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Psychosomatically
Fri Oct. 12, 2007 —
We weren’t allowed to have allergies when I was growing up, and so none of us did.
Of course I didn’t know we weren’t allowed to have them until I asked why none of us did; the rule wasn’t up on the wall in needlepoint. Another time I asked if we had any vitamins in the house. I was told we got our vitamins from our food.
A boy growing up in a six-person household devoid of allergies was bound to ask the question sooner or later, after it was proven that Gloria was not allergic to kidney beans, after Fonzie became allergic to girls for one tensely brilliant episode, after poor Vinnie Barbarino developed environmental hypersensitivity and had to live in a plastic bubble. Oh, the comedy, the suspense, the sneezing.
“So why aren’t any of us allergic?” I asked my mom.
“Because allergies aren’t allowed in this house,” she replied, and that was a good enough explanation for me.
I ran into a few allergic people in university. One classmate’s allergy to a particular family of grains prevented him from consuming beer – though thankfully the affliction did not prevent him from drinking Scotch. Another alarmed the drunken attendees at a weekend cottage getaway by consuming ground almonds in the form of a Sara Lee layer cake and going into anaphylactic shock in front of us. And then there was my friend Dave, who was allergic to pretty much everything.
Though the specialist Dave saw for his particular brand of environmental hypersensitivity reportedly had at least one patient who subsisted entirely on mothers’ milk, Dave’s affliction stopped short of requiring that he be sealed hermetically. For a time it seemed his diet consisted entirely of rice cakes, cheese curd, and pears – pears because he was allergic to apples. He was deathly allergic to soy products; when a classmate noticed that he carried an AnaKit and inquired if it was for bee stings, he replied, “No, bean stings.” He was also allergic to a broad range of petroleum products, and being within 500 feet of fresh asphalt made him feel, as he told me once, “like peeling my skin off with a paring knife.”
And that put the lie to the idea of allergy sufferers being merely weak-willed.
Then, a few years later, in a motel room on the morning of a friend’s wedding, shortly after embarking on a prescribed course of antibiotics in the hopes of eliminating a persistent sinus infection, I developed an allergy to penicillin. The face that looked back at me in the bathroom mirror was covered in red splotches, and my skin tingled with that don’t-touch-me hypersensitivity that sometimes accompanies a high fever. I wondered briefly if room service would bring me a potato peeler.
It’s funny, what sticks in your head. Mom didn’t remember my question about allergies when I confessed my affliction, and rightly so. If I had kids I’m sure I’d be storing up a library of misinterpreted offhand comments in their tiny spongelike brains. She didn’t remember it because she wasn’t taking herself seriously when she said it, just as I shouldn’t have been. I hope she didn’t feel bad, in retrospect, imagining me trembling under the weight of such an unfair edict. She reassured me that she herself has been known to suffer from hayfever on occasion.
So first penicillin, and then after consulting with my physician, I sensitized myself almost immediately to sulfa. Anyone planning the perfect murder should be taking notes. In spite of it all, I still didn’t feel as vulnerable as – and could therefore still feel superior to – people who had nagging but essentially merely irritating reactions to ubiquitous everyday substances. Globules of penicillin didn’t float through the air on sunny summer days; sulfa capsules didn’t try to jump into my lap and lick my face. At the same time though, like the troopers in the peanut camp, getting caught unawares by a bad batch of mould meant certain death. And not satisfied with an allergy to the single most popular antibiotic on the earth, I had to strike the second line of defense off the list as well. And me without a Medic Alert bracelet. Witness life on the edge.
Now it’s a good twelve years later – a good weal-free and not particularly itchy, watery-eyed, or sneeze-punctuated twelve years, except for the occasional woofly wet-carboard-box sounds that I’m hearing in my left ear lately.
You know where this is heading. My doctor tells me it’s allergies. And you know when it’s plural, it’s not something noble, rare and life-threatening like bean stings. It’s seasonal.
And do you know what else? Since I found out, I’ve fallen prey to all the Brady Bunch allergy symptoms. My eyes are red, itchy and moist. I sneeze. I take antihistamines when I go to bed so that I don’t wake up covered in my own drool, and due to the likelihood of walking in on me wiping various facial orifices with a tissue many of my co-workers suspect I’m entrenched in an emotional crisis.
My problem doesn’t seem, to me, to stem from having suddenly developed allergies though. I think I suddenly got permission to have them.