I have always been afflicted by environmental allergies.
Sneezing, coughing, watery eyes, runny nose, (I sound like a pharmaceutical commercial) occasionally even rales — especially in the morning and especially in the springtime.
We always attributed it to the pine pollen in the springtime because that was the most visible culprit.
Allergies were always worst when the milky yellow clouds of pollen were blowing in the wind, but a doctor told me years later that pine pollen kernels were actually too large to be allergenic.
He did say, though, that when it rains, pine pollen kernels can swell and burst into smaller particles which can be allergenic to some people
Now I know that even though my suffering was worst when the vehicles and sidewalks were covered with pine catkins, the real villain for me was privet hedge (Ligustrum sinense).
While most other allergens might make me sniffle a bit, hedge in bloom makes me feel like I’d poured gasoline into my eyes. The only other thing that I’ve found to be as noxious as privet hedge pollen is cat dander. Both allergens make me wish I were dead.
Back in the olden days our old fashioned country doctor attributed it to, “night dust.” Even though that’s not too far off, it is reminiscent of the medieval physicians that were certain that illness was caused by bad night air. It was known as a fact back then that night vapors could give people cholera, plague and even chlamydia.
This is another case of a conveniently apparent culprit. Seasonal environmental allergies are usually milder during the day when you are up and moving around because gravity and motion helps the snot drain out of your head.
However, when you lie down at night the snot pools in your head, dehydrates somewhat, and clogs things up making for an awful early morning experience.
In 1933, Swiss Dr. Daniel Bovet invented the first antihistamine for which he received the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1957. By the time he received that award, a new antihistamine called diphenhydramine had hit the markets and was helping a great many allergy sufferers. The most common American trade name for diphenhydramine is Benadryl.
I was raised on the red Benadryl liquid. We ran through Benadryl so fast that my folks used to get it in the brown glass pint bottles directly from the pharmacist. It was good for everything from environmental allergies to bee stings and from poison ivy to sedating restless kids.
I don’t know if you can become resistant to Benadryl but my allergies seemed to peak in my early teens by which time the Benadryl didn’t seem to help much. My morning reaction to “night dust” got so bad that my parents took me back to the doc and he put me on a somewhat newer medication that he thought might be better — Chlor-Trimeton. No dice. It was no better than Benedryl and the routine of having to take a pill before bed every night was onerous.
I continued to suffer from seasonal allergies into adulthood, occasionally even progressing into allergy-mediated pneumonia. I remember one time when I was teaching at Mississippi State University, my springtime allergies got so bad that I would sit in my office unable to work on the computer because my eyes and nose were running so badly. The janitor in that building took pity on me and started delivering a couple of rolls of toilet paper to my office each day for me to wipe my nose on.
It was not till I got back to McComb and a local doctor decided to try me on a brand new medication with a totally different action from all the antihistamines I’d tried. Montelukast (a.k.a. Singulair) was a miracle for me. It seemed to completely switch off my allergies. Taking Singulair regularly, I could now smell a hedge blossom, or even hack away at a hedge bush with an axe without so much as a sniffle. I suspect I could have even snuggled with a cat, though I didn’t take the experimentation that far.
What’s more, even after I stopped taking Singulair ( I don’t remember why I stopped it) I was not afflicted with allergies to any significant degree again. It was as if taking Singulair for a year or two had largely cured my allergies. Weird, I know.
Until the last month.
Elise and I moved to Montana and I replaced all of my childhood enemies with all new allergens. Gone were the loblolly and shortleaf pines and the red and white oaks that populate southwest Mississippi. They were replaced by fir, juniper, spruce and limber pine. The Chinese privet hedge was gone, but these mountains are rife with mahogany and lilacs and other exotic-to-me species. I even saw my first tumbleweed a few days ago — in downtown Butte.
My allergies have certainly not been as bad as when I was a teen in McComb or an adult in Starkville, but I have been more congested in the mornings and I absolutely cannot stand to wear my contacts for more than a handful of hours before they are gummed up with pollen and so itchy I have to take them out.
A couple of days ago we had a windstorm, and though you couldn’t see the pollen drifting in the wind, my truck was yellow afterwards.
Until now I hadn’t really had any reason to realize that different places have different allergies.
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Dr. Patrick Parker was the Director of the Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation program at the Cardiovascular Institute of Mississippi in McComb for more than 20 years. Visit RoamingParkers.com to see more of what he does to stay fit, well and healthy.
