Puff Me Up!

Hey, boys and girls – to start off today’s blog post, here’s a pop quiz.  See if you can guess what all these have in common:

H.R. Pufnstuf (Sid & Marty Krofft Saturday TV show from the 70s)

Violet Beauregarde (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”)

The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man (“Ghostbusters”)

and...

Randy wearing the snow suit in “A Christmas Story”

Give up?  

Not one of these characters was ever more swollen and puffy than I am.  

Today’s discussion is about allergies … or, in other words, why God has put this curse on my immune system.  I go to Mass every week.  I DO try.  So what’s up with that?

Okay …. He doesn’t hate me, I know that.  I just tend to get a little frustrated when I can’t remember what my ankles used to look like.  And, given that I’ve been living on Claritin D for the past six weeks, I don’t think I’ve slept for more than four straight hours during any given 24-hour period.  I need to breathe. I need to go to work.  Everything else is secondary. I know the constant buzzing in my ears is annoying, and I do wish the voices in my head would stop, but I figure there will be time for that in the winter.  December is a nice, calm month.  Nothing ever happens in December, right?  

Okay, I do realize I’m not special.  Years ago, a doctor in Willoughby told me that he’d never met any native Clevelanders who could breathe out of both sides of their noses at the same time. He said it had something to do with living by Lake Erie. Of course, I also recently had a doctor tell me – after extensive allergy testing – that the only thing I was officially allergic to was cockroaches. Now … my house doesn’t have roaches. I’ve never seen a roach in this house.  But, ever since the test results, it’s given me something new and horrible to think about when I turn out the lights and try to go to sleep every night.  What if there ARE roaches but I don’t see them?  Do they swarm at night?  Are they plotting with the spiders who live in the garage?  And if they’re here, why isn’t Miss Kitty stepping up and informing me? Oh, I forgot – she’s too busy attacking the vermin living in the Invisible Realm.  I see her pouncing on things that aren't there and I can't figure out if she's seeing things, I'm seeing things, or if that thousand legger is still running around the living room (those little devils are hard to see).

So I ponder these things, lying in the dark.  Know how kids worldwide fear the monsters living under their beds?  They don’t know how good they’ve got it.  I've decided that living longer doesn't make the monsters go away, it just makes them more creative in coming up with ways to kill me.

But back to my allergy issues.  I know what you’re saying (because I’m psychic as well as delusional):

“Are you drinking enough water, Brenda?”

“Are you eating too much salt, Brenda?”

“Have you stopped drinking caffeine, Brenda?”

“Why are you always writing about bugs?”

And my answers, of course, would be, “Absolutely … not at all … of course… and Because I Like It." And then I’d pause and suck down yet another Diet Coke and chase it with two cans of Spicy V-8 juice because nothing else feels good when I’m depressed and it’s this hot outside.  

Yes, I realize water’s important … but it tastes terrible, I’m sorry, it just does.  You know how we’re all supposed to drink, I don’t know, twenty liters a day? (which would be the equivalent of what’s sloshing around my joints?) If I’m lucky,  I can drink a couple small bottles without gagging.  I’ve tried dumping fruity powders in the stuff but, with every swallow, I feel like I’m being punished for something.  And yet, okay, I know it’s good for me.  Diet Coke, on the other hand, is not.  I’m positive my ol’ pal “DC” is directly responsible for that massive kidney stone I had surgically removed while I was working in Miami a few years ago.  And, when I’m having a rare, objective, out-of-body experience while I’m drinking it, I realize I’d probably live longer drinking battery acid.  Diet Coke is my best friend and is not good for me.  On the other hand, I've always had a history of choosing friends who are a little messed up and probably not all that good for me either.   At least my fun friends fit that description. 

And don’t get me started on the V-8.  There are five foods on this earth I would never give up even if you promised me a million bucks for doing it: shrimp, lobster, chocolate, V-8 and tropical-flavored Smarties. It’s really sad and pathetic not one member of the fruits and vegetables family made that Top Five (unless you count the V-8, but I think that’s kind of pushing it).  Sure explains a lot, though.

As for salt, well, I don’t see it.  I mean … c’mon …. How much sodium could a tiny little 5-ounce can of Spicy V-8 have, right? 20mg? 30? 50? 330?  (Guess which stinking number is the right one).  This is just so not fair.  Shouldn’t the drawings of the colorful vegetables on the can automatically cancel out some of the life-shortening essence of this magical drink?  And I never use a salt shaker, not even when I’m eating Campbell's Soup or General Tso's from Chin's Pagoda.  So really, how could I possibly have salt issues?  

I could give up the caffeine, but we all know that’s so not going to happen.

The drugs help a little.  I’m not a big fan of Zyrtec, but my sister is.  As long as all my Claritins have a “D” at the end, I can survive.  I also have a colorful collection of various snot-blasters sitting in my medicine chest. But I really miss the Dr. Neil nasal rinse I used to use. I had total faith in the stuff until some news show reported that a few people were getting fatal brain infections from amoebas swimming in the tap water.  (Is an amoeba a bug?  If it can kill you, it should be).

Changing my diet seems to be the most logical plan of attack.  But, given that I’m willing to make exactly zero compromises with my current lifestyle, I guess I’m stuck looking like Jabba The Hutt every time spring and summer rolls around (which is what I’ll be doing on the floor if this gets any worse).  Still, it could be, in fact,  a lot worse.  Years ago, when I had to take steroids for my uveitis, I turned into a human blowfish. When my sister visited from California that winter, she took one look at me and cried.