Sneezing Through Life
This week has suddenly clouded over, but until today we've had summer weather practically since May, heatwave included. Beautiful weather with the typical blue skies, puffy white clouds some days, sun, tepid breezes. I am lucky this year, and the past few years. When I was younger, I couldn't have enjoyed this. I would have been sneezing in a corner, surrounded by tissues and sporting a red, puffy nose, and streaming eyes.
I have allergies. While living in Boston, I would get the streaming eyes and nose in May and again in September. Working at a children's hospital, I would ask one of the doctors I secretaried for, for a prescription for one of the new-generation antihistamines. Why go through the bother of getting an appointment somewhere else and missing work for a piece of paper I could get at work? My insurance wouldn't have covered the cost of the drug, anyway. So I got by for a couple of years.
Once here, though, the prescription disappeared. Worse, I discovered I was having allergic reactions most of the year. Sitting on the beach in the month of July, my red cauliflower of a nose was red, puffed, and dripping as if I had one of those monstrous colds you can only cure with hot chicken soup. Whenever I picked up a cat, I would notice a tightening of the chest, and my nose would soon start a marathon. The same would happen if I swept or dusted. I couldn't help cut the hay for the same reason. And when I picked up hay in my arms, little red bumps would appear that would itch like the world was ending.
At one point, when it got so bad I couldn't laugh without coughing, nor exist without tissues, I decided to go to a specialist. He did the test with the little drops on my arm, marking each different drop and monitoring them for a few minutes. After what seemed just a few seconds, almost all of the spots with a drop started to blow up angrily red and itchy. It turns out I am allergic to most pollens (except pine, how strange), dust mites, cat hair, proteins in certain fruits, nickel, and I don't remember what else. I was a walking allergic reaction. I had even developed asthma thanks to my body's excessive need to protect itself from different bugaboos.
This wonderful doctor (he's retired by now, more's the pity) gave me various different medications, and designed a vaccine. Since I am also spiritually allergic to needles, it was a sublingual vaccine. Every night, I had to put so many drops under my tongue for a certain number of minutes. The vaccine wasn't cheap, and it got to the point I had to stop taking it. But the months I did take it helped me develop a mostly normal life. The streaming nose and eyes disappeared. My asthma came under control with the appropriate morning and evening inhalers. For those infrequent weeks when the allergies threaten a comeback, a tiny pill vanquishes the army of sneezes. Now, I can enjoy living in the country and sniffing the clean smell of pine needles and eucalyptus.
This does not go to say that I never have reactions now. This year there is some kind of mosquito that has been dipped in poison and decided to attack. Itchy, itchy bites cover my arms and hands that then become infected when scratched, and there's no way to avoid scratching because I'm no saint. I still can't eat certain raw fruits, though others seem to have become innocent, such as pears. Costume jewelry can't stay on me longer than a couple of hours, especially not in my ears. But at least I can live without year-round cold symptoms and I can laugh all I want if I remember to take my inhalers. Perhaps that's the best result. After all, laughing is a very important part of life.
I have allergies. While living in Boston, I would get the streaming eyes and nose in May and again in September. Working at a children's hospital, I would ask one of the doctors I secretaried for, for a prescription for one of the new-generation antihistamines. Why go through the bother of getting an appointment somewhere else and missing work for a piece of paper I could get at work? My insurance wouldn't have covered the cost of the drug, anyway. So I got by for a couple of years.
Once here, though, the prescription disappeared. Worse, I discovered I was having allergic reactions most of the year. Sitting on the beach in the month of July, my red cauliflower of a nose was red, puffed, and dripping as if I had one of those monstrous colds you can only cure with hot chicken soup. Whenever I picked up a cat, I would notice a tightening of the chest, and my nose would soon start a marathon. The same would happen if I swept or dusted. I couldn't help cut the hay for the same reason. And when I picked up hay in my arms, little red bumps would appear that would itch like the world was ending.
At one point, when it got so bad I couldn't laugh without coughing, nor exist without tissues, I decided to go to a specialist. He did the test with the little drops on my arm, marking each different drop and monitoring them for a few minutes. After what seemed just a few seconds, almost all of the spots with a drop started to blow up angrily red and itchy. It turns out I am allergic to most pollens (except pine, how strange), dust mites, cat hair, proteins in certain fruits, nickel, and I don't remember what else. I was a walking allergic reaction. I had even developed asthma thanks to my body's excessive need to protect itself from different bugaboos.
This wonderful doctor (he's retired by now, more's the pity) gave me various different medications, and designed a vaccine. Since I am also spiritually allergic to needles, it was a sublingual vaccine. Every night, I had to put so many drops under my tongue for a certain number of minutes. The vaccine wasn't cheap, and it got to the point I had to stop taking it. But the months I did take it helped me develop a mostly normal life. The streaming nose and eyes disappeared. My asthma came under control with the appropriate morning and evening inhalers. For those infrequent weeks when the allergies threaten a comeback, a tiny pill vanquishes the army of sneezes. Now, I can enjoy living in the country and sniffing the clean smell of pine needles and eucalyptus.
This does not go to say that I never have reactions now. This year there is some kind of mosquito that has been dipped in poison and decided to attack. Itchy, itchy bites cover my arms and hands that then become infected when scratched, and there's no way to avoid scratching because I'm no saint. I still can't eat certain raw fruits, though others seem to have become innocent, such as pears. Costume jewelry can't stay on me longer than a couple of hours, especially not in my ears. But at least I can live without year-round cold symptoms and I can laugh all I want if I remember to take my inhalers. Perhaps that's the best result. After all, laughing is a very important part of life.
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