Springtime

It's springtime and all over town, trees are blossoming.  I never think in terms of blossoms when I start to sneeze, but I notice that I've been sneezing more than usual lately and someone mentioned that the blossoms were producing a lot of pollen that makes people sneeze.

I come from an allergic family.  My father had hay fever and would get coughing fits so bad that he would crawl down the hall because he couldn't stand up, trying to get air.  When he joined Kaiser in 1953 and had allergy tests taken he started twice a week shots for his allergies and life changed for him significantly.

They also tested Karen  Not sure what her symptoms were that she got tested and I didn't, but I remember going to Kaiser the day they tested her.  Oh my goodness....they injected substances down her back, all the way down her back, in two columns, to see which she reacted to.  I don't remember her crying, but she must have.

She was allergic to so many that she also went to Kaiser twice a week for years to get her allergy shots.  The doctors said that they could tell by looking at me that I, too, had allergies, but not as bad as Karen did, so they never tested me.  I've never found whatever allergies I have to be a problem.

Because of Karen's allergies, we were never able to have a pet because of her allergy to pet fur.  When she moved out, after she graduated from high school, the very first thing she did was to get a dog...a breed that supposedly was not a problem for someone with allergies...and she had no problem with it.

I didn't get a dog until Walt and I moved into a rented house with a back yard.  I wanted a dog so badly that when we went to the pound they only had two dogs, neither of which I felt particularly drawn to, but I had waited so long for a dog, we took the one I disliked the least and Ho Chi Mutt became our family dog.  He and I had problems his entire life (especially in the early days when we had no dryer and I hung diapers on a clothesline and he pulled them down!)

I cough all the time.  My mother and Walt were the only two people who never bothered me about my cough.  I also blow my nose often, as my mother did, and I presume both the cough and the nose blowing are parts of my allergies, but I'm 80 years old and have been doing this for most of my life, so it's just "who I am" and it doesn't bother me.  And actually, I kind of enjoy the sneezing.

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