I have some kind of allergy situation going on, and am not a fan. I don’t know what’s triggering it, here in mid-August. Somebody said ragweed, but I got the impression he was just pulling that “information” straight out of his ass. In any case, there’s a constant crystal-clear drippage and itchy eyes and a lot of sneezing. It seems like whenever everybody else is hocking and hacking and blowing their noses, I’m perfectly fine. Then I pay for my smugness during late summer.
Are you allergic to anything? I don’t have anything major in that category, except this crap that’s going on right now. Also, I’m prone to a rash on the inside of my right elbow. It’s happened all my life, at random times. It feels like an allergic reaction to something, but all the armchair doctors I’ve encountered think it has to do with heat or humidity. In fact an actual doctor told me that once, as well. “Yeah, that’s a heat rash,” she said during the third second of her extensive four-second examination. I reject her findings. It’s some kind weird reoccurring allergic thing that I’ve been getting for more than 40 years. It only happens on my right arm, and can kick-in during the dead of winter or the height of summer. But whatever.
What are you allergic to? Tell us about it, won’t you?
And have you ever gone to one of those doctors who supposedly pinpoint the exact stuff that triggers your own personal snot factory? Everybody I know who’s done that has a ridiculously long list of things they’ve clearly memorized and seem exceedingly proud of. It always starts with “dust,” for some reason.
I’ve never been to a so-called allergist, or a chiropractor, or a sleep clinic, or a person who speaks with the dead. Is it unfair that I put all of them in roughly the same category? Probably, right?
I did go to a palm reader once, while semi-drunk, in California. He told me, basically, that my current marriage is doomed and I will remarry and start a second family during my 40s. I thought that was pretty weird, and never mentioned it to Toney. At least not until I was out of my 40s. What in the knuckle-cracking hell??
What niche “doctor” have you visited? I’m not being very respectful, am I? Oh well. How about hypnotism? Aroma therapy? Acupuncture? Did any of it help, long-term?
I worked with a woman who went to an acupuncturist to stop smoking. She’d go to his house, late at night, and there would be people sitting there waiting to see the guy, with envelopes full of money. I think he pushed a thumbtack through one of her earlobes, and she SWORE it cured her for good. Fast forward four months… and she’s outside chugging cigs again on all her breaks. Perhaps she required a maintenance therapy that involved stapling a piece of notebook paper to her upper thigh? Admittedly, my knowledge is limited.
Also, what curious things do you notice people being smug about? Like me and my lack of springtime allergies? I can come up with one, right off the top of my head: folks with unlimited data. Smug motherfuckers… Also, people who have had a lot of surgeries, and have rods and shit. Know what I mean? You can see the twinkle in their eye when they start talking about that stuff.
I need to go now. Another work week awaits! My nipples are exploding with delight.
Have a great day, my friends!
I’ll see you again on Thursday.
Now playing in the bunker
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First first ever!!
I am allergic to second I guess. At least today I am.
Ahhh, there’s the smugness, heh-heh.
I’ve got the dripping and sneezing, and I’ve had it for a month. I don’t know what it is, but it’s a pain in the ass.
I once a problem with my thumb. One of the many things they did was stick some sort of needle thing in my hand to measure the electrical impulses or whatever. They also wanted to me to go to physical therapy for months. I did not do that. It went away eventually.
I went to a hypnotist to help me stop smoking. I fired one up on the drive home that day and figured it didn’t work.
Brian Regan has a classic bit about those few people who can drop the phrase “I walked on the moon” in response to anyone’s tale of “I can top that” smugness.
I have visited the AMA pantheon of specialists, e.g., urologists, orthopedic surgeons, allergists, cardiologists, etc. Each of them has a specific routine of indignities that they use to help diagnose your problems. Massive rectal things, muscle pins + electricity, chemical stress tests, stuff that would have made the Gestapo proud.
Allergies? Cats, definitely cats. It’s so bad that I had a severe allergy attack while walking by the lions and tigers at the National Zoo in DC. I think various allegies develop as you age. I am now allergic to the skins on apples, peaches and pears…lips go numb and I start drooling like a labrador retriever. OTC Nasonex seems to work but it is beaucoup expensive.
I could throw myself off the Cliffs of Moher when some smug asshole starts going on and on about the new fad diet he/she is on. Grapefruit, cabbage, ox tails and raisins… Holy jumping Christ on a jackhammer I DON’T EFFING CARE!!!
And have you ever noticed most of these people who drop wight fast a) look pasty and sickly and b) gain it all back and THEN some in a few weeks.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for people slimming down and feeling better about themselves. But do it in a normal fashion – an array of foods in your diet and exercize) may work! And for the love of all that’s holy, don’t tell me anything about it.
Supposedly pollen is up. And my office is so dusty they could film a horror movie in this place.
I so agree with you, madz! Any mention of “gluten” or “vegan” sends me into a rage! I don’t give a damn about your allergies nor your diet so STFU about it when speaking to me. Wow, I sound a little hostile there, don’t I.
yup. You’re one of the reasonable peeps out here. Ignore the whiners. Just a thought.
John
I used to have severe allergies in the Fall and so I looked like some kind of stoner in all my school pictures because of the antihistamines. However, as I’ve gotten older, I seem to now have allergies in the Spring–especially lilies. And it’s only the white lilies, star-gazers and day lilies don’t seem to bother me at all.
I’m also allergic to a lot of seafood: shrimp, lobster, crab, basically any crustacean. If I’m even in the same room with that stuff, I swell up like the Michelin Man!
People who are oh-so-smug about their surgeries or how sick they are annoys me to no end! I want to shout to them, “Oh yeah? Well, I’m DEAD…try and top that!!”
Yes, I have a rod, but I rarely talk about the thing, and I’ve never let an acupuncturist get within a hectare of it.
On a related topic, I can’t believe Jeff decided to go to a palm reader and found the only male practitioner in the contiguous United States. I’ve heard that a significant minority of these ladies predict that you’re going to give them forty bucks for a hand job with considerably more accuracy the Jean Dixon. Perhaps it’s just a rumor spread by the related chiropractic industry.
John
No one is more smug than craft beer drinkers. I like an IPA as much as the next guy, but I’m not going to blow the brewmaster.
Hold it, Joe. You might have stumbled onto a clue about the mysterious rash on the inside of Jeff’s right arm.
And while we’re here in this deep artesian aquifer, I want to go on record as “undecided” with regard to blowing the brewmaster: I’d like to take a quick peek at her bona fides first.
jtb
No allergies. No fancy specialists unless you include gall bladder or kidney stone removal doctors. I also get tired of the micro-brew braggarts. My brother-in-law being the king of it. He likes to puff air and roll his eyes every time I pick up a domestic and take a swig.
Oh another bunch that need a good ass kicking: Gym Groupies. Those folks who are all fit-bitted, spandex clad, constantly checking their heart rate and going on and on about how many reps they did, or which personal goal they set. It ranks right up their with the surgery, medical mystery obsessed and I find myself not even covering up my yawning.
You just nailed another “trigger” of mine…surgery. Just last night, I got the below message from someone I haven’t seen nor have I really talked to in over 30 years. I think I ground my molars down to nubs when I read it. She was getting her point across and attempted to throw in a bit of humor with her comment. I wanted to stuff socks down her throat but instead I just did not respond to her message and don’t think I will “chat” with her again for I fear I will get the minute details of her many surgeries and meds she takes daily. Oh, I failed to mention she is a retired RN; you would think the last thing she would want to talk about would be medical procedures!
“I have had 23 surgeries in all. When I get bored I go to the hospital and ask them can they find something else to remove or repair.”
Wow, thats my best friend. Whats the saying “your best friend calls you out on your bullshit but keeps listening to your bull shit” or something like that. I’ve had one surgery so I have no idea whats the allure.
I get head allergies (eyes, nose, sinuses) from cedar and hay.
Food allergy is onions. I don’t have the anaphylactic swell-up-and-die reaction, just the so-much-stomach-acid-I-wish-I-was-dead reaction. If any onion somehow sneaks by, the only way to get relief is it coming out the same way it went in.
And don’t get me started on, “There’s not that much onion in it- you can’t even taste it.” That’s not the point; and why is there any at all if you can’t taste it?!
Not an allergy, an intolerance.
Yeah, but it’s easier to call it an allergy; that gets people’s attention more than “intolerance.” Intolerance gets the, “Pfft- you won’t even know they’re there,” treatment.
Got it. Onions blow out both ends, but my MD says it’s an intolerance…. I blew out his office bathroom to prove it. Farkers knew I was there…. Rat bastid….
After a relatively allergy-free life, I’ve managed to develop old-man allergies, which might or might not be actual allergies. Hell, I used to replace the Kleenex box on my desk once a year. Now I buy a new box for the car and a new box for my home office once or twice a month. I don’t think I’m actually allergic to anything. I think my sinus cavities are just starting to break down and leak, like the oil pan on a 1967 Mustang after the Baja 1000 race.
Other things leak too. Fuck them.
jtb
Started out with “seasonal” allergies when I was a kid. They now encompass all four seasons and are steadily getting worse. Over the counter meds just about keep the wheels on well enough to function daily.
I’ve had a condition in my hand for years where my fingers go ice-cold white when the temp dips below 50 or so. I also had the pleasure of going to a neurologist for the “needle test” where they start jabbing needles into your hand and check the monitor for electrical action, then proceed up the arm and into the neck. And of course everything was normal, because a multitude of people had already told me it sounds like Raynaud’s Syndrome – just a shrinking of the blood vessels. So one alleged specialist down.
I have, however, had a couple different injuries that required physical therapy in lieu of surgery or medication. I was skeptical at first, but both time their voodoo stretching and mickey-mouse exercises worked like a charm. Now swear by them.
The smugness of Yankee or Cowboy fans, when their team is winning and they decide to come out of the woodwork, is sometimes borderline unbearable. I know it’s not right to hope for plane crashes, but….just sayin’.
https://thebowentechnique.com/what-is-the-bowen-technique/
This shit is for real!! The selling point for me was their attitude. Give them 6 visits and if it doesn’t help it doesn’t work for you. Unlike a chiropractor who wants your business every week for the rest of your life. I did it years ago for my back (congenital) and it hasn’t hurt since.
Allergies, I’ve had a few but then again too few to mention. you know that’s not true When I was a kid I was pretty indestructible. In my 20s I developed spring ‘hay fever’ and mostly toughed it out – benadryl makes me loopy and gives me weird dreams. I eventually figured out the allergy was to holly pollen, we had 3 big holly trees outside the dining room & bedroom windows, I also have a topical allergy to pine trees; at Christmas I would insist on a live tree and end up with hives all over my arms from setting up / decorating the tree.
In my 50s I developed an allergy to poison ivy. I don’t even need to touch it, just get close to it and I end up with weeping sores. Yeah it sucks
I used to have food allergies like that, girl. Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew, when I bit off more than I could chew, but through it all, when there was doubt I ate it up and spit it out.
jtb
Oh Frankie, (swoon)
I developed a Mollusc (clams, mussels, squid) allergy in my mid-20s, out of the blue: after eating calamari I had the sweats and puked until I had burst capillaries around my eyes, but nobody else who shared the plate got sick. A couple years later I ate pasta in clam sauce without thinking, and that didn’t go well either. I miss eating fresh-caught calamari on the boat, but otherwise hadn’t been a big Mollusc muncher (zing!) anyway. Fortunately, the allergy doesn’t include Crustaceans (shrimp, crab, lobster) — I probably would’ve burned something down over that one: southern CA yielded lots of spiny lobster and now the Pacific NW means plenty of fresh prawn and Dungeness crab. Mmmm…
A mollusk allergy would suck-diddly-uck. I do love the clams, mussels, oysters, scallops etc. One of the traditions in my dad’s family is making clam chowder, and I would hate to give that up. And just for the record, the chowder my cousin Bill makes is markedly inferior to mine.
Fuck Bill and the geoduck he rode in on.
Just thought I’d pitch in.
A quarter of all marine organisms are mollusks. And, according to Stephen Jay Gould, there’s no such thing as a fish. Maybe that’s why they’re so hard to catch.
jtb
Swordfish.