feel like a normal human's.

So when you get that time machine working and you go back in time, pick up a package for me while you're there. I'll reimburse you. Oh, and the cherry flavor is my favorite.

Love, Katie