When Allergies Attack

Allergies are the bane of my existence.  I have year-round allergies, but each spring I am once more reminded just how much Mother Nature hates me.

I love flowers and finally seeing the sun make an appearance after months of overcast and rain. I enjoy going outside without needing to wear 18 layers of clothes and a scarf.  Spring is when people go out and walk their dogs and when I go out to look at all the dogs being walked (I don’t have a dog of my own).  However, I know that every new flower that blossoms is Mother Nature’s latest attempt at killing me.

On the up side, I am not alone.  My roommate experienced a ten-minute sneezing fit yesterday at work.  I have seen more people rubbing at their eyes over the past few days (and I don’t think that all of it can be attributed to sleep deprivation). Apparently updates from allergy sufferers in my city are also “trending” on Twitter.

You’d think with such advanced medical research and high-tech companies here, we would have done something about this by now.  I bet that, given how many nerds/geeks that live in the area, this city has a higher-than-average number of allergy sufferers per capita.  If economics has taught me anything, it’s that this should create demand for allergy treatments within the market.  Other than allergy shots and an insane amount of antihistamines, I haven’t heard of any magical medical mixes that will solve this problem.

During most of the year, my allergies are a minor annoyance.  My allergies are background noise to the rest of my various medical afflictions.  On one hand, I think that my allergies are beneficial during every time of the year other than spring.  I need to make sure to keep my room relatively dust-free and somewhat clean.  I can’t let food get moldy without having a particularly annoying respiratory reaction. 

I imagine that my allergies are like beefy white blood cells that attack anything and everything that comes into my system.  I picture my immune system looking like the cast from “300” only with grenades, laser vision, and ninja-like reflexes.  Whenever everyone else is out with a cold or the flu, I look around and think, “Huh. I didn’t even know that was going around.”  Thank you, Godzilla-like over reactive immune system. 

If I were to have a conversation with my immune system about this, I would ask, “So that cold that everyone got except for me last fall.  Did I never get infected or were you guys just super effective?” The leader of my immune military combatants would likely say, “What cold? Oh, that pesky thing? We dealt with any of those silly buggers that tried to come in.  It was nothing.  That dust mite, however, that was an epic battle, believe you me!”  I think that the commander has a really cheesy absentminded British accent.  And probably wears a monocle.  Yes, definitely a space cadet.  I bet they even drink the germ battle fighter equivalent of Earl Grey tea.

Maybe there will come a day that medicine and science can create a way for me to work with the armed forces commander of my immune system.  So if any of you reading this are in the medical field or need a really cool research project, you should get on this.  You’ll have a willing human test subject.