Organic Mutant

Over the last few days I have been semi-incapacitated by allergy symptoms. Runny nose, watery eyes, scratchy throat, half-sneezed sneezes, and dry, dry skin. I haven’t had bad allergies since we left NoCal to move to SoCal over 16 years ago, so to have a resurgence of this suffering gave me some compassion for people who have chronic illness in their breathing apparatus as three days of this nonsense had me ready to go on a strict cleanse and a rampage.

There came a moment when I had all of the above symptoms and I couldn’t even open my eyes. I lay on the sofa while Lucas colored his way across the living room with his markers, wanting to wash my eyeballs in refrigerated saline solution, not caring if he colored the floor, the dogs or the drapes. Of course, we were out of my allergy medicine, so I suffered the full blown variant.

Yesterday evening I was finally able to pick up my meds. It is only supposed to be taken every 4 hours. The first hour you wait for the chemicals to block the reactions to the allergens, you spend two hours in relative comfort and then the last hour noticing an increase in symptoms while you count down to the appointed time for further pill ingestion.

I think that this episode was caused by the extremely dry air we’ve had over the last week. Although I didn’t realise this until late last night, so I was going through the house methodically cataloging possible causes. Two aged feather pillows were relegated to the shit-can as pillows are know harborers of dust-mites — they even sell special covers for pillows to keep the mites away. I think the dry air just made me very sensitive to the various allergens which normally do not affect me.

Today is much better. I can actually think about going to the park without wanting to cut off my nose.