The smell of spring is in the air...hack, cough, gasp, wheeze...

That bad day a little while back? It's kind of become the bad week. Which turned into the bad 'allergy season.'

Yup, allergy season is here, and this year, it makes my throat swell up just like my foods were. The food reactions are much worse, and much faster. The lovely doc. gave me steroids to take to tone down the reactions.

What do the pills have in them, though? Did you guess corn?

Ding ding ding ding, we have a winner!

Back to the drawing board, I guess.

I am currently double bagging myself. I put on a paper mask, and a scarf over that, and I can go out of the house and drive into town. I last about 2 hours before my throat starts to burn, the flu symptoms start up, and I have to get home before my throat starts to swell.

I feel like the masked marauder. People look at me and wonder what dread disease I have, or what strange religion I belong to. Hmmm...I'm the Patron Saint of Allergy Sufferers? With my doughnut halo that doubles as a shuriken with sprinkles that snap out like blades.

Uh, yeah....one gets a bit crazy contemplating the fact that I'm nearly housebound for the next 6 weeks or so.

Or longer.

It's shocking that I feel actual fear going out of my house now, like some strange allergic agoraphobic. I can take benadryl, but I better hope to god that my throat doesn't swell up too much before the active ingredient kicks in, or I'm toast. And epipens? Well, yeah, I can use it....but it feels so...final. If I used my epipen every time my throat swelled up, I'd use it at least three to five times a day. That's insane. It would ruin my body, and my pocketbook, both.

So I just go through the day, and every time I smell something, or the wind hits my face, or I go into a new building or a new car, I'm tense. I wait to see if my throat swells up or not, and if it does, I have to try and judge. Is it going slow? Is it stopping? Is it getting worse? Is there anywhere safe I can go where it will stop?

Is this the time it goes so quick, so much that I can't breathe anymore?

I HATE that. When did the scent of good food actually become potentially deadly? It's ridiculous. Like some Castle mystery where someone figures out the super-cool way to kill someone off: by scent. You'd think, 'oooh, clever.' But you'd never think it would REALLY happen.

And you'd sure as hell never think it would happen to you.

I'm wondering, tonight, what I'm going to do this year. Can I go away for Thanksgiving this year? We go to visit the same great people every year, and I'm wondering if it's safe for me to drive there, to stay there, or if I'd be setting myself up to react and be unable to stop. What about Christmas? Vacation?

Right now, I'm feeling like a bus ran over me and then backed up, just to make sure. That was merely going out of my house for a few hours, double bagged, not even taking off the mask to get a drink of water. Indoors the entire time.

And my allergy tests? They say my reactions are miniscule. They say this should never be happening to me...so you can imagine that if I try to get any special equipment to enable me to leave the house (you know, like a gas mask, or a space suit, or my own version of cyberman-wear.), well, insurance will just jump at the chance to pay for it, I'm sure.

I'm trying to keep this in the back of my head. Push it back there, get on with life, and keep going. Invite people to my house instead of going out. What the heck else can you do? Wallow? Who wants to do that?

Whine? Well...okay, that I can do, a little bit anyway. And then it's back to shoving this down and moving on, because getting angry about this? I don't think the pollen and the dead chicken in the fridge care all that much. My body doesn't seem too inclined to listen, either. So it's time to learn Japanese some more, write a bit more than that, and review Emily Dickinson's life...you know, just in case.