Another Allergy Medicine Induced Ramble

Today I’m on pseudophedrine. Not the wimpy phenylephrine stuff that comes in Sudafed these days, but the full-on, you can make Meth out of me, pseudophedrine. This stuff is supposed to make you wired, unlike Claritin which makes me wired anyway. Why have I opted for the distracting rush of a near illegal decongestant?

Because the phenlephrine I took this morning did a sum total of nothing for my clogged ears. Whereas the pseudophedrine cleared them up exactly 12 minutes after I took it. 12 minutes! Which leads me to my next logical point:

I had to eat dinner at Piraat last night instead of the Theater Too Café. The Theater Too Café is downstairs and up the block from the theater where I spend a lot of my time either in shows or in rehearsals for said shows. A year or so ago, I went there and got a chicken wrap with humus and a little hot sauce. I immediately dubbed this the “Chicken Sandwich of God”. The name pretty much sums up my feelings on the sandwich.

Having not had one in a while, I salivated the long walk form the Embarcadero BART stop whereat I had left my sweetie to the Theater Too Café wherein I had planned to partake in the said religious experience that commoners call a wrap, but it was closed! Instead I wandered up the street to Piraat for pizza only to order rotisserie chicken, vegetables and rice. Good. Edible, but the heavens did not open up and shine a beam of light on my taste buds.

I need to go buy more pseudophed.

Photo courtesy PDPhoto.org

Claritin

I have allergies. I discovered this almost two years ago when I kept turning up at the doctor’s office complaining of flu-like symptoms. He handed me some Astelin and said “you have allergies”.

About six months later I changed doctors. My old one was in Oakland. I haven’t lived in Oakland since 2001 and it was finally time to get with the times. In the transition from my old doctor to my new doctor, I had to go about a week without any Astelin. I used Claritin instead, and quickly discovered a very unusual fact: Claritin makes me high.

My heart races a bit, but more importantly, my mind races jumping from half formed thought to half formed thought like a frog fleeing a burning forest of lily pads. I find this incredibly annoying. I can’t even concentrate long enough to play a board game, and I talk incessantly. Those of you who actually know me know this is somewhat the opposite of my normal state.

That week I was on the Claritin I drank a lot, just to take the edge off.

Last fall I went to see an allergist and found out I’m massively allergic to dust mites, or really, I’m allergic to dust mite shit. (People generally aren’t allergic to the dust mites themselves). So I started on a run of allergy shots.

Unfortunately last month we got to a dosage that results in a giant itchy welt on my arm every time I get a shot. Because of the reaction, they can’t increase the dosage, and so the shots really aren’t doing me any good. Last week, the allergist suggested I TAKE A CLARITIN THE DAY OF MY SHOT.

So I did, in hopes maybe it wouldn’t effect me the same way. It does, but somehow I managed to write this and make it coherent. Of course, it took me 2 hours, but…