Eye Watering

I'm unsure if another exciting trip to the hospital today was part of my exploration of retirement with all its new experiences or simply an occasion to be poked by somebody in scrubs and a mask. This time it was for the Covid 19 Nasopharyngeal Swab Test we've all been hearing about and that I said in my last post I would be getting. 

Oh my goodness, do they really send them out in the post and expect to get proper samples back? I must be a glutton for punishment because I've just watched the Government video to check if it's the same procedure and yes, the principle would appear to be the same. I suspect, however, that distance makes a fundamental difference.

With a professionally administered test, forget the gentle brushing of the swab over the tonsils. My instructions were, "This has to go to the very back of your throat and to get it there you will gag" and I did, eventually, on the fourth or fifth take. You see there's no accounting for my tongue that has a mind of its own and which was in full G6 security mode this morning. Tell it to lie down and it rises to the roof of the mouth; tell it to relax and it stiffens in apprehension; hold it down with a spatula and it wrestles to break free. 

I felt sorry for the poor nurse to whom I kept apologising profusely, insisting that I had no control over the heap of pink muscle thrashing around inside my  mouth. How she avoided contaminating the sample against it, I honestly have no idea but then, when she finally dived past it and I gagged as instructed, she wasn't ready and had to go in for another swab inducing retch. Success, she proudly held the swab aloft and I felt a wave of satisfaction or maybe relief.

Of course, there was no time to sit back in the chair and reflect in the glory because the same swab then goes up your nose. When I say "up", I certainly mean "up"!

The video suggests inserting until the point where it meets resistance, but where is that? I'm still not sure I know now. I can only describe where this swab was pushed as the place where your eyes start to water and it's significantly higher than anything that has ever gone up either of my nostrils before. In fact as she twirled it around gathering secretions and the eyes dripped profusely, all I could think of were the words to an old rhyme we used to chant as children: "The eyes fall in, the teeth fall out; the brains come tumbling down the snout."

Fortunately they didn't!