Word: mucous
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Before his epiphany, Benedict's Scrooge is a character reminiscent of a man clearing his throat and phlegming up mucous. The phlegm is all gone by the end, and a jolly, giddy, bright and shiny Scrooge emerges to love and be loved...
...female organ of the flower. That would start a fertilization process eventually resulting in seed and the propagation of the species. As a result of one of nature's oversights, however, many of the pollen grains reached another moist and sticky target first: a human eye or the mucous membranes of a nose or bronchial tube, where they set off a chain of events with a decidedly different outcome...
When this message is delivered and read by a stigma in a flower of the same species, the fertilization process begins. But when the grain lodges in the mucous membrane of a person susceptible to allergies, its protein message is heeded by the human immune system, which confuses it with a menacing invader. Alarmed, the system immediately begins churning out legions of IgE (for immunoglobulin E) antibodies, stationing them on "mast cells," which patrol the body's tissues...
...swells, reddens and itches, the patient more often than not is allergic to the substance placed there. Ordinary citizens wondering whether their clogged nasal passages and sneezes are signaling an allergic attack or simply a cold can perform their own quick diagnosis. If there is no fever, if the mucous secretions are clear and if sneezes occur in rapid, multiple sequence, an allergy is almost certainly involved...
...tried to start a grassroots movement among other sneezers, wheezers and snifflers. Together, I tried to tell them, we could turn the tide, out law the blue-green mush they used to spread the grass seed. It was hard to relay my message across a barrier of tissues and mucous. My nurse said something about a lost cause, but it was all a drugged haze...