The Honest Courtesan

I’m pretty sure it’s the daisies.

When an allergy shows up later in life, it’s usually something absent from the environment of one’s formative years.  So when the severe allergic reaction I wrote about last week returned on Wednesday, virtually vanished while I was in town on Thursday, then  got so bad Thursday night I got only barely-sufficient sleep, I asked myself what was present at Sunset but not in Aberdeen, and not in the New Orleans area or Oklahoma, and not even as abundantly at Sunset in previous years?  And there was only one obvious answer:  daisies.  Oh, I’ve seen them here and there at Sunset in previous years, but this year there are so damned many it looks like I’m raising them as a cash crop.  And the symptoms started ramping up just as they really started popping up like…well, like weeds.  By Friday morning I just wanted to breathe through my nose again and get a decent night’s sleep, so I decided to try the suggestion a reader made in last Tuesday’s comments, and asked Chekhov to pick me up some before coming over for Grace’s birthday dinner.  I’d tried nasal sprays before with little luck, but that was 40 years ago, so I figured maybe they’d improved.  Well, the pharmacy Chekhov visited didn’t have the brand the reader suggested, so he got the stuff in the picture instead, figuring it was similar.  And boy, did it work!  Quite astonishingly well, in fact!  About an hour after using it, I felt dramatically better; not totally well, mind you, but I could breathe properly and wasn’t blowing my nose every 15 minutes.  And it did indeed last about 24 hours; I still woke up a lot, but a quick nose-blow and roll over, and I went right back to sleep.  I assume the allergy will fade in a few weeks once the daisy mating season is done, but at least I won’t be miserable until then.  And next year I’ll know what to do when the damned things pop up again.