Allergy Season is in Full Bloom

By John Addyman  |  Email: john.addyman@yahoo.com

Ah, spring!

The birds are chirping, the grass is growing and the pollen is flowing.

As the trees bud and the flowers start coming up, I see little wispy seedlings drift by in the breeze.

They are all meant for me. They are not my friends.

About four years ago, I decided to go to an allergy doctor because every spring, I would get one cold after another — and my family doctor told me, “You need to get your allergies checked.”

So there I was sitting with nurse Mary Rose and she was explaining all about grass pollen and pine pollen and cat dander and dust and mites — she was very thorough.

“Do you think you might be allergic to some of those things and which ones?” she asked with her clipboard all ready to take down notes.

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes what?” she asked.

“Yes I’m allergic.”

“Allergic to which of these?”

“Yes.”

“Yes to all of them?” she asked.

“Sure feels like it,” I told her.

Mary Rose looked at me like an experienced nurse who knows a scam when she sees one.

“Come on, all of them?”

“Try me,” I challenged. And she got started with the test. She drew on my arms and put the thing with all the needled samples on it and we waited to see what the reaction would be.

It didn’t take long.

One skin pop got so big it exploded and a flying monkey launched itself out of my arm and banged into the wall.

“That doesn’t happen too often,” Mary Rose said calmly.

OK, it didn’t go down quite like that, but I had all kinds of red spots on both arms.

“You are allergic to almost everything,” she told me. “This is going to be fun.”

What followed was weekly trips to see Mary Rose or nurse Christina, who would calm me down with soothing banter (I have a thing about needles) and give me two shots — one in each arm. I had an “animal” arm for all the creatures I was allergic to — dog, cat, guinea pig, horse, Bigfoot — and I had a “plant” arm for all the botanicals that would cause me grief — grass, trees, flowers, corn, marijuana.

On a normal Friday afternoon, right after I got the shots, my left arm would swell up and my right arm wouldn’t. I seem to be much more allergic to animals.

But I stopped having three colds each spring. In fact, I stopped having colds at all — a welcome life change.

After three years, Mary Rose and Christina and I got to be BFFs. There’s something so valuable in your life when you’re being taken care of by competent nurses.

And things were going ducky…until I got COVID-19, then I got it again and that has somehow changed me in a really unusual way.

I am not making this up.

On a Monday night I was working hard on a lecture I was going to give my Living Environment (Biology and Ecology) students. I would be talking about flower reproduction the next day and the lecture was heavily weighted toward, guess what? Pollen.

I was busy making a drawing and describing flower parts when I sneezed. I sneeze all the time; nothing abnormal there. Then I sneezed again. Bigger. Louder.

And I sneezed again. This time it was something new in my life — a “chain sneeze.” It’s not just one A-CHOO and you’re done, it’s a chain of sneezes and my whole body shakes. It’s actually kind of pleasant, but when people see you sneeze like that, they get a little concerned.

So, I did a big chain sneeze. And when it was over, I went, “Whew! Yeehah!”

All the while I was going through this chain sneeze thing, I was sitting in front of my laptop computer that had on its screen a big yellow flower, with its pollen parts in full display.

I looked at the screen.

I sneezed.

Time for action. I was expecting my principal to walk in any second because my classroom is right down the hall from her office and I was sure she could hear my sneezing. Everyone in the school could hear my sneezing. I had to do something.

I thought, “I’m a biology teacher. I’m a scientist. I need a hypothesis and a quick experiment. And because I’ve never sneezed like this before, I need to do something really wacko.”

So I closed my laptop computer, so I couldn’t see the image of the flower anymore.

And I stopped sneezing immediately.

Figure that one out.

I kept the laptop closed and packed up to go home. All the way home, no sneezing. After dinner I opened the laptop, which no longer had the flower on display and everything was fine.

At the end of the night, my scientist gene told me it was time to check my experiment out to see if I got the same result. I opened the laptop and went back to the site and the screen with the flower on it.

Five seconds went by. Ten seconds. And then… I sneezed. First time all night. I closed the laptop and went to bed.

This can’t be happening to me.