Spring and all that it brings

Ahhh, spring. Birds chirping, grass growing, flowers blooming, nose streaming, eyes itching, face sneezing, and all around misery.  Actually, it isn't as bad here in Hawaii as on the mainland, but spring does usually bring a new pollen into the mix to shake up any normally healthy immune system.


Allergic rhinitis: hay fever.  When I was younger, growing up in Oregon, springtime meant living a life of lethargy and fatigue.  This, of course, was a direct result of having to dose myself with a prescription antihistamine tablet the size of a pinhead that resulted with me in a groggy stupor, unfit to drive vehicles or use heavy machinery.  One day my doctor suggested that I should be tested to see what exactly was causing my malaise.


I'm not sure if they do this now, but back then what this meant was to go to a specialist (I can't even remember what kind, only that they had a lot of needles), and undergo sharp pricks with various types of pollen. They injected this liquid mixture just under the skin all across my back.  I felt like a pin-cushion and looked like a patch-work quilt as each injection site reacted with varying degrees to these sub-lethal doses of venomous spores.


Conclusion: I am most allergic to pollens from grasses and trees.  Okay, that is like saying I am allergic to something everywhere I go in the world except Antarctica. I am pretty sure that whoever thought up the Spiderman comics also went through these tests, because the next course of action was to actually go to my doctor once a week and have these pollens injected into me to "build up my resistance". But, instead of taking on super-human properties like being able to stand tall during hurricanes or able to attract and control swarms of bees, these pollen-injections were supposed to make me immune to their irritating consequences.


Every time, after the poke at the doctor's office, they required me to wait out in the waiting room for 30 minutes to "make sure there was no reaction".  I did not inquire in depth about what type of response they were expecting, assuming they were talking about a puffy, hot, and sore arm (which was the norm).


One day, jacked up on antihistamines and fresh from a "treatment", I wearily sat waiting with the other patients trying to read a two-year-old Highlights magazine.  Soon I nodded my way into a "hidden picture" slumber, legs splayed and most likely drooling.  Sensing that I was not in my bed, and as foreign mutters and sounds came drifting into my subconscious, I jerked awake to find two nurses gathered around me; their faces pressed close to mine with one of them taking my pulse. 


"What is going on?" I asked trying to remain calm.


"Oh. Ahem. We were just checking to see if you'd had a reaction to the injection," they prattled, trying to act nonchalant.  I knew better. You NEVER saw nurses in the waiting room.


"What type of reaction is possible?" I mustered the courage to ask after they had removed me from the gawking crowd and back into an exam room.  


"Coma, seizure, anaphylactic shock," the nurse replied with detached emotion.


Somehow, even at 15 years of age, I determined right there and then that the risk was not worth the reward. I never went back. They never asked why.


I'm much better now.  Newer and better antihistamines have been invented; some that don't even cause drowsiness. I can drive and operate heavy machinery to my heart's content. I even look forward to the nuances of spring and all that it brings.