"I've spent the last few years building an immunity to iocaine powder."Ever since I hit my late teens/early twenties, I've had pretty bad allergies. I noticed that they tend to be the worst in late spring and in the autumn, but I never knew specifically what it was I that I am allergic to. It's really bad when I go camping, depending on where I go. I am generally miserable the entire time and most, if not all, allergy medications are useless to me at that point. The stuff people tend to swear by do extremely little for me. Claritin-D? Might as well give me a placebo. Zyrtec? Allegra? I get hardly any benefit. Pseudophedrine usually helps, though it's not an antihistamine and I hate that meth-heads make it harder to acquire.
It stinks because I enjoy the outdoors, but the outdoors doesn't enjoy me. The best way I can describe a general attack is that it's like someone taking a long, thin feather and shoving it as far as they can into my nostrils and then begin to *tickle tickle tickle tickle* constantly. It makes me miserable and it makes everyone else around me miserable.
About a year ago I went to see a specialist and had my back scratched up by different allergens so I could get a clearer picture of what I am allergic to. They make you lay there for 20 minutes while your back feels like it's had itching powder dumped on it. Most trees, grass, and weeds maxed out in less than 5 minutes and left me with large welts for the rest of the day.
He prescribed some steroid nose spray (Flonase generic) which helped greatly. But after going camping again this year, I decided to go with something else the doctor and I discussed last year:
Allergen Immunotherapy.Basically they make a serum of all the allergens you are allergic to and give you injections of increasing strength over the course of several years. It's a form of getting your immune system to slowly tolerate and ignore the allergens. Instead of treating a symptom, it's treating the cause.
I start tomorrow, and I have to carry an epi-pen on injection days (a self administering shot of a adrenaline in case of a major flare up, which is rare but still a precaution). Personally I'm excited because doing this will either do two things: It will make me completely immune to all the things I am allergic to (which 70% of the folks who do this end up with) or, the worst case scenario is that my allergies will be far, far less severe. I will be happy with either one.
It will be nice to stay true to my ranger heart and be able to be out in the wilderness again without feeling like it's my own special hell.
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