Really? You think about stuff like that?

Borderline TMI would like to take the next couple minutes of your day, and possibly gross you out. I know that I could probably go on a Googling binge and figure this out myself. Wait, Googling? I’ll take made-up-words for a thousand, Tribeck. But that wouldn’t be any fun. Not when I can post it here for you reader(s) and maybe gross you out, or maybe make you say, “oh that’s gross, I can’t believe you think about stuff like……..hey wait, where does it go?”

Or even for the simple pleasure of letting you all see more into exactly what is going on up here. You didn’t actually point at your head when you typed that, did you? Mayyyyyybe.

So, anyways…….a quick back story. Mrs. HokieJayBee is a teacher, at a public elementary school. Lil HokieJayBee, our 2 and half year old bundle of energy, attends a sitter’s house with four other children. These two variables add up to one simple constant situation. I’m always sick. Like, not sick-sick, not strep or bronchitis or anything serious, but just a constant daily life that includes congestion and full sinuses and a runny nose. More of an annoyance than a sickness. But from the months of October to February every year, I’m just near-kind-of-almost-congested sick. Neither of them get sick, or even hover around the near-kind-of-almost-congested sick like I do. I call them carriers. They have built up immunities to this constant congestion stuff and are just drone sponges that bring it home to me for the winter. Yeah science!

Side note: my biological father, my grandfather, and one of my uncles on that side have all had sinus re-opening, cleaning, widening surgery. Perhaps I could find a parallel here between that and the elementary school/daycare germs that I live with, and a lessened immune system for the winter months……but that’s not the point of this piece.

The point of the piece is that I live with a constant state of congestion all winter. Every winter. I’m used to it I guess. Now, without any Googling, I want to know where it goes.

I mean, I have a little constant sniffle and lately a lot of phlegm build up in my throat. At work all day, or even at home, one doesn’t realistically blow one’s nose on a constant basis, or cough and hack up the phlegm for a good loogie out the back door. It’s just not feasible for a person who lives in a constant state of kind-of-almost-nearly-congested sick, like I do. So, inevitably, one swallows it.

Wow, Jay. Deep stuff there. I guess problem solved? Shut up brain, you know what I mean; you help (hinder?) me with these kinds of thoughts all day.

What I mean is, where does it go?
Does the body digest it? Is it processed as pure waste to excrement?
Does the body process it? Like for re-use? It is after all a bodily product already. So some of it might be able to be used again. For the same function?
Maybe the body pulls the waste/anti-bodies out of the base mucus product and sends that to waste and processes the mucus for re-use?

I know it’s gross, but really, what happens to it?