I've seen the way they talk about allergy season. The pharmaceutical commercials make it sound like this is comparable to hunting season. You go out, pay your license fees, spend a few sleepy hours in the dark dampness of early morning and with any luck tag your deer and go home.
If only it were that easy! (And that much fun!) No... not hardly. For many of us have severe allergies for 5 or more months out of the year. Many of us do not respond to the anti-allergy drugs as miraculously as the commercials would leave you to believe. Many of us feel just as sick with allergies as we do when we have a bad cold or the flu. Many of us prefer a cold to allergies. The major difference is that there is no hope of the allergies going away in a week... they linger on sapping the life out of you for months on end.
And if that wasn't bad enough, then you have the middle-of-the-night allergy attacks. Where you wake up at 2:00 am with a scratchy sandy feeling in the back of your throat, your eyes itching like someone has sprinkled crumbled thistles in your face, nose tickling and sneezing, your face feels puffy and swollen, your ears itch and maybe even ache deep down in the canal so much wonder if there might be something crawling around in there (but you know there isn't), and you are coughing from the raspy feeling in the top of your lungs. No matter how exhausted you were feeling when you went to bed, at this moment there is no possible hope of sleeping through the attack, so you drag out of bed and seek relief from cold water and peppermint tea. You avoid the Mountain Dew at this hour, though you do contemplate it's helpful properties for a few moments before closing the fridge door, with futile hopes that the attack will subside enough to be able to return to sleep. After using 5 or 6 tissues in the course of 2 minutes, you once again wonder what might be involved in investing stock into the company that makes Puffs Plus. You try the homeopathic spray, the essential oil of peppermint and whatever other remedies have helped in the past in hopes they will work faster this time. And then when all avenues of treatment have been exhausted you resort to distraction, and try to find soemthing to do that will get your mind off how miserable you feel, and hope that if you ignore it long enough the allergy attack will go away. Ah yes... the joys of allergy season. If only a little drop of liquid in the eyes, or a little tablet with a glass of water would cure it all away as quickly and completely as the commercials make it sound! I wish!!!