Letter from Boston

Allergy Season Hits

By MASAKO YAMADA

We've had an unnaturally late spring in Boston this year. It was cold and damp for most of April, and we even had snow at the end of the month. There is the old saying, "April showers bring May flowers," but hearing it has not made us feel much better.

Now May is here, and the weather has gotten warm enough for us to shed our winter sweaters. Finally, the flowers and trees have started to bud (thanks to the April showers, no doubt).

However, in addition to revealing beautiful signs of life, the plants have also been releasing that pesky enemy of allergy sufferers: pollen. The pollen level seems especially high this year. It is almost as if the plants had carefully stored their pollen reserves during the cold months, and they have now been given a chance to explode. All I can say is that my nose knows that spring has arrived.

I went to a classical music concert tonight and noticed that many of the people in the audience were sniffling. It's common for people to cough or sneeze and shuffle papers in between movements at a concert, but some people were sniffling even while the music was playing.

Unfortunately, I was one of them. I had to keep a tissue within close reach at all times. I knew that all of the snifflers did not have colds but were rather reacting to the pollen outside.

My companion noticed early in the evening that I was sniffling and he asked whether the trees had been getting to me. I was surprised that he didn't ask me whether I had a cold, but then he said that the pollen was affecting him as well.

He lives in the city but he told me that he'd gone to visit his family in the suburbs and even that short trip had exposed him to enough pollen to make him feel sick.

I've been feeling miserable for the past few days, even though I don't live in a particularly tree-heavy neighborhood. Although I'd trade in my symptoms for good health any day, the good thing about having pollen allergies is that there are lots of sympathetic people with whom to commiserate.

I casually mentioned my symptoms to a friend who had been visiting our apartment, and he pulled out a couple of pills from his wallet and gave them to me. He said that after trying different kinds of med icines, he'd finally found one that seemed to work and didn't make him drowsy.

The medicine he gave me was a herbal medicine, so just one dose didn't really make me feel better, but I was happy that he offered his advice. I've heard from another source that certain prescription medicines also work well.

Given the number of advertisements I see for prescription allergy medicines, I suppose that the market is very hot. The medicines seem to be as popular as antidepressants and Viagra.

Sometimes the TV news broadcasts even give an "allergy index" to tell allergy sufferers how the weather will affect them that day (I think this index combines pollen count, humidity and wind conditions).

The question is why so many people are allergic to things. I have heard that allergies can fade in and out of one's life and that they can be activated by a combin ation of various environmental stimuli.

I don't know the details of what's going on in my case but I do know that my allergies are in the active phase right now. I never used to get sick, but not only do I have pollen allergies that cause coldlike symptoms and itchy, red eyes, I also have certain allergic reactions that cause my skin to break out in a rash.

I've taken antihistamines to try to relieve the symptoms, but, unfortunately, they make me feel very sleepy.

Pollen doesn't get into my eyes when my eyes are closed, so I tend to feel better after a nap, but this is obviously not an ideal solution when I have work to do. I wish I could just fall asleep at night and wake up without any discomfort, but the best I can do is distract myself until the trees stop mating.

It's a small price to pay for having plant life on the Earth.

Shukan ST: May 19, 2000

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