Allergies = tEh Suhkk

It’s that time of the year when i get hit by allergies. Sacramento is the 22nd worst city in the country for allergies (apparently), and every year for the last decade or so, mine have gotten worse and worse.

A few days ago i woke up feeling like a cat had just slept on my face (as you may guess, i’m allergic to cats).  The wind had been blowing mightily all night, the windows were open (because i’m a genius like that), and when i rose from bed my pillows were covered in what used to be the skin around my eyes.  In general, my face was as red and poofy as one of Richard Branson’s reddest and poofiest hot air balloons.  The back of my throat, my nose, my eyes . . not pretty.

I stumbled to the medicine cupboard, and grabbed the little plastic container of Zyrtec.  Why?  Because it was there, and because only last year it was still prescription, and i tend to put great faith in meds that were recently prescription but have now been deemed safe for the masses.  I figure, if it used to be forbidden, then it’s stronger and fancier than the other stuff, and thus must be better, right?  Never mind the gaping holes in logic that can be found in that statement.  I’m a funny creature when it comes to meds.

So, did the Zyrtec help?  Am i back to feeling peachy keen?  Well it’s days later, and i’m writing about how much allergies suck.  That ought to tell you all you need to know.

So you start feeling stuffy and runny, or itchy and sneezy (it’s starting to sound like the seven dwarves for chistssake) . . what do you do?  You take an allergy med.  Maybe you also wash your sheets, and dust your dustables, and vacuum your car, and try like hell to clean any and all potential irritants out of your living areas, but that’s roughly the equivalent of pitching a shutout ninth inning when you’re down by 10 runs.  It could help, but the real damage has already been done, and the game is lost regardless of your cleaning aptitude.  So what the hell do you do?  You hope and pray that whichever med you could get your hands on works, and works fast.

Here’s the thing that really kills me; here is god’s punchline (he’s such a joker, that one):  The allergy meds are likely to make you feel even worse than the fucking allergies. I mean, COME ON!!  That’s just not fair.  I’ve seen the ads.  Formerly miserable people tra-la-la’ing through fields of pollen, now unfettered and joyful beyond their wildest hopes and dreams.  Like all ads, this is a baldfaced lie (duh).  The meds don’t make you feel good, nor do they help you forget about the original malady.  What they do is make you feel loopy, and sort of clammy, and detached, and cracked-out, and . . well . . still pretty miserable.  A slightly different brand of misery than you were dealing with before, but misery nonetheless.  In short, they make you feel like you’re sick.  You go from feeling itchy and sneezy and runny, to feeling like you are in the middle of a cold.  Except it’s worse than a cold, because you get over a cold.  With a cold you can go to the doctor and get antibiotics, or nom some chicken soup and feel comforted, or call-in-to-work-get-a-couple-of-sick-days-drink-some-NyQuil, and pass the fuck out until you feel better.  With a cold you can guzzle OJ, and eat a banana, and mix some Airborne (i LOVE Airborne), and in a few days (give or take) you will no longer have a cold.

But it’s not a cold.  It’s allergy meds.  You can stop taking the meds (which i shall be attempting on the morrow), but then you still have to deal with the original problem, and, sadly, it’s a problem that has no solution outside of patience.  Oh, and you now have to deal with that chest full of mucus from the cold that you never contracted.  Have fun with that.  Here’s some Robitussin.

We have cured polio.  We have cured malaria.  We have cured smallpox.  We have cured many kinds of cancer.  We are making enormous breakthroughs on HIV every day (there are some fellas out in Houston who think they’ve got it licked, and i’m told that we shall likely be seeing a practical treatment from their research within the next few years).  But mold spores and mulberry trees lay us out like the Bubonic Plague.  Tall grasses and dandelions dress up like Apocalyptic Horsemen once or twice a year, and dance merry jigs on our heads.  Oak trees and a strong autumn breeze can topple the otherwise stalwart ramparts of our immune systems like they were made of cardboard and fairydust.  There seems to be very little we can do about it, and that pisses me off to no end.

I repeat: This is not fair.  A choice between “Argh!” and “Eck!” is not a choice that i’m prepared to deal with.  What about door number three?  Why, in this age of medical and technological miracles, must we suffer so?  I think i’m about three-more-days-of-this away from constantly sporting one of those masks like the throngs of Asian pedestrians that they show now and again on the BBC news.  It may look stupid, but dammit, i can’t spend the entire month of October feeling like this.  I’m choked up and can’t breathe.  I feel like i have a fever even though my temp is running at a standard 98.6.  There’s a tickle in the back of my throat that hasn’t dislodged itself in four days.  FOUR!  DAYS!!!  I smell nothing but bleck, and my sinuses refuse to clear under even the most insistent of blowing and coaxing and assorted sweet talk.  I’m hot, then cold, then hot, then cold.  If i weren’t 29 years old, and a dude, i’d swear that i was going through menopause.

Fuck this business.  I’m moving to Antarctica.

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Miserably Yours,

Tony