Mouth Breather

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• December 29, 2025

The above picture is a scan of my face. You can sort of make it out when you notice the teeth at the bottom. That black squiggle line in the middle is my nasal passageway. It’s a cavity, meaning it’s empty space. But that passageway is supposed to be straight. My nose is medically “severely deviated.”

It’s no use wondering how this deviated septum came to be. An adventurous tomboy, I got bloody noses from soccer balls to the face, surfboards slamming in the face, oh and that one time I flew off of my mate Andrew’s jet-ski and landed on my face. Basically, I deviated my septum as much as you can without a full blown break.

The truth of it is, my plan was to have this fixed a decade ago. But following a traumatic tonsillectomy, I had my reservations about any sinus related surgery. For good reason. Post tonsillectomy, I hemorrhaged not once, but twice, resulting in multiple ER visits, and ultimately a double blood transfusion because I actually was near death. So one could understand my trepidation.

It would, though, be nice to be able to breathe completely out of my nose. A lifetime as a mouth breather leaves me with only speculation of what that’s like. The time I can breathe the best is when I come out of the ocean. When the salt water has cleansed by whole body.

A Septoplasty is inside your face, with no changes to your outward appearance. If it were up to me, I’d have the bump shaved on my nose (I always hated my nose, thinking it’s too big), but that’s cosmetic and would cost me a cool $20,000 that I certainly don’t have. A septoplasty could, however, change the sound of your voice. That, I don’t think I’d mind so much. I have a nasally voice, much of it to do with the fact that I’m a mouth breather.

Extremely rare complications to a septoplasty is damage to your skull base which is life threatening. The words one should focus on is “extremely rare.” After all, I know a lot of people who’ve gotten their deviated septum fixed, including both of my parents, and everyone says, “you won’t believe how clear you will breathe when they remove the packing.” But it was also a rare complication to almost die from a tonsillectomy.

Life decisions always involve weighing out the pros and cons. And even though I did spew so much blood out of my face after the tonsillectomy, it made a Tarantino movie look like he skimps out on gore, I don’t regret doing that surgery. Until that surgery, I got strep throat three times a year and I couldn’t take it anymore. Still, between allergies and my crooked nose, I’m susceptible to sinus infections. Having fear going into any surgery is logical. And once you’ve committed to a decision, commit to it. There is no going back. Second guessing decisions that can’t be undone is a road to madness.

I don’t recall being teased for being a mouth breather growing up. My family or sleep over friends would comment on my snoring, but that wasn’t bullying. These days, on TV or in the brutality of social media comments, I see the term “mouth breather” being used as an insult. I suppose it is an unflattering quality, but more than not the result of a physical deformity. Could I end my mouth breathing days without an extra complication besides the expected pain and recovery time? Such questions breed a certain anxiety. Such anxiety is a self torture, when there’s no way of knowing until you go through it. Why are you forcing yourself to suffer twice?

New Years are often filled with promises to ourselves we quickly break. Aren’t I guilty of human fallibility? Don’t I have the same fears and hopes as I did the year before, and the year before and the year before? Wouldn’t life be better if my own body wasn’t standing in my way of breathing better? I’m sure it would be. But wouldn’t life be better if I wasn’t standing in my own way with all my other insecurities and doubts? I’m sure it would be, mouth breather.