The Water Pik Netti Pot Listerine Don't Try This At Home Sinus Irrigation Disaster

(((I selected this post to be featured on Dad Blogs. Please visit the site and vote for my blog!)))

I'm probably not sane. I haven't just come to this conclusion--it's been growing on me for years, a sneaky, furtive suspicion that I ain't raht. It worries me a little, not because I'm afraid of being crazy, but because I don't want to infect the children.

Case in point: Do you believe I found the YouTube video of the guy rinsing his nasal cavity with a teapot:

1. Disgusting


2. Totally hilarious


3. Inspirational

If you picked three, welcome to your favorite blog.

I rarely try things I see on the internet. I don't drop Mentos into diet coke. I don't drift my car. I don't cycle-sleep. But when I saw the Netti pot, I had to give it a shot. How could I avoid it? It hits all the 10 year old entertainment points: boogers, semi-inappropriate irrigation, sticking something up your nose, and laughing hard enough to blow coke through your nose while you're blowing salty water through your nose. Through your nose.

As soon as I saw the video I ransacked the house looking for some device that could stand in for a netti pot--a tea pot, a water bottle, a baby's nose cleaner--anything. But I had nothing.

Then I remembered my water pik.

If necessity is the mother of invention, YouTube is the mother of emergency rooms. I'd like to say I stared long and hard at the Water Pik before I gave in to the imp of the perverse, but I never lie. As soon as I saw the Water Pik, I shoved it up my nose and turned it on. Ok, there was a moment of practical modification--I removed the actual pik--not because I found it indelicate to nostrilize something I often stick into my mouth, but because I only wanted to squirt some water through my sinus canal, not drill a hole through my frontal lobe. And I did rinse the tank out. Once. In hindsight, there are some other practical points I might've added to my pre-hydro-encephaliticizing check-list. I might've:

• considered that my sinuses were blocked


• turned the damn thing down from "Saw Through A Diamond" to "Gentle"


• rinsed the tank THOROUGHLY given that I often fill it with straight Listerine


• used water that was WARM, not BOILING


• Not. Frikken. Done. It.

But I don't blog for myself--I do it for you, dear readers, and to give up merely because there were risks, discomforts, or potential blindness would be cowardly. I pressed on. I pressed the blunted pik into my left nostril, tilted my head 45 degrees to the right, flipped the switch, and blew the top of my skull off.

To say that the initial sensation was one of hot, sharp, piercing agony would be like saying a firecracker is a lot like a nuclear bomb.

A jet of boiling Listerine shot into my sinuses, was rebuffed by a mucal plug like a steel door, then proceeded to abrade the delicate lining of my cranium like a pressure-washer filled with bleach.

I realized right away that this novel use of a Water Pik wasn't going as well as my last attempt and, flailing blindly, as water was shooting out of my nose and spraying all over the mirror, I managed to grab the electrical cord and disconnect.

Now, there are many reasonable people out there who now are saying to themselves, "well, surely he'll give up after that ridiculous stunt." You'd be wrong. Failure is not an option. It's genetic.

I rinse out the tank, turn down the pump, adjust the temperature and try again. Where the trial run felt like I was being stabbed through the brain with a light saber, the second try felt like getting punched in the nose by a very angry, very accurate, dwarf. Clearly I was getting somewhere.

I checked the power and saw I'd not turned it down as far as I could. I tried again and finally reached an acceptable level where it felt merely painful, like when you're at the beach and you come up for air the fourth time you've been nailed and driven under and as soon as your head clears the surface you get punched in the face by a nine foot wave that drives four hundred gallons of salty water into the upper reaches of your sinus cavity with all the grace and consideration of a nail bomb. Like that. Only less gentle.

Unlike in the YouTube video, the water ran out of my nose like I'd left the garden hose on and instead of a gentle cleansing, instead of feeling like all the stuff in my nasal caverns--sand, dog hair, chunks of discarded Maduro cigars, old furniture, and a 38 Chevy--was being sluiced out into the sink, I realized with growing fear that I was packing it all up into the furthest reaches of my skull where it would grow into some kind of mushrooming alien podsack and I knew with terrifying clarity that in a few days, my head was going to give birth to E.T.

And it hurt. Like hell. So I stopped. So, take it from me, the water pik is not a durable substitute for a netti pot. That's my public service announcement for the week. Never say I didn't give you considered advice.

Here's the video:


- - -