Irritating springtime sexual activity

…that’s what bugs me and many other people this time of year — the sexual activity of trees. They’re cranking out pollen and doing what “comes naturally” in order to procreate, but it sure makes the lives of many humans hell for these months. So quit whining, blow your nose, scratch your eyes and take a pill — love is in the air! And there’s no real cure…

What I have is what this article describes as oral allergy syndrome. Yes, they finally have a name for this weird allergy to many raw fruits, which people spent the last twenty years of my life telling me — as if I didn’t know — is “really weird”. Yes it is weird. I was an innovator to have it twenty-some years ago, but now it seems to be increasingly common. Blame it on the birch. (I know those yellow things in the picture are from maple trees, and yes, pollen is too small to be seen…)

I finally went to an allergy specialist a few years ago, and got shots for the past two years. This spring, I decided to give them a pass — they seemed to help somewhat, but (as the article mentions) the hassle of being in town, going to the clinic and having shots for 10 weeks in a row and then every three weeks ’til mid-summer was too much for me. And I was “lucky” — I got to have two shots per week, one in each arm that subsequently swelled up and was itchy for several days (don’t forget waiting for a half-hour afterwards to ensure you don’t go into anaphylactic shock). Believe me, they crank a lot of liquid into your arms — the doctor at the clinic was always shocked at the colour of the stuff she was told to shoot me up with (thick and dark, like maple syrup) and the amount of it she was supposed to squeeze into my arms (so much that it would take a few days for the subdermal lump of liquid to be absorbed).