The Allergies

I have allergies. I react to bug bites, I have hay fever and I wage a constant war against soaps and cosmetics.

Take last Sunday. I got bitten by something. For the last week, the thing has been itching on and off, which is what's to be expected. It's also swollen my foot a bit and it's purple. Not irritated, not red, imperial purple. Friday, it drove me nuts enough to point it out to Boyfriend. That's when he started worrying a bit.

Yesterday, I had the sniffles. The hayfever sniffles, it turned out. By evening time, I had a headache and a blocked nose. Later I got hot flashes, which turned into cold flashes, and back. Those don't usually come with my hay fever attacks, but I put on the awesome jacket, turned on the fan and told Boyfriend. The worst thing bothering me is the fact that all the sneezing and blowing my nose has irritated my septum piercing to the point where it's comfiest if I wear my biggest retainer (I have two: a delicate one and one reminiscent of the horns of Satan), to accomodate the swelling and avoid any corners that might make it tricky to maneuver out should it get worse. Also, I keep the thing flipped down, or I have to do some kind of weird contortionist moves with my nostrils to blow my nose. If I gel my hair and find me some black plugs with skulls on them, I look like I'm into heavy metal and poking people with flick knives.

Now, Boyfriend took the news with a bit less cool than I did. Could it be the bug bite? I jokingly told him maybe it was Lyme's disease and then had to assure him I didn't have the bulls-eye rash that comes with it.

And when Boyfriend starts worrying... I get paranoid. Which worries Boyfriend, which makes me more paranoid...

I checked my pupils to reassure myself that my headache combined with drippy nose wasn't my brain swelling, made sure I wasn't getting another paresis (Boyfriend: Are you checking for a stroke? Are you having a stroke?!) and promised myself that if it got worse, I would, by Jove, wake up J. and W. and beg to be taken to an ER.

Needless to say, it's been going on for about five hours and I haven't been rushed to the hospital. It's not getting better, but it's not getting worse, either. Boyfriend is allergic to wasp stings, not pollen, so he has no antihistamine lying around in the apartment and I'm fresh out. We have some aspirin, but the stuff tastes so vile I usually need a pretty epic headache to even consider taking them. We looked for a pharmancy selling tablet aspiring yesterday, but we set out at four, when most pharmancies close at two. There are no pharmancies in the vicinity open on Sundays, and I'm too embarrassed to go to the pharmancist on call to ask for over the counter allergy suppressants and some paracetamol.

If it were an epi pen I needed, or if my allergy involved projectile vomiting, or anything that either threatened my life or could inconvenience other people, I'd go right now, drag a doctor, a pharmancist, anyone from their beds and solve the problem. I don't play with my health. But it's hayfever blocking my sinuses and giving me a headache. On the seriosity totem pole of medical emergencies, it ranks somewhere slightly above a scraped knee.

The last time it gave me trouble was in Vienna, where it got so bad I was holding up the entire group I was travelling with. I thought I was seriously ill, it was so bad. A friend suggested it was allergies since my eyes were burning. We asked for five minutes to get some antihistamine. It couldn't hurt to try, and the fever/headache medication I'd taken that morning had lasted for all of an hour. I was willing to try LSD if it promised relief at that point. Fifteen minutes later I felt human again and was no longer running out of tissues at an alarming rate. Boyfriend just hasn't seen me go through this particularly charming aspect of being me yet, and this is a relatively mild, if annoying episode.

At the moment, he's worried because he's seen me type the words 'paranoid' and 'ER'. The fact that I'm one of those people who refuses to suffer in silence as long as they can still moan, whine and complain doesn't help. Yes, I am a drama queen. Yes, I have been huddled on the sofa feeling sorry for myself. I occasionally got up to hang up laundry, put in a fresh load and help load the dishwasher, reminding myself that as grotesque as I make this look, there's a ninety to ninety-nine percent chance that it's not lethal or even dangerous.

To Boyfriend, it must look like I'm dying of the flu, the way I'm acting. I'm puttering through tissues, snuggling in a pile of pillows and indulging in my chocolate habit. I'm drinking lots of water, but that has more to do with the fact that it's hot than the fact that I'm losing fluid through my nose.

The only thing I'm doing to battle the headache is re-washing the washed sheets J. gave us today. They're comfy, but I can't stand the smell that came with them. It's possible they stayed in the laundry machine a bit too long after they got washed. I don't know what it else to compare the scent to. It was driving me up the walls. Boyfriend doesn't smell anything. Just like he didn't think it smelled that bad when he wore a shirt I'd left in the laundry machine too long and he left the house in a three-foot cloud of Eau de Anaerobic Bacterium. Yes, I divested him of the shirt as soon as I noticed and rewashed everything that went through that particular cycle. They say girls smell better than boys, but maybe I'm just fussy.

Oh, well, while I wait for either my allergy to die down (Rain, dammit, I need rain) or Monday to come around so I can go to a pharmancy before 'work', I'm going to continue feeling sorry for myself, drinking chocolate milk and knitting my jacket.