Allergies and more

Everyone has some allergic reaction to something. Whether it's mild irritation from a mosquito bite or something far more serious like severe anaphylactic shock by merely breathing in the vapors of some allergen, we've all experienced this to some extent. I fall on the more severe side of this spectrum. I have been treated by an allergy specialist since I was 9-years-old and carry an arsenal of prescription medications with me at all times JUST IN CASE. I have had my share of experiences where I realized I was allergic to the hotel room I had just laid down to sleep in, the laundry detergent someone had used on their towels, the birds that had just been newly introduced to the home, or the chocolate brownies with peanut sprinkles that I had just greedily consumed.

I am sympathetic and empathetic to people suffering from allergy symptoms. Granted, it makes me a little crazy when people try to medicate severe allergies with over the counter drugs and then complain that it's your cat or your house that's the problem, but I can still empathize with them over the symptoms...and encourage them to see their physician to find a better way to manage their symptoms.

My daughter Grace does not have allergies to speak of. I am elated. Given all my problems with allergies and the role family history can play in one's likelihood of having allergies, I am overwhelmingly joyful that she never has to deal with these things. She gets a mosquito bite and she barely even notices. She can play with dogs and cats and horses and birds and do so outdoors in a meadow with tons of pollen floating about her, all while eating peanuts and chocolate and never have the slightest hint of a physical irritation from any of it.

Which is why it always throws me for a loop when she's sick and someone tells her she's having allergy symptoms.

Yesterday Grace came home from her father's house at 6:30p. She was clearly congested. Not coughing, no sore throat, not even sneezing, just a stuffed up nose. I asked her how long she had been sick. She said she wasn't sick, she had allergies, she had taken allergy medicine the day before that her father had given her, she felt better, and there was nothing to worry about. Huh? This isn't the first time this has happened. Maybe I'm arrogant, maybe I'm pious, maybe I just assume everyone has as much experience with allergies as I do...but isn't it obvious that a kid with no allergy history doesn't have allergies? And that someone who doesn't have allergies is actually catching a cold when they show cold symptoms?

I gave her a mild decongestant before she went to bed; she felt fine this morning. Before I gave her the medicine though, I explained to her that having allergies is not something that comes and goes. An allergic reaction is one that comes quickly and you can usually identify the allergen. I also explained to Grace that the most important thing when taking over the counter medicine is to take the medicine that is appropriate for what you are suffering from, not just one that seems to make you feel a little better. Sure, when you're catching a cold, an antihistamine will make you feel better because you'll get drowsy. But your congestion won't be alleviated. Sure enough, more than 24 hours after she had taken the allergy medicine (whatever it was), she was still pretty congested and I couldn't see evidence that it was getting any better.

As always, you can imagine that there's a bigger picture here that's eating at me. Two things bother me about this. The first is stupid medicating of children. Grace's father's family thinks all illness begins in allergies and that Benadryl is a cure-all. This follows from nothing I know about health care unless you have been diagnosed with allergies. Which none of them have been. And as far as I can tell, none of them really suffer from allergies of any kind. But that sore throat? Guzzle down some Benadryl. Same for a fever or stuffed up sinuses. Even if you've accepted that you have a cold, take some Benadryl too, 'cause it can't hurt you. (Do you feel sorry for the kids in this family yet?) It just makes me crazy that the simple difference between an allergic reaction and genuine cold symptoms are so poorly misunderstood. And all of these adults have enough education and resources to know better. None of them have ever been without health care.

The second half of this that makes me crazy is not unique to the "allergies vs. cold" dilemma. It's Grace's willingness to defend something that her father and his family does. She insisted with me that she was feeling better after taking the allergy medicine a day before, even though she clearly was still having cold symptoms. She said the medicine her father gave her worked. I explained that a medicine that makes you drowsy will probably make you feel a little better if you are ailing, but it won't treat the root of the problem. There's more to this story that I'll not bore you with, but the troublesome part to me is that she absolutely defends these actions to her own detriment. If we wanted to paint the situation black and white, you could say that when a situation arises in which Grace's father and I disagree on how something should be handled, Grace defends her father's actions every time. Even when she's sitting in front of me congested for the fourth day in a row.

I was thinking last night, though Grace and I have a very different storyline to our childhoods, I can relate to her on one thing: I trust my father. When he says something, I think he's right. This is putting it simply; of course I differ with him on various things now that I'm an adult. But when I was 15, I would have trusted his opinion on almost anything, despite having no real evidence that his opinions were valid or defensible. So Grace is just doing the same thing I did, and that I suppose that many kids do. When your father tells you something, you believe it. If your mother tells you your father is incorrect, you defend him and tell your mother she is mistaken, not your father.

That's all I can say about this now. There's so much more brewing in the back of my mind about how much I worry about Grace when she's with her father. It's petty and boring to list out my concerns. I think it's easier to summarize it all and say, I'm tired of having to hand the reins over to someone that I don't trust has her best interests in mind.