Rant #2,180: Allergies

Yes, I have them, and I have them bad.

I have them when the pollen count is high, I have them when the pollen count is low, I have them 12 months/365 days a year, and in leap years, I have them for that one extra day.

I have had them for as long as I can remember.

They don't go away, and they not only impact your nose and throat, eyes and ears, but when I have them bad, they effect just bout every part of my body; I just don't feel at my best when I have them.

This week has been a tough one. We are in the middle of summer, we have not had much rain at all in recent days, and my eyes and my nose are feeling the discomfort.

They just don't feel right the entire day; but what can I do, I simply learn to live with it, and kind of work around it when I can, which is difficult. I can't tell you how many times I write these Rants with maybe one and a half eyes; when you see a spelling mistake here, you can bet it is because I didn't see it.

Anyway, to get to my point, I believe that I have reached an anniversary in my pain and suffering, a positive to take away from all the negatives I have had related to my allergies.

I believe that I have passed my 46th anniversary of taking allergy shots every month; yes, I have been getting allergy shots on a regular basis since I was 15 years old, so I have pretty much have been getting my allergy shots for more than 550 months straight!

When my allergies first started to come to me and affect me in the mid to late 1960s, not much was known about allergies and how to control them. There seemed to be more studies out on food allergies than just your garden variety allergies related to dust, ragweed, and pollution, and, in fact, I knew somebody who was allergic to orange juice.

Well, he simply did not drink orange juice, and he was fine.

Me, my allergies overtook me to the point that I could not eat, could not sleep, and there were days that I simply could not function. I was constantly blowing my nose, and where some kids' pockets were filled with baseball cards, rubber balls and loose change back then, mine were filled with tissues.

Anyway, when we moved to Long Island in the summer of 1971, my doctor implored to my mother that I needed an air conditioner so I could breathe properly, and I was the first one in my family to have one in my room.

It helped, but what was to really help was the next step.

The study of the types of allergies that I have became more focused in the early 1970s, and things were being discovered about those with allergies, and ways to tone down the symptoms.

So, I believe that it was sometime during this summer period in 1972, I went for an allergy test at a place called The Allergy Testing Institute.

I took the now-archaic, then-revolutionary "staple gun" allergy test, where you were literally stapled up and down your arm with different chemicals that you could be allergic to, and the indentations in your arm were numbered, and the ones that didn't puff up you were not allergic to, the ones that did you were allergic to.

You had to sit there after the chemicals were injected at a table were you could place your arms out, and you could not turn your arms over for about an hour, if I remember correctly.

Well, if I remember correctly, my right arm was fine, just full of little indentations that seemingly went away as quickly as they came.

My left arm, however, looked like I had fought a battle with a rabid dog, It was twice the size of my other arm, as puffed up as could be, and it literally looked like I had been mainlining heroin, as the veins in my arm seemed to be inflamed.

Suffice it to say that I could not wear a short sleeve shirt for about a week or two after that, until the arm went back to normal.

But it was well worth it.

A week or two later, the test results came back, and for the very first time, we actually found out what I was allergic to: the usual grass and ragweed and tree pollen and other pollens, and also, horse hair and something called the Jerome bush. There were some other things, but I don't remember them, but suffice it to say that I was allergic to pretty much everything they injected into my one arm.

The Allergy Testing Institute then hooked me up with a local doctor who would administer allergy shots to me each month for an undetermined time.

I went to this doctor once for the shots, and we had to wait a few weeks to see if they made any difference and if I had any positive or negative reaction to them. They seemed to take, and when I was about a day away from going once again, I read in Newsday that he had committed suicide (hopefully not over me), and we had to find another local doctor to give the shots to me.

We found one, and so started the regular odyssey--at 15 years of age--of going to my doctor to take allergy shots each and every month, which I have done pretty religiously over the past 46 years.

I have been regularly tested for my allergies every few years--now, it is just a simple blood test--and let me tell you, getting the shots has made a world of difference to me.

Where once my only defense against what was ailing me was a tissue, now I have steroids in my body that at least try to fight the allergens that force me to feel out of sync.

It doesn't always help, but I can't see myself living the life I have lived without getting this monthly shot--it has improved things dramatically, but again, it is pretty much a Band-Aid to what you have, and not a cure.

Some people go on and off the shots at regular intervals, because they and their doctors believe that you can build up an immunity to the shots and their benefits over time, but I have never wavered.

My allergies were so bad that I felt if I went off the shots, not only would I have to be tested again--I did not want to go through that staple gun thing again--but I might go back to suffering.

So even at the behest of a few of my doctors over the past 46 years, I have never gone off the shots.

Look, I still suffer, but I am chicken; I never want to go back to the way I was, and I mean never.

I have been poked and prodded seemingly a million times related to my shots--I have gotten anywhere from a single shot to four shots in both of my upper arms for all of these years, and I have the pin pricks in those areas to attest for that--but it has all been worth it.

And no, the allergy medicines do nothing for me, but the shots do.

So as I march on to my 50th anniversary of getting shots in 2022, I have to say that the first doctor who gave me my shots put me on the right path. I often thought that if he knew he had helped me, or at least one person, he might not have done what he did to himself.

But whatever the case, I have gotten through typing this out with just one sneeze and a few tissues ... if I was doing this at 15 years of age, I don't know if I actually could do it; that is how bad I was.

So as I still wheeze and sneeze but not freeze in this warm weather, have a good weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.