Last week I received a phone call from my doctor. “It’s not an emergency,” she said on the message, “but please call me back as soon as you get a chance.”

Being highly anxious and an aspiring hypochondriac I immediately gave her a call. It seems she was looking at the results from my most recent CT scan (I’ve had two others) and all four of my sinus cavities are clogged and filled.

“How are you feeling?” she wondered?

I told her that I was very worn out and my face was sore. She wasn’t surprised. And it seems that instead of waiting six weeks for my follow-up appointment, she wanted me to come back ASAP.

So I went back for the follow-up and was told they want to operate. On my face. I’ve been told this before. However, this was the first time I agreed.

How did I get here? Well, it has a lot to do with being clumsy. In seventh grade I was at a party on the last day of school. I was wearing Converse high-tops, an R.E.M. “Shiny Happy People” t-shirt, and cut-off green army pants. This was the high-point of my formative years of fashion experiments. With this outfit I was attempting to be cool. As it turned out, all I could manage was spastic. I was running around like a crazy person and somehow managed to smack face first into a closed sliding glass door. There was more shock than pain, but the end result was a break in my nose which caused my insides to look like this:

This mishap (along with several other tripping, passing out, or just walking into poles incidents) set the stage for bacteria to hold court inside my head. They’ve caused all sorts infection that has been unable to drain out due to blocked or crooked passage-ways. That and the fact that I seem to be allergic to everything on God’s green earth.

But I’m ready to fix it now, ready to say good-bye to my monthly trips to the doctor for antibiotics and decongestants. I’m ready to have them shove things into my nasal passages and drain out all of the goo, and sit swollen-faced for weeks while things continue to drip.

Why am I finally ready for this to happen? The reality is that I don’t have much else going on. So why not?