Aging Gracefully

The Pickleball Nose Miracle – You Can’t Make This Stuffed Up

Pickleball, the official sport of Roman Gladiators, has many benefits. But the one thing I didn’t expect from Pickleball was a miracle. A medical miracle.

But that is just what happened. To understand this miracle, which has been documented by my outstanding allergist, Dr. Kushnir, you have to learn a little bit more about me. And my nose. Oh, my nose.

I was born with a nose made for radio and sinuses that were made for misery. As I alluded to in a previous article, which my Google Analytics indicated reached fewer people than I would by shouting out my basement window, and in fact, it was such a small number of people that Google referred to it as Google Analytic so it wasn’t plural… my nose was always stuffy as a kid, whether it was allergies, colds, narrow nasal passages, or just me being me. Whatever it was, I had a stuffed nose. It was quite attractive to the girls at school.

The Panama Canal

As an adult, I’ve improved, though it hasn’t been all smooth breathing. I had many sinus infections and a cold that lasted during most of the Clinton administration. But then in 2002 during a harmless pick-up basketball game my nose ran into the sharp elbow of my friend Rick M, and voila! I had an official deviated septum (DS). The cartilage that constitutes the left side of my nose was pushed to the right, which left me with a crooked nose and a nasal passage that was shall we say indirect. What was already a narrow passage became unpassable. Like The Isthmus of Panama before we built the Panama Canal. Sort of.

Since then, along with the adoption of two adorable cats that I am allergic to, I’ve been in nasal hell. After a few failed attempts at finding a good allergist in Oakland, a city more known for muggings than fixing your mug, I found a great one, Dr. Kushnir. The great Dr. K does a relatively new procedure called a Rhinoscopy, which trust me you don’t ever want to endure, where the doc sticks a scope up your nose, which is at least well-medicated. The scope looks all the way through your nasal passage, essentially to your brain. Literally, “up your nose with a rubber hose.” Pleasant.

The good news was that I actually have a brain (which ruled out a few theories of mine). Bad news was my septum, or nasal passage, was deviated significantly into what she described as an S-shape, similar to that of the pipes below your sink. Somebody call a plumber. This DS was exacerbating my allergy and breathing problems and was ugly to the naked eye and frankly, any eye.

With his being confirmed, Dr. K and I were discussing the nuclear option: DS surgery, which meant re-braking my nose, moving my cartilage, slapping me in the face while I’m under, and then a month of recovery, with cotton balls stuffed up my nose for a week. Pleasant. The good doc wanted to a lighter touch treatment first – a medicated neti pot type of solution every day, also pleasant, to see if we could avoid surgery. But it now seemed like an inevitability that I’ve been avoiding for years. It’s Procrastination 101: stupidly submit to mild, long-term suffering vs. facing short-term hell. Is this a Buddhist principle as well? (Desire and ignorance are at the root of suffering.)

It was then that the pickleball miracle happened. On a cool November morning, my wife Julie and I engaged in our friendly PB rivalry with our friends who live in the South Bay, near San Jose. East Bay versus South Bay. We’ve done this a lot. We hang out with them and other friends the night before, drink a lot (but monitor the other team’s drinking to see that they’re not drinking less than us), talk a lot of shit about who’s going to win, sleepover at their house, and then play PB in the morning. It’s for the bragging rights among our friends.

Early in that day’s contest, a rifle shot came at me quickly at the net (or the “kitchen” as PBers call it) and I reflexively put up my racket to hit a volley but instead hit myself in the nose. Not only hit myself but drove the business end of the paddle up my nose. It hurt. A lot. But I couldn’t let that stop the game and rivalry. The bettors on Fan Duel would have sued. So we kept playing and the pain eventually faded. We ended up losing. I played like shit, and while I tried to blame the loss on my wife’s court presence, I knew it was me and my dumb nose. I told her after that I thought I rebroke my nose.

Brokeback Snoutain

That was partially true. I actually unbroke my nose. More on that coming. My nose hurt for a couple of weeks, but I knew I had a follow-up appointment in three weeks with the allergist, and another lovely Rhinoscopy scheduled, so I figured I would wait for the doctor to evaluate. But a funny thing happened on the way to the appointment. My nose, while hurting, felt straighter and I was breathing a little better. Hmmm.

So I visited the doctor and as she was getting ready to “scope” me again, I said, starting confidently then ending sheepishly, “I want to let you know that I hit myself in the nose with a pickleball racket a few weeks ago and it hurt like hell, and it’s possible I either broke my nose again or, and I’m just guessing here, because I am not a doctor, but watched ER: is it in any way possible I broke my nose back into the correct shape?”

Dr. Kushnir smirked, holding back a full chortle, and said “We’ll see what the Rhinoscopy tells us.” She did the Rhinoscopy and afterward, lo and behold with a wry smile, slightly laughing said, ”Well you moved the cartilage back into place with the blow from the pickleball racket. And while your nose is still a bit crooked you no longer have an S-shaped septum. It’s about a one-in-a-million chance but you hit the right spot with the right force. If you hit your nose with that kind of force two millimeters to the right you would have further pushed your cartilage over and been in a world of hurt. You would’ve been bleeding like Rocky Balboa. But you don’t need surgery now.” “

So I unbroke my nose,” I exclaimed, and she said, “You unbroke your nose.”

Wow! She later said, dripping with sarcasm, “If nose surgeons find out about this they may try to ban pickleball or they’ll be out of business” This is another reason I like this doctor so much.

So there you have it. A true pickleball miracle. My nose knows. How many more good things can pickleball do for me and everyone else? No one really nose.