Allergies

This post probably has a lot more detail about what's wrong with me than you want. I'd move on to that article about NPR if I was you.

Jus' sayin'.

From the time I was small I have always been allergic to something. Initially, it was milk (I drank soy before it was cool!), eggs, and a variety of growing things ... along with stuff they could never pinpoint (I once had an allergy test that looked like a long string of mosquito bites). Then I grew and got over it and the frequency eased to once or twice a year. And then about ten years ago I moved to Kentucky.

Since then I have had two serious bouts with allergies:

• February, 2002, while returning from a trip to Arizona
• October, 2008, while returning from a trip to Arizona

I was in Arizona over the weekend and had a fabulous geo-caching day (16!) but we did a lot of desert tramping and I think I got one of those un-pinpointable things up in my head and -- well, I'll be honest, I really want to go to some dark unknowable place right now until this is over.

While flying from Sky Harbor to Blue Grass yesterday, everyone I looked at gave a glance and decided they wanted absolutely no part of what I had going on. Both eyes were swollen and watering, my nose was rubbed raw, and I had this weird dry cough.

This morning, I woke with one eye sealed shut and mid-size drifts of aloe-infused tissue surrounding my bed. Ech. I feel everything in my head. I know where my brain is and I feel the roots of my teeth. If I breathe like a normal person I feel cool air swirl through the middle of my skull with every breath, and my eyes are crying to get out -- so I breathe through my mouth. I'm not stuffed so much as empty and I am constantly 40-60% about to sneeze.

I seriously mean this: I don't know who they are, but god bless the folks who invented Puffs Plus and Benadryl.

I can't wait for tomorrow. I know it will be better then.