SOMETHING TO SNEEZE AT
By Allan R. Andrews
American Reporter Correspondent.
WASHINGTON -- Allergies.
They've knocked me out for the past few days.
What's worse, I think I've caught a cold to go with my allergic
reactions so now I can't tell if my nose is running, my throat
is scratchy and my sneezing is almost incessant because of allergies
or a cold.
My allergies are not so bad that I have to have special treatment.
Generally, some over-the-counter antihistamines will do the trick.
This week, though, the pills seemed to be like knockout drops.
I didn't fall asleep, but I found myself drowsy and drooping like
a dandelion gone to seed.
For the first time I began to understand why the warning is on
the medicine label about not operating heavy machinery when one
is taking antihistamines. (Incidentally, one should consider a
computer heavy machinery in reckoning this abstinence.)
Also, I think people at work tend to see allergies less as a sickness
than as a psychosomatic reaction. They've probably never had to
deal with sinus headaches.
I was 15 when I discovered I was allergic to some things. In my
case, the first indicator was newly mown grass.
A friend
and I spent time between innings during a softball game wrestling
in the grass. It was one of those church softball games where
everyone from seven to 70 plays, sometimes with 11 or 12 players
on a team.
At any rate, by the end of the evening, my eyeballs were red and
swollen almost out of their sockets.
Interestingly, nobody at the ballgame seemed to take much notice
of my developing symptoms, but as soon as I walked in the door
my Mom swept me out again and off to the doctor's office.
I don't remember much about that visit other than that he prescribed
some medicine and told me I should move to Arizona, which to a
New York City kid was like being told to go live on Mars. Those
were the days when even the major leagues didn't play baseball
west of the Mississippi River.
It turns out I'm allergic to most breeze-borne allergens such
as pollen, ragweed, sawdust, grass and various combinations of
industrial smog. I get hay fever in the fall, rose fever in the
summer, and whatever seasonal fever is associated with the pollination
of trees.
In high school, I had to drop out of woodworking shop because
sawdust sent me into paroxysms of sneezing. Fortunately, my school
had both metal shop and automotive shop, so I got some industrial
arts experience I probably otherwise never would have had. You
might say I learned how to use a lathe and how to fix a carburetor
because I was allergic to dust.
Once as an adult and working at a summer camp in Eastern Maryland
I tried to do my poetic thing and stood to contemplate the darkening
sky of an oncoming storm. It was wonderful. I felt I was being
engulfed by a giant blue-purple cloud that rose higher and higher
over the rolling hills. The wind blew into my face, much as one
might feel standing on the prow of a sailing vessel going upwind.
What I didn't realize at the time was how much pollen and dust
was being carried along on the winds that preceded the storm.
I felt invigorated when the rain began and I raced for shelter
in my cabin, but ten minutes later I was probably one of the most
miserable people on earth. I think I sneezed for a half-hour and
rubbed my eyes to soreness before the medicine took its effect.
When I was
younger, I used to keep track of the number of times I sneezed
each time I had an allergic attack. My rule of thumb was that
the next sneeze had to come before one minute elapsed. I think
the record came when I was about 16 and I sneezed 108 times in
a row.
One of my young friends used to say that one lost a day off of
his allotted lifetime each time he sneezed. I stand as living
proof that such reckoning is an old wives' tale. Were it true,
I would be long dead because I have certainly sneezed away about
50 years of my life.
I lived in Japan for several years of this decade. Japan is not
a good place for allergy sufferers. For one thing, the smog is
awful, especially in places like Tokyo. The Japanese often wear
surgical masks when they are suffering from a cold, but in August
you'll see perfectly healthy people wearing surgical masks to
limit their inhalation of polluted air. One of the most ironic
things one sees in Tokyo is a person pulling down a surgical mask
in order to take the next drag on a cigarette.
Someone told me that the city planners of Tokyo, who are famous
for building so-called "ring roads" that circle the
central city at varying distances from the heart of town, are
also known for building what could be called "ring parks."
Somewhere about 25 kilometers outside of Tokyo there is a ring
of spruce trees that were planted to beautify the inner city,
and they work; Tokyo is surprisingly full of pleasant parks and
green spaces, most of them scattered in rings around the metropolis.
The problem,
of course, is that spruce trees make the inner city a notoriously
bad place to be if one is an allergy sufferer. When the trees
pollinate, Tokyo becomes an allergic person's Inferno.
Something similar has happened in Arizona. When the doctor told
me several decades ago I'd be better off living in Arizona, he
wasn't aware of the desert boom that would make Phoenix and several
other Arizona cities desirable places for Easterners moving West.
They've irrigated so much of Arizona now that anything can grow
out there, including some of the worst sources of airborne allergens
know to humanity. Progress has turned Arizona from an allergy
sufferer's paradise to an allergy sufferer's hell.
I keep wondering if those cherry blossoms that make Washington,
D.C., such a tourist's Mecca in the spring -- a gift from Japan,
recall -- might also be a source of allergens.
I know I'll never know the answer because once one is inside the
beltway in D.C., there's so much polluted air - most of it having
nothing to do with flora and fauna - that watery eyes and sniffling
are part of one's life. Now that we're in an election year, I
think I'm growing allergic to Washington bluster.
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Allan R. Andrews can be contacted at allan.andrews@reporters.net