Published: August 25, 2009 08:46 am      

Weather takes unpredictable toll

I felt slow.

Not that I didn’t anticipate that feeling for maybe a day, but after mid-week, I started to worry.

Last Tuesday I returned to work feeling a little under the weather. I had just returned from a trip to my hometown (Creston), and after a weekend filled with golf, late nights and traveling, I was beat when I crashed on my sofa Monday night.

Needless to say, I was near pathetic at work Tuesday morning. It got so bad, even my co-workers noticed I lost a step laying out the paper in the morning. All I needed was to get through Tuesday and I could breeze through the rest of the week.

When rising out of bed Wednesday, I felt surprisingly almost worse than I did Tuesday. Maybe I just needed a shower. So I hopped in the shower and when I moseyed out, I felt awful.

This was ridiculous. It’s been a little more than year since I graduated from college and I could have easily handled this situation during that time. The aging process certainly could not have this much effect this early. At this pace, I’ll be 30 and not able to work the week after playing golf.

After crashing again on my couch Wednesday, I summoned the advice of my resident nurse — my wife. Her diagnosis usually calls for toughening up and getting more rest. But this prognosis caught me by surprise.

“What's your symptoms?” she asked, seemingly amused by the situation.

“I have a sore and clogged throat, cough all the time, have watery eyes, can’t get rid of this pounding headache and am tired all the time,” I said, barely able to squeeze out complete sentences. I still did not know why my wife, Christina, flashed a smile on her face. Couldn’t she see that I was on the verge of hospitalization?

“And after I mowed today, I thought my eyes were on fire,” I added, looking for the slightest bit of sympathy, only to find nothing.

It didn’t take long for my nurse to make her decision. I suffered from allergies. (Christina added that my long weekend probably didn’t help, but she has no proof for those baseless accusations.)

For many years I chastised my brothers and Christina, either to their face or behind their backs, about their supposed allergy attacks. When the affliction came, it always seemed to sprout during the most opportune times of raking, mowing or other outdoor chores.

Allergies affect 35 million people, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. So I now I must apologize to those people that I long thought suffered from a made up disease. I’m sorry.

I don’t know how people don’t go crazy, knowing every year at around the same time they’ll feel tired, cough and sneeze uncontrollably and endure a splitting headache. If these problems return, I’ll go nuts.

Luckily Christina stocks the cupboards with allergy medication, so after popping a few pills (in a safe manner), I was back to my old ways when I came back to work Monday.

That week taught me a lot about getting older. First, I can still develop crazy maladies that I thought I outgrew when I entered middle school. And, because it was allergies that brought me down, I can eliminate the notion that I can’t stay out like I used to.

I now just have to worry about staying awake for the local nightly news.



Scott Levine is the Associate Editor at the Clinton Herald. He can be reached at scottlevine@clintonherald.com.