All right, kids, today we are going to talk about how to survive a sinus infection because I have one, and it’s the only thing I can think about seeing as my brain is currently 97 percent phlegm.

The first step in surviving a sinus infection is to get a sinus infection. As we all learned long ago, infections are caused by little organisms called germs. Basically, a germ is a microscopic version of that old freshman-year-roommate of yours who invites himself over to your new apartment so when you get back from picking up groceries he has brought over six dozen friends and is having a garbage fight in your living room with a stripper named Misty, except that the living room is your sinus cavity and the trash is 700 gallons of mucus and Misty is your ability to breath… yeah, I didn’t really think that analogy out.
Germs are easily available in a variety of convenient locations near you, such as bathroom floors, doorknobs, kitchen sinks, cages full of rabid weasels, Walton Hall.

Once you have your germs, place them carefully in your sinuses. As I’m sure you remember from Mr. Schaefer’s eighth grade biology class, the sinuses, also known as the “Great Cranial Phlegm Reservoir,” are a series of hollow cavities that take up 89 percent of the human cranium (the other 11 percent being Lego bricks you stuck up your nose when you were 4).

The easiest way to reach the sinuses is to simply remove an eyeball, push aside the ocular nerve, and shove that yellow Lego brick out of the way. Now simply drop in your germs, screw the eyeball back in tightly and wait two to three days. If you’re too impatient to wait for the germs to mature, you can skip to the end result by putting a funnel up your nose, and then injecting several hundred gallons of silly putty into your nasal cavities.

So now that we’ve got our sinus infection going, what’s next? Simple, just sit back and wait for the sweet release of death. I mean, go to the doctor. Or if you’re too cheap to go to a real doctor, you can find the next best thing: Target! That’s right, select Target stores are now opening in-store walk-in clinics. While they don’t necessarily have an M.D. on site, they will have some other medical professional, such as a physician assistant or nurse practitioner. But you could be getting a janitor with a white coat, a reassuring smile and an icebox full of kidneys in his trunk.

The problem with medical professionals is that they like using medicine. At first glance, this may seem like a good idea, I mean, medicine fights germs, doesn’t it? Let’s go back to our previous analogy, shall we? If the germs are your obnoxious former roommate and his buddies throwing a raucous party in your living room, then sending in medicine to clear them out is like kicking in the door and releasing rabid attack weasels. Yes, the obnoxious party people are gone, but now there’s weasel poop and half eaten former roommates everywhere. This weasel poop is known as “side effects.”

See a side effect is something a medicine does that is not its primary purpose, but it does it anyway because it’s a jerk like that. For instance, incontinence. Or death. And the more medications you’re taking, the more side effects you’ll have. For instance, I’m on three different medications, and every time I move, it feels like I’m swimming through a sea of warm treacle, although that might just be because I wet myself.

Well, now that you’ve consigned your body to the ravishments of at least one illness and multiple medications, all you need to do is sit back, relax and stockpile tissues like global warming just happened and the coming ice age is actually made of phlegm. Actually, you might just want to skip the tissues for a bucket. On the plus side, now I’ve got some Legos to play with!