Same song, third verse.
The weather changes, a front blows through and I find myself in the doctor’s office with a quiver of needles sticking out astern.
Happened again last week for the third time since the middle of football season.
The days have blurred, but I think it was Wednesday when I started hacking and blowing my nose and swallowing antihistamines.
By Friday I fully succumbed and asked Mario Holland if he could shoot the photos of Chandler’s Homecoming basketball game that night while I sat in front of the fireplace with a warm drink.
He graciously agreed and I made plans to go to urgent care Saturday morning. There, I joined a long line of people with most of us hacking, sniffing and clearing our throats.
COVID has reared its spiked head again with the Omicron variant, and I suspect everyone in the line and lobby was dealing with it or allergies or a typical winter upper respiratory thing.
Saturday morning, I woke up with a swollen, irritated eye as a bonus symptom.
The verdict:
- Negative COVID test result.
- My allergies may require a head transplant at some point. If you think you might want to be a donor, we should talk. - The eye irritation might have been from
- The eye irritation might have been from allergies, or it might have been from an unrelated infection. Best to treat it as contagious until it went away, the doc said.
I got two shots of steroids in the hip and a shot of antibiotics, a pack of antibiotic pills and some eye drops.
By Saturday night, the steroids had kicked in and I was feeling better. In fact, I felt so good I couldn’t sleep.
At all. About 3 a.m. I got out of bed and went in the kitchen to play my guitar quietly. At least I thought it was quietly.
About an hour later, Kindra walked into the kitchen.
“That’s a really loud guitar,” she commented. I’m feeing much better now, with the allergies 90 percent cleared up, and no one in my immediate circle has developed any eye problems.
But the circadian rhythms are still out of whack, which is why I am writing this at 4:18 a.m. Tuesday.
Writing only, with no guitar playing, I should observe.
I am grateful to have avoided COVID to this point and recognize that allergies are much, much less serious, but, dang.
I always thought you were supposed to outgrow allergies, not grow into them.