Dr. Steve, or, The Disgusting Contents of My Nose

I'm sick.

I developed a sore throat and earache on Thursday, so I called up the midwife unit at the hospital to see if I could safely take Lemsip (a drug/lemon/honey tea concoction) and nasal drops for my condition and the woman I spoke to agreed that both those things were just fine.  When I went to the pharmacy to pick them up, though, the chemist was having none of it, so I left with the very mild throat lozenges he was willing to part with, and by the end of the evening when Steve came home from work, my head was about to explode from sinus pressure. 

Steve loves drugs.  Anytime I mention any slight discomfort, he recommends a pharmaceutical product, and he was sure that this time there was surely some drug to fix me up that I was allowed to take.  He called his mom, a nurse, for advice on what we should do, but there are really no good sinus-clearing drugs that doctors recommend for the pregnant.  Instead, she suggested we try to simulate the effects of a neti pot to clear out my sinuses. 

Turns out that Steve loves administering sinus-clearing "injections" even more than recommending drugs.  He set up a little medical center in the bathroom and prepared a saline solution to syringe into my nose.  The first few doses were not good.  I felt like I was drowning and there may have been a bit of shouting about the fact that Steve was quite over-zealous with the salt content of the salt water.  When he called his parents back the next day, it turned out that his original solution contained six times the recommended salt level.

Once we figured out the right saline solution, though, it was a remarkably good tonic.  And Steve did apologize for trying to brine me.