Trebuchets and ticklish spots

I live in a house of REALLY ticklish people. I am not one of them. This periodically drives the 6yo crazy and he badgers me to tell him where my ticklish spot is. I really didn't think I had one and I certainly wasn't going to tell him if I did but turns out I do and he can't get to it. And here's how I found it. 

Last week, my friend Em and I led the science station at our BSA district's Cub Scout day camp. It was SO MUCH FUN. We made glurch and oobleck and sleds out of plywood to pull the Boy Scouts around on and we fired trebuchets and water balloon slingshots and even had homemade root beer made with dry ice.

Our trebuchets were much smaller than this and flung tennis balls. Scientific discovery: trebuchet size doesn't really matter (at least when it comes to fun; I would imagine battering down a castle might be different). 

I also accidentally sprayed myself in the face with Diet Coke while trying to load up the Mentos geyser. Two discoveries: Diet Coke in the eyes isn't so problematic and I can move pretty darned fast in emergencies like that.

I even spent my (40th!) birthday at day camp which may sound sad to some but turns out it was also pretty d*mned fun. How many people can say they've been serenaded by a few hundred little boys and parents on their birthday? Me!

But I'm also allergic to dust and as our camp location meteorologically fits the definition of drought, it also fits the definition of Dust Bowl.

No, it wasn't quite that bad. But that's probably only because it wasn't really windy out there.

I spent the week fighting to keep my sinuses clear, living on a combination of Benadryl, Allegra, and caffeine. I ended up with a sinus infection.

I had never had a sinus infection until I had pituitary surgery almost 5 years ago. I was diagnosed with acromegaly caused by a tumor on my pituitary that was producing excess growth hormone; I had the tumor removed. Through my nose. It's really a genius way to get to the pituitary (take a pencil and stab it up your nose and that's where it would end up if there wasn't bone and other tissue in the way) but in my case, it also seriously horked up my sinuses. 

Also suffered from acromegaly. Prepubescent. I was very much post-pubescent and I am still short.

My regular ENT (at the hospital where I had the surgery) is notoriously hard to see so I tried a new tactic and called my primary care doctor's office. FAIL. His partner was unwilling to believe I have a bacterial infection, disinclined to believe that I could identify which sinus is actually infected, and wants me to wait until Monday. Statistically, it is unlikely that I have a bacterial infection - okay, I can appreciate that. However, statistically, I'm already enough of a medical freak that I once had medical students lining up *just to look at me* in the emergency room right after my surgery, simply because their chances of seeing someone with my disease in person is so slight. I've already been diagnosed with a disease that affects about 6 out of 100,000 and after my surgery, had not one but two of the least likely complications from the surgery. I have lived statistical unlikelihood, dude.

My symptoms being intolerable (but not including a fever, a strike against bacterial apparently, but also a symptom I never get), I went ahead and called my ENT and halle-freaking-lujah, got in to see him this morning. It's a beautiful (if also completely disgusting) thing: he reaches into the center of my skull, my sphenoid sinus, and plucks and vacuums out the yuck that is there. It. Feels. AMAZING. And turns out, it also TICKLES. A lot.

Weirdly, I've had this procedure done on this sinus before. At least a couple of times. Never noticed. Today, I was ready to fall out of the chair. The ENT thought he was hurting me. Nope. Just tickling.

So I've apparently found my ticklish spot. And there's no way in h*ll the 6yo's going to be able to reach it. Lucky me.