WERE you shocked to see the postman snarling at
you Friday, right after the newspaper delivery boy deliberately wacked you on
the head with your daily rag?
Are you puzzled that your neighbours aim BB guns
at you when you amble blissfully past their driveways on a stroll with your
dog?
Are even the babies hurtling by you in their
prams inexplicably glowering at your friendly winks and smiles?
Ah, my dears, be thankful, for your
obliviousness to the cause of all this irritation is proof positive that you
aren’t suffering from the allergies currently plaguing everybody else.
My house is full of grumps, including Yours
Truly. Our eyes are itchy, our throats are sore, we can’t get anything done. My
husband Stanley wafts about fruitlessly, as out-of-it as Mr. Magoo. I spend as
much time as is humanly possible in bed watching re-runs because it’s safer to
aim my evil glares at Jerry Seinfeld than at my fellow weaklings. Even the wheezing
dog is in a snit.
Other Vancouverites greet the arrival of the
cherry blossoms with glee, marveling at their delicate beauty. Poor Stanley’s
heart seizes with anxiety the moment he spots his first blossom every year, as
these pale stars signify his most allergic time. This spring, I’ve been protesting
that I can’t be suffering from allergies, because this isn’t my season for
them, but Stanley is made of braver stuff. He wants to confront the truth – he
even keeps track of exactly why he feels so terrible. Early this week, for
instance, he noted that a high alder count is officially defined as anything
over 80 grains/m3 (whatever that means). Tuesday’s count was 450. No wonder
this normally cheerful, kind and gentle man was considering a new career in
torturing small animals.
One Dr. Ross Chang, the president of the B.C.
Society of Immunology, explained Mother Nature’s timing in 2010 to the
Vancouver Sun. “When the season is delayed by a long winter, the plants try to
compensate by putting more pollen out in a shorter amount of time,” he said. “So
when the pollen counts are higher, more people are affected, and allergy
symptoms are more severe.”
Argggggghhhhhhh -- you don’t say.
There’s no end of advice for allergy sufferers
from the experts, of course. Stay indoors, and leave your pollen-soaked
outerwear on the porch. Shut the windows of your home and your car. Don’t go
outdoors at the highest pollen time, 5 a.m.-10 a.m., or when it’s windy. Don’t mow
the lawn or pull your weeds. Keep your pets off the furniture. Don’t hang your
laundry to dry in the pollen-filled air. Wear a dust mask if you must work
outdoors. Run your air conditioner, allergy-grade filter, high-particulate air
filter and dehumidifier. Take your vacation during your worst allergy season,
in a place where your allergens aren’t so prevalent, like somewhere with an
inviting beach. If possible, move to the moon.
Personally, I’d endorse B.C.’s health care
system sending those of us who are allergic to Club Med for a month at whatever
time we identify as our worst season. Imagine the money and time the government
would save if all of us crabby, unproductive snivelers were kept out of the
province’s over-crowded emergency rooms. So a few million pretenders might tag
along on these getaways. Who cares?
There are all sorts of alternative “remedies”
we’d probably have to try first, though. They include dining on local honey,
using a tropical herb nasal spray, doing yoga, and enduring acupuncture,
biofeedback/hypnosis, aromatherapy, and chiropractic-spinal manipulation.
Some “cures” sound like a lot more fun than
others. A few years ago, for example, a Japanese study was released that
suggested a 30-minute kiss could relieve hay fever misery. My guess is that the
24 male and female allergy sufferers recruited by Satou University’s Department
of Allergy were simply too distracted by each other’s tongue action to sneeze.
But Dr. Hajime Kimata found their blood samples also showed a big drop in the
antibodies fighting their allergens. The same effect came into play when Japanese
patients with atopic dermatitis were asked to kiss each other for half an hour.
(Ew, to be a fly on that wall.)
The same doctor, by the way, has studied whether
a humorous film causes an “elevation of salivary melatonin levels” or “improves
nighttime wakening” in children and elderly patients with atopic dermatitis,
and whether laughter elevates levels of breast milk melatonin. Smooching,
watching movies, and giggling – this is my kind of medical research project.
If swapping spit with someone itchy isn’t your
idea of a scientific answer to a nasty medical question, however, don’t entirely
give up hope. In 2006, Great Britain’s Mail Online claimed a cure for allergies
was but a few years away. “Cutting-edge research from around the world will
yield a treatment for hay fever by 2009, with a cure for asthma following
shortly afterwards,” it said, quoting various vague British doctors who haven’t
come through yet, damn them.
We’re not a patient bunch, we allergy
sufferers. Which may be why few of us avail ourselves of the wit and whimsy
found at www.allergyasthma.on.ca/jokes.htm.
You know, that’s the website that tells you about the famous tune, Blowin’ in
the Wind, by Peter Pollen Mary -- or the sign in the allergist’s office, which
reads “We got rid of the kids … the cat is allergic.”
Maybe it’s proof that my immune system’s
gone wonky that I kind-of liked this joke, from the Allergic Living Forum at
www.allergicliving.com. As part of the admission procedure at a hospital, a
nurse routinely asked her patients whether they were allergic to any foods. If
they were, she made sure they wore an alert band on their wrists so they
wouldn’t be served them. So one day, she asked an elderly female patient if she
were allergic to anything. “Yes,” the woman replied. “I can’t eat bananas.” A
few hours later, an angry man charged up to the nurses’ station, demanding to
know why his mother had been labeled “bananas.”
All
right, so it ain’t Dane Cook. Look, we Bubble People have to get our relief
where we can. After all, on the allergicliving.com website, each writer is
identified by what he/she and his/her family members are allergic to, which is
a sad enough state of affairs. In terms of humour, the forum offers only six
entries, the last one made in March, 2005.
And so we must conclude, ladies and aller-gents,
that hay fever is no laughing matter. That is all.
As you know, I was astonished to have allergies in February in Vancouver.
Actually, they've stayed with me driving south all the way to Baja.
... Symptoms have been lessening as I go south.
Posted by: Account Deleted | March 14, 2010 at 10:22 PM