It’s a War

For those of you that don’t know me personally, I sneeze a lot. The usual case happens while somebody is speaking and I sneeze for two or more times in a row. The funny thing about it, it’s that I don’t fully sneeze, I sort of close my mouth to avoid spraying everyone around me. This leads to a different sneezing sound, a little squeak. After almost 30 years of sneezing, I finally decided to go to an allergist and get tested. First, they pinch you in the back with all of the spring/summer oils, some negative controls, histamine and I wait for 15 mins. The doctor walks in, looks at my back for reactions and tells me that I’m allergic to maple, birch, feather, cottonwood, etc. Then he wants to make sure that those that didn’t react are in fact negative, so the nurse gives me under the skin shots: 11 of them (ouch!). In conclusion, he says it’s not bad, but this is a war, and I’ll need the weapons to fight it. He loads me up with nasal sprays, pills, eye drops, etc. In the end, he’ll probably cook up a serum for me to get in shot form until my body builds enough immunity against the allergens. Of course, before this day, I did not know any of this, so I’m hoping to hear from you, how well these treatments work and how annoying they can be (besides of course my own googling). Enough with the allergies, the main thing I wanted to say was that Google Calendar was released today and I was thinking that doctors should offer iCal urls for all of their patients. Then I could just point Google Calendar to all of my family doctors and have a reliable source of scheduling. Now, if I would only look at my calendar before committing to a meeting or appointment.