(4) drug regimens
Nov. 4th, 2010 02:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
constanceIt is not too strong a statement to say that when I was younger, allergies incapacitated me for a month or so every year, and made my life highly unpleasant for quite a lot of the rest of it. In spring especially, I'd wander the world in a swollen-eyed, hive-ridden, snotty-and-sneezy, blisteringly beheadached daze, barely able to function and an object of disgust and annoyance to the people around me. I tried with the allergy shots for a while, and remind me to tell you one day why I stopped getting them
, but they didn't do me much good, and Benadryl did its job beautifully but wrecked (and still wrecks) me almost as badly in a different way, so for years I just resigned myself to rue, despair, and misery.
And then came Allegra and Claritin. Holy shit, the amazing difference they made. Suddenly I could open my eyes all the way! Suddenly I could breathe, suddenly my cheekbones stopped hurting, suddenly I could bend over without my brains trying to leak out of my eye sockets. It was astonishing! And even my dermographism was suddenly under control! And they didn't even render me comatose, like Benadryl does, and though there were times when coma was preferable to extreme misery, after Allegra and Claritin I didn't have to make that choice.
It was like a miracle or something. A freaking miracle of pharmacy, right in the palm of my hand.
And it got even better when Claritin went over the counter, because then I didn't even need a prescription! I could just walk into CVS and there they were, right on the shelf, and I haven't forgotten how desperate I was for relief, back in the dark ages, and what that relief felt like when it came. Sometimes there are still days when I have to up the ante a little -- thank you Nasonex and Flonase! Thank you Tylenol Sinus! -- but for the most part it's enough. And it's good.
(You know, I think I will just tell you very quickly why I stopped getting allergy shots, because it's an interesting story of me, and totally informs more than one of my steadfast convictions, namely (1) allergy shots are works of the devil, and (2) so is getting really, truly drunk. What happened was this: I was in college, sophomore year, getting allergy shots at the student health center, and I was having a little reaction from the shots (a hard, round, itchy welt about the size of a quarter would appear at the site of the injection and linger for a day or so), so the clinic nurse told me to make an appointment with my allergist in New Orleans to reassess my dosage. And so I did, like a good girl, made the appointment for November 1, which as it happens is the day after Halloween, but which factor I did not consider in my calculations.
We went out on Halloween, of course. We were in college. IT IS THE LAW THAT ALL LSU STUDENTS GO OUT AND GET TRASHED ON HALLOWEEN OKAY. We went out and I was dressed as a Robyn Hitchcock record made out of trash bags and people kept buying me drinks and man, was I drunk. Dry-heaving, face-down-on-the-floor druuuuunk. I was so drunk that when I got up at 6:30 to get dressed and ready to drive for an hour and a half to my doctor, I was still a little woozy. Maybe not drunk, but certainly not sober, you know?
So I drove to New Orleans and checked in at the doctor's office, and they gave me my shot and sat me out in the lobby to await some (if any) reaction, and after five minutes I was covered in hives, and within ten minutes I was laid out on an examining room table with my throat closing and an IV in each arm (one Benadryl IV and one adrenaline IV to keep the Benadryl from stopping my heart) and after that I don't remember too much. My mother tells me that they ended up letting me sleep for most of the day and then calling her to pick me up before they closed the office, and she ended up bringing me back to the hospital later that night when a second reaction set in, but I remember none of this past the needles going into my arms.
So it turns out that my low tolerance for alcohol is really intolerance, and that plus an allergy shot full of things I'm also allergic to hit me that day like a freight train, and I haven't gotten an allergy shot since, and I have rarely drunk more than one or two drinks in a row since, and man, there is nothing like a systemic allergic reaction to cure you of the habit of drinking your paycheck away. I recommend it highly as a cure for coed binge-drinking.)
, but they didn't do me much good, and Benadryl did its job beautifully but wrecked (and still wrecks) me almost as badly in a different way, so for years I just resigned myself to rue, despair, and misery.
And then came Allegra and Claritin. Holy shit, the amazing difference they made. Suddenly I could open my eyes all the way! Suddenly I could breathe, suddenly my cheekbones stopped hurting, suddenly I could bend over without my brains trying to leak out of my eye sockets. It was astonishing! And even my dermographism was suddenly under control! And they didn't even render me comatose, like Benadryl does, and though there were times when coma was preferable to extreme misery, after Allegra and Claritin I didn't have to make that choice.
It was like a miracle or something. A freaking miracle of pharmacy, right in the palm of my hand.
And it got even better when Claritin went over the counter, because then I didn't even need a prescription! I could just walk into CVS and there they were, right on the shelf, and I haven't forgotten how desperate I was for relief, back in the dark ages, and what that relief felt like when it came. Sometimes there are still days when I have to up the ante a little -- thank you Nasonex and Flonase! Thank you Tylenol Sinus! -- but for the most part it's enough. And it's good.
