This year I am suffering a great deal from allergies.  Over the course of the last 3 weeks I've been sneezing,  coughing,  and blowing my nose nearly non-stop.  It's been the most miserable I've been from allergies since childhood.

So I finally went to see a specialist.

As part of my visit,  my arms were poked in 24 places with trace amounts of things that are commonly found in the northwest.  I was told my arms would itch,  but not to scratch them,  because that would screw up the test.  Within 15 minutes several places had grown bumps,  in some cases alarmingly large ones,  more than a centimeter across.

Then the nurse came back in,  and what happened next felt like my future was being foretold.  She gently took one my arms,  ran her finger over some of the bumps,  and said, "mmm,  mold."  She looked carefully again and then quietly murmered, "dust."  She looked briefly at me again before moving to the other arm,  where she pressed her finger against a particularly large bump and doomed me to  "Alder."  She ran her finger down the second line of bumps and,  in a voice that filled me with a sense of impending dread,  said, "trees,"  before finally stopping on the one that had just been foreshadowed.  She looked up at me with doubt and pity in her eyes,  and made her final pronouncement.  "Birch."

So now I'm on some very powerful medication,  and I'm feeling no pain,  and no runny nose.  it's quite nice,  but since it's a form of steroids,  I can't be on this medication for very long.  By then hopefully the Alder and Birch will have completed their pollen-spreading activities,  and I'll be in for lower-level annoyances with grasses for much of the rest of the summer and fall. 

-Rafe

PS.  A side effect of these medications is that I've had a huge amount of energy all day yesterday and today,  I expect to have a tough time sleeping again tonight,  but in the mean time I'm getting a ton of stuff done.  :)

Tags: allergy, sick