For posterity's sake
I am allergic to cedar. I discovered this in college when my first apartment happened to be built in a grove of cedar trees. For a week in February of 20 aught zero, my sinuses shut themselves down completely. Being forced to breathe entirely through my mouth lead to all sorts of terrible throat pains, evenings spent passed out from healthy doses of NyQuil, and mornings spent hacking giant globs of brown stuff into my sink. Eventually I moved to a new apartment that improved my reaction to cedar pollination season each February, but it's still one of the things that made me dislike living in Austin for a long time.
This is my third spring in Seattle, and in the first two I had zero issues with allergies... until last week!! Faithful reader, I can assure you I thought I would never relive the experience from that cursed cedar grove, but it has happened. Oh, has it happened. Starting last Monday, upon feeling a tickle in the back of my throat I judiciously administered my proven method of illness prevention: a vitamin C pill and copious amounts of alcohol. Germs can't live in your blood if it's full of alcohol, to which any respectable scientist will attest. But by 11pm, that tickle had turned into full-on post-nasal drip. Feeling my sinuses begin to swell closed like pressure doors in an emergency on a submarine, I popped a Benadryl and prepared for a night of mouth breathing.
Upon waking on Tuesday morning ("waking" being an entirely inappropriate term given that I was never truly asleep, nor could my state following the sun's rising be described as "awake" given the long tail of the Benadryl numbing curve), I realized that I was in for a long slog and immediately sent a note to my dear work colleagues informing them of my rare absence from the office. No "work from home" today! It was a day of rest. And of suffering. But even then I had not dreamt of the scale of suffering I would receive before the ordeal had run its course.
Afraid of dying from a Benadryl-induced stupor, I ventured to the market and purchased a handful of Allegra from the local drug merchants. Unfortunately I discovered that evening that Allegra causes severe heartburn and only a pitiful lessening of the extraordinary mucus production of my sinuses when confronted with the threat of cedar pollen. After scratching out only 3 hours of sleep, I resigned myself to laying prostrate on my couch, thankfully accompanied by my Kindle Fire HD®, where I viewed movie after movie until the sun arose once more.
Wednesday was to be a repeat of Tuesday, and although in terrible pain in my throat (swallowing and speaking both triggered stabbing pains in my upper chest), I knew I could outlast the accursed pollen. Thursday arrive, and I decided to travel into the office for a half day, since I was by then two days behind on my projects. Around 5pm I noticed that my vision was a little blurry as I traveled back to my home for another night of non-sleep. But! Things were about to become even worse. The cloudiness in my eyes soon proved to be the symptom of spontaneously developed conjunctivitis. For the next 48 hours, my eyes excreted yellow globules of... goop. Every 30 minutes I had to visit the bathroom in order to squeeze the material from my sockets, less it completely glaze over my retinas, completely blocking my vision. During the night I of course could not perform this regular cleaning duty, and would wake up to find myself unable to even open my eyes, so encrusted were they with rheum that I had to pry my eyes open with two hands.
On Sunday my plight worsened even further, as evening approached I suddenly lost most of my hearing in my left ear. By tilting my head from side to side I was able to discern a small amount of fluid had managed to imprison itself within my middle ear, thereby blocking my ear drum. It was at this moment that I realized I had been beaten by those damned trees. Those pollen spewing cedar trees! Upon waking on Monday I journeyed to a local medicine man in the nearby village of Issaquah, where he imformed me that I had an "infection" in my eyes and ears. He gave me some antibiotics and sent me on my way.
Today is Day 10 of my ordeal, and I am on my way back to health, albiet slowly. There is no denouement or epilogue to my tale, because I am a fan of non-standard narrative structure.
This is my third spring in Seattle, and in the first two I had zero issues with allergies... until last week!! Faithful reader, I can assure you I thought I would never relive the experience from that cursed cedar grove, but it has happened. Oh, has it happened. Starting last Monday, upon feeling a tickle in the back of my throat I judiciously administered my proven method of illness prevention: a vitamin C pill and copious amounts of alcohol. Germs can't live in your blood if it's full of alcohol, to which any respectable scientist will attest. But by 11pm, that tickle had turned into full-on post-nasal drip. Feeling my sinuses begin to swell closed like pressure doors in an emergency on a submarine, I popped a Benadryl and prepared for a night of mouth breathing.
Upon waking on Tuesday morning ("waking" being an entirely inappropriate term given that I was never truly asleep, nor could my state following the sun's rising be described as "awake" given the long tail of the Benadryl numbing curve), I realized that I was in for a long slog and immediately sent a note to my dear work colleagues informing them of my rare absence from the office. No "work from home" today! It was a day of rest. And of suffering. But even then I had not dreamt of the scale of suffering I would receive before the ordeal had run its course.
Afraid of dying from a Benadryl-induced stupor, I ventured to the market and purchased a handful of Allegra from the local drug merchants. Unfortunately I discovered that evening that Allegra causes severe heartburn and only a pitiful lessening of the extraordinary mucus production of my sinuses when confronted with the threat of cedar pollen. After scratching out only 3 hours of sleep, I resigned myself to laying prostrate on my couch, thankfully accompanied by my Kindle Fire HD®, where I viewed movie after movie until the sun arose once more.
Wednesday was to be a repeat of Tuesday, and although in terrible pain in my throat (swallowing and speaking both triggered stabbing pains in my upper chest), I knew I could outlast the accursed pollen. Thursday arrive, and I decided to travel into the office for a half day, since I was by then two days behind on my projects. Around 5pm I noticed that my vision was a little blurry as I traveled back to my home for another night of non-sleep. But! Things were about to become even worse. The cloudiness in my eyes soon proved to be the symptom of spontaneously developed conjunctivitis. For the next 48 hours, my eyes excreted yellow globules of... goop. Every 30 minutes I had to visit the bathroom in order to squeeze the material from my sockets, less it completely glaze over my retinas, completely blocking my vision. During the night I of course could not perform this regular cleaning duty, and would wake up to find myself unable to even open my eyes, so encrusted were they with rheum that I had to pry my eyes open with two hands.
On Sunday my plight worsened even further, as evening approached I suddenly lost most of my hearing in my left ear. By tilting my head from side to side I was able to discern a small amount of fluid had managed to imprison itself within my middle ear, thereby blocking my ear drum. It was at this moment that I realized I had been beaten by those damned trees. Those pollen spewing cedar trees! Upon waking on Monday I journeyed to a local medicine man in the nearby village of Issaquah, where he imformed me that I had an "infection" in my eyes and ears. He gave me some antibiotics and sent me on my way.
Today is Day 10 of my ordeal, and I am on my way back to health, albiet slowly. There is no denouement or epilogue to my tale, because I am a fan of non-standard narrative structure.