It haunted me for years: "You don't know what it's like to breathe, Ryan."

A moderately shy child at the doctor's will make for the perfect little patient—still, quiet, responsive to command.

The big stranger in the white coat can perform his invasive diagnostics with a casual tyranny, scoping and probing his tiny subject while extracting information in the form of minimalist replies.

"How long has your nose been stuffy?"

"Um, a long time."

"Uh-huh. Do you have any allergies?"

"No. I think."

"Mm-hmm. Mom, does he have any allergies?"

"Not that we know of."

"Ok, bud, do you normally breathe through your mouth?"

"Yea."

Looking through the Seussian cone lens of his otoscope, he lingered a moment as he investigated the craggy cave of a chafed nostril, which, due to a near-permanent clog, was a mostly decorative feature.

He asked the right question, got the right answer—"Yea" or in other words, "my nose doesn't work and never has"—but still somehow missed the point.

"We'll give you some antibiotics to see if we can clear up that sinus infection."

The diagnosis: a mere infection.

The prognosis: steady reduction of infection-related symptoms—or, in my case, perpetual nasal blockage and awkward physical suffering.

**

Believe it or not, there are four pairs of sinuses, or nasal cavities, in the human head. These sinuses are a system of pockets that do several important things: reduce the weight of the skull; serve as a resonating chamber for speech; and filter, warm, and humidify air for the lungs. And let's not forget that the sinuses are prolific producers of the body's own gross brand of lubricant: mucus.

There's a lot going on in there, and when the flow of air and moisture is obstructed by an infection—or, let's say, a severe structural flaw—life can get pretty uncomfortable.

Let me explain. For 84% of my life, I lived with a largely unusable nose. Imagine an old mining shaft that flooded and partially caved in. Although you know there is a passageway of sorts, structurally speaking, the whole thing is so full of rubble and mud that hardly a breeze ever slips out of it.

And if anything ever did slink out, it would be so unsightly that it could be cast in an episode of Stranger Things, where I would star as the mouth breather.

Graphic Warning: if you can't handle any mental images of that green stuff (you know what I mean), close the tab and get back to work.

It was an everyday thing as long as I can remember. I either had a continuously runny nose (and we're talking a miraculously endless ooze) or unforgiving congestion in which my sinuses seemed clotted with nearly dried cement.

On the rare occasions that air could pass through my nose, it was like breathing through a coffee straw, a privilege I indulged despite the chunky, wheezy whistles.

I recall annoyed elementary school teachers sharply demanding that I re-stock the class supply of tissues, which were meant to last the school year but were burned through in a matter of weeks. To them, I was a wasteful criminal, not a sufferer. They didn't understand (or care to) that my inefficiency in nose dabbing was not by choice. I simply had to wipe what was leaking from my nostrils because I couldn't forcefully eject the green gooey stuff.

In fact, because air could not pass through my sinuses, I didn't even understand the concept of blowing my nose. I remember the revelation: "Oh, I'm supposed to push it out."

But I couldn't.

Mornings were fun. Head lofted back, mouth gaping, I would open my eyes and immediately start smacking in an attempt to lubricate my desert-dry mouth. Often my tongue would be dry-coated with mucus (the body's attempt to protect it), which festered through the night into the most horrendous taste. Immediately to the bottle of mouthwash I would go to seek some oral comfort and combat the lethal halitosis.

Not that I could smell my own breath—or much of anything.

I didn't know that dirty laundry smelled. That shoes got funky. That deodorant was not optional. Consequently, I was the smelly kid. I was the Pig-Pen that everyone tolerated.

Smells were faint or non-existent, except for the really potent stuff, like sizzling bacon or cigarette smoke.

"Does anyone smell that?" someone would say while others commiserated and I continued my business. I suppose I was saved from all those permanent markers, or burning toaster crumbs, or re-heated leftovers that others periled over.

Or was I?

I think maybe I would have preferred fuller access to the fifth sense.

A normal voice would have been nice too. Middle school was an especially ripe time for kids to imitate my often nasally tone. Even the teachers chuckled at the jivings.

Fortunately, a stymied schnauzer didn't prevent me from being a star athlete, and for the most part, my mouth breathing was tolerated by athletic coaches, except for in the one sport I was too small for, which happens to be the sport that attracts the most vocal, pig-headed leaders.

Football.

I can't forget the scrunchy are-you-dumb looks of my DB coach or the other Dad-of-a-first-stringer coaches who spat common sense advice at me: "Just breathe through your nose."

Obligated to try, I'd enter some zen-like state in order to continue sprinting with my mouth closed, sipping oxygen tenuously through a crooked thread of nasal passage.

Can't say they didn't know what they were talking about. They won back-to-back state championships (which, for the record, doesn't require emotional intelligence).

Of all the discomforting symptoms, there was one particularly tortuous villain: the postnasal drip.

I know well the thick thread of mucus that spans the back of the mouth, from sinus to throat, and ruthlessly tickles the epiglottis. You know the clown trick where a comically long series of different colored knotted handkerchiefs are pulled from an oversized sleeve? That's what my postnasal drip was like, except mine was only green and the trick never ended.

So many mornings, I'd cough vigorously to dislodge the slimy rope before I had to run outside to the school bus. When I wasn't successful in time, I'd have to ride all the way to school while being as still as possible as not to disturb the loogie that was slithering past the sweet spot of my gag reflex.

I avoided conversation and sat rigidly—"brace yourself, here comes the bump"—until I arrived, at which point I shuffled in an upright and level manner to the bathroom where I would hack violently until I was red-faced and teary.

"Ew, gross," a kid would say.

I'd consider it a good morning if I didn't vomit.

Let's fast-forward to one of the worst mornings ever.

Eyes darting open, I woke up with a sense of bodily alarm that I hadn't ever experienced. What was going on? Staring blankly for a few seconds, I had a startling realization.

I needed oxygen.

I attempted to cough, to gasp, but any small airway I created was immediately choked by a mass of mucus. I jumped up, barged out of my bedroom, fell to my knees, and made the choking symbol with my hands to my parents.

And I kid you not, what crossed my mind wasn't "I'm going to die"—instead I thought, "I can't die like this."

No one suffocates on snot. I can't think of a more inglorious way to kick the can.

There is no warrior's death, no reception into Valhalla for the lunk who fatally chokes on his own phlegm.

But there I was, teetering on the edge of infamy (forever to be known as Booger Boy).

Or oblivion. I'm pretty sure any proud family would sweep this sort of death under the rug. I probably would have gotten the he-wasn't-one-of-us treatment.

Spoiler: I didn't die.

Choking pro tip: put your arms above your head.

911 was called, and as the ambulance ran its rescue route, my parents relayed information to the dispatcher, which was a big challenge since I couldn't really talk. Mucus overwhelmed some mechanism of speech, so I had to communicate in choppy, alien fragments.

This is a real story, people. You can't make this stuff up.

Even the paramedics seemed confused by the situation, leaving awkwardly since I had re-gained my powers of respiration by the time they arrived.

If a near-death experience is good for anything, it's usually good for a trip to the most helpful place on earth: the doctor's!

"So, this morning, I woke up, and I couldn't breathe. There was so much mucus in my throat, I couldn't get air through."

"You were choking?" he said, with a blend of confusion and incredulity.

"Yea."

He asked the right question, got the right answer, but—you guessed it—entirely missed the point.

Good news is that by my teenage years, I had evolved beyond the sinus infection diagnosis. Hearing that repeated attempts at treating a supposed infection with antibiotics was unsuccessful—and that I nearly died—the doctor figured it was time for the big guns.

"I think, given the severity here, I'm going to give you a steriod shot."

Now, while I didn't get sick for 6 years after my first steroid shot, the whole stuffy nose thing was never solved. I guess I don't consider the everlasting nose-stopper condition to be a sickness. To me, it was the status quo. The stuffiness remained, but there was no infection strong enough for my roided super soldier immune system.

On that note, I just want to say to all the doctors who wisely administered the multi-year regiment of steroid shots, I do feel a lot better now, and my third arm is growing in nicely.

As I dug into my 20s and the great joys of a major recession, I ably navigated a string of year-long postnasal drips, the last of which brought me to the one doctor with a bright idea.

Don't get me wrong. He ordered another steroid shot—this time, flipping open a pamphlet of some new elixir that I imagine an attractive pharmaceutical saleswoman (or "drug dealer" for short) had recently hocked in his direction. These women crowded the elevators, and I would race them to the reception desk in order to sign in before they started selling (the high heels and sample-stuffed suitcases slowed them down).

"We'll try this. And if it doesn't work, there's a specialist on the floor above. Maybe check him out."

A specialist? What a thought!

Because my symptoms had been stigmatized as weird and uncouth for my whole life, I had been conditioned to think I was just stuck that way and should do my best to cope and conceal.

My condition had been routinely misdiagnosed by inattentive doctors for so long, that I didn't think I had a special problem requiring a special person.

Well, the steroid shot didn't work, so I figured I'd take a different type of shot.

On the day of my appointment with the specialist, I was greeted by a quaint office with a smiling receptionist. The walls were covered in diplomas, awards, news articles, and several crayola masterpieces by grateful young patients. I signed in and was quickly called back.

I remember sitting in the examination room, surrounded by unfamiliar tools, and looking out the window without any real situational interest. There was no hope of a cure in me. I was simply going through the motions. At best, I figured I was in for a steroidal tune-up.

I didn't actually think a doctor would be helpful. Then Dr. Robb walked in.

He was as friendly as he was focused. He listened thoughtfully and patiently. He believed me.

Starting with the otoscope, he saw what every other doctor had seen a thousand times before. Then, he made a brilliant suggestion that separated him from the legions of distracted, bandaid-prescribing doctors before him.

"Let's take a deeper look."

This was very new to me. The doctor seemed to actually care as he determinedly pulled out a long wiggly lens device. First, he sprayed a magical solution up my nose that instantly melted the defensive line of green gunk. Then, into uncharted territory he went.

"You're septum is severely deviated. To rate the deviation, I would give you a 13 out of 10 if I could. It's bad, and it's interrupting everything. Your sinus cavities are full of mucus because it can't flow properly."

(The cover photo is in fact a CT scan of my beautiful head in which the structural asymmetries and congested nasal cavities are clear even to an untrained eye.)

Next, he said one of the most hurtful things I'd ever been told:

"You are using about 10% of your nasal passage. You've been like this since you were born." He paused and then delivered the finishing blow.

"You don't know what it's like to breathe, Ryan."

**

On average, we breathe 20,000 times per day. 20,000 multipied by 365 days per year multipled by 27 years is 197 million breaths that I apparently didn't experience right.

There are few things we do all day, every day. Breathing is one of them. One day, a nice, knowledgeable man told me that I didn't actually know what breathing was.

Can you imagine?

It haunted me. Not because there wasn't a solution—no, there was!

He was an award-winning specialist with thousands of corrective surgeries under his belt and not to mention the latest in 3D imaging technology. He could fix it.

But, thanks to a recession I had no part in creating, I didn't have a job and therefore didn't have insurance hefty enough to manage the costs.

Instead, I was haunted. Every day. I woke up to his words. I felt insulted, degraded. I had been robbed of a fundamental human activity: breathing.

I stopped accepting my "stuffy" nose. It was no longer normal to me. It was a curse.

It became the cruelest truth of my existence.

I suffered more than ever because adaptation and acceptance had been violently terminated by a simple, honest diagnosis.

Every broken breath made me angry.

But that's not the point.

You'll have to pardon the narrative whiplash, but here's an unceremonious update:

A few years later, with the help of some European-style health insurance, I had my septum corrected. I can breathe now. Whatever.

This is not where the story ends. Rather, this is where it begins because this story is not about me.

It's about you.

My fury is not with fate but with every face of my past. These words are war with every person who was supposed to help me but failed, not because they couldn't help me, but because they couldn't help themselves.

You've become distracted, arrogant, and overfamiliar.

Whatever it is you do, whatever is in your life, you've seen it a thousand times, and now you've stopped actually looking at it.

You are not paying attention.

I inherited a deviated septum from my father, and I know at least two of his brothers share the condition. There's more than 160 years of life between them, and they've never even heard of the term "deviated septum."

How is that possible?

And no, this is not solely about the medical community (which, yes, I'm not fond of).

It's everybody.

Months ago, I was driving down the road, and the smell of burning plastic entered my now functional nose. I swung by the mechanic's, and he told me there was a plastic bag wrapped around my muffler. Great. I kept driving, more burning plastic. Second and third visit earned a tweaked diagnosis:

"There is still residue on the muffler, but it will slowly burn off."

Kept driving, more burning plastic. Fourth visit resulted in a fascinating new theory:

"An inner CV boot is leaking grease onto your muffler."

"Grease on a muffler smells like plastic?"

He blankly confirmed.

I know nothing about cars and rely on supposed experts for guidance. However, one day, my completely untrained eye spotted the obvious problem. That little plastic housing that surrounds the wheel, called the fender liner, was loose and rubbing against the tire as I drove. It was completely shredded:

They looked at my car four times and didn't arrive at the most obvious conclusion.

How is that possible?

You can miss a highly visible mangled car component only if you are not paying attention, if your previous experiences fooled you into assuming the current problem is like all the other symptom-matching problems.

The mechanic heard the symptoms and entered a familiar mental tunnel on auto-pilot.

A routine solution will do; no need to look deeper. Right?

From blue collar to the lab coat, inattentiveness and overfamiliarity are turning expertise into incompetence.

You are not paying attention, and as a result, you have become incompetent doctors, mechanics, parents, friends—people.

Having seen it all, you've become blind.

Having heard it all, you've become deaf.

Having gotten too comfortable, you've become neglectful.

You've seen so many problems that they all look alike.

You are not paying attention.

It's time to snap out of it. It's time to be like Dr. Robb.

Observe thoughtfully. Listen carefully. Think critically. Show empathy.

Pay attention—before you owe someone 100 million breaths.

Tag a doctor. Tag someone with a deviated septum. Heck, tag anyone who will #payattention