A Look Back, Or: I was always Allergic To Everything

 Just for fun, I looked up the blog about my original allergy testing, to see how it compared to this time. I'm reprinting part of it here, partially because I needed to be working on the Haunted Noble County, Indiana manuscript instead of writing blogs.

But also because I went through that first testing in early 2013, well over ten years ago. What has changed since then? Basically nothing:


           The allergy tester looked away (after injecting numerous allergens under my skin), and when she looked back my forearm had swelled so much I resembled Popeye right after taking the spinach.

           To her credit, her eyes bulged out only for a moment. Then she calmly opened the door and called to the medical staff:

           “Red alert! I need 50 cc’s of all our antihistamines, a gallon of decongestant, hydrocodone, ice, oxygen, codeine, epi-pens, and an extra copy of that release form he signed, in triplicate. Also, cancel lunch.”

           From the next room I heard a puzzled voice: “Just how many patients do you have in there?”

If there's a flower, there's a good chance it makes me sneeze. But if you look really closely you can see a bee--and since the allergist doesn't test for that, bees worry me more.


           Then the tester lady put twice as many pokes into my other forearm.

           A little card, with round holes in it of different sizes, measured my reaction. After a few tries she tilted her head and said, “I think we’re going to need a bigger card.”

           Then she started poking single needles into my shoulder, one by one. Those reactions, by the way, held on for over a week.

           “What’s the verdict?” my wife asked, while I huddled, slobbering and shaking, in a fetal position on the floor.

           The tester shook her head. “Do you have any plastic bubbles?”

           “Um, we have bubble wrap.”

           “I’m not sure you can sterilize bubble wrap.”

           It turns out I’m what they call severely allergic, which is a medical term meaning … well, I guess it’s pretty straightforward. I’m seriously allergic to … let me take a breath:

           Dogs, cats, indoor mold, outdoor mold, dust, grasses, ragweed, pollen, politicians, insects, dust mites, urushiol, fungus, feathers, and cottonwood.

           Here’s a fun irony: Standing by the entrance to the allergy doctor’s office are two big cottonwood trees.

I LIKE trees. But I also like birds, and I'm allergic to feathers, too. This one was making fun of me right by the front porch.

 

           Oh, Urushiol? Poison ivy. I already knew about, through sad experience.

           The tester explained that, while medications might mask some symptoms, my body was still fighting the allergens every moment, every day. Imagine, she said, being in a boxing match in which you’re hitting at an opponent constantly, without a break, for years. How would that make you feel?

           That explained a lot. Not just the typical allergy symptoms, but sleep problems, depression, headaches, irritability, itchiness. I'd been sick my entire life, constantly, and because I had no period of wellness to compare it to I thought it was normal.

           When we met with the ENT doc again, I asked what treatment we could try. Anything, I said – anything to give me a chance to feel awake and alive for the first time in my life.

           “Since you have so many allergies, we can’t fit all the treatment into one dose. So, you’ll have to have two allergy shots, one in each arm every week, for the rest of your life … or at least, it will seem like the rest of your life.”

           I nodded, and pretended to consider it. Then I said, “On the other hand, I don’t know what I’m missing, so it’s not really that bad, is it?”

           But my wife encouraged me to try the shots, anyway.

           By encourage, I mean “made me”.

 

 

 

Remember: Every several dozen books we sell pays for an allergy shot. Save the Kleenex.

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