kate_schaefer | Life with my little histamines

I am allergic to a cubic whackload of things that humans customarily eat: shrimp (and all its kin and a bunch of things that aren't particularly related to it besides, lobsters and langustinos and crabs and crayfish and sea cucumbers and snails and slugs and squids and octopodes), cashews, melon, wheat, lamb, mangos. I'm allergic to things that are naturally in the air we breathe: grass pollen, birch pollen, maple pollen, alder pollen, scotch broom, ragweed. I'm allergic to things that end up in the air we breathe because of industrial processes: gasoline fumes (which I sometimes perceive as smelling like expensive perfume), expensive perfume (which, yes, sometimes smells like gas fumes to my nose), cheap perfume, most soaps, most detergents, asphalt, formaldehyde. And if you burn almost anything, odds are good that I'll react to it, although so far I'm okay with charcoal (no lighter fluid, please) and well-aged firewood (but I won't stand directly in the smoke). Also cats, dogs, ferrets, and undoubtedly giant pouched Gambian rats.

It might seem as though the reasonable reaction to all these allergies -- so many allergies that my allergist stopped testing me, because what's the point if I react to everything? -- would be to live in a bubble. I don't want to do that. What I did for many years was to take Claritin (and then generic loratadine) before getting up every single day, reduce the amount of dust in my house, and rotate the foods I ate with a fanaticism usually associated with divine inspiration and funny hats. For good measure, I also wore funny hats.

This didn't keep me from being miserable when trees and grass had unnatural congress in my nose or from withdrawing hastily when innocent people who had washed their clothes in ordinary old detergent got too close to me, but it did allow me to interact with the world in a reasonably normal way most of the time. Sometimes I'd have to cancel an engagement because I just couldn't breathe outside my house (my house: land of air filters, unscented cleaning products, and no carpet), but most of the time you'd hardly know about the great big scarlet A for Allergic on my chest. That is, you know about my scarlet letter, because you're my friend, and the ushers at the symphony know, because they've helped me change seats when people sitting nearby are wearing clouds of cologne, but strangers passing on the street don't know.

Since February 2007, I've been going through a different allergy regimen. I no longer take loratadine. I don't rotate my foods. I still wear funny hats and I still try to keep the dust levels way down. In addition, I now get a shot once every two months. This shot is supposed to retrain my T-cells so that they don't overreact to ordinary harmless substances. In the few days around the shot, I eat an eccentric restricted diet (fish, venison, rhubarb, yams, the outside leaves of lettuce or cabbage, cooked carrots, cooked celery, sea salt, parsnips, white potatoes; that's it. No fat, no fruit). I stay in my room and avoid, not just everything that I know I'm allergic to, but everything that I could possibly become allergic to while my T-cells are being retrained.

During this period, I watch a lot of movies, because I can't read new books (could become allergic to the fresh ink), old books (might be musty), newspapers (too dusty), or magazines (fresh ink). I can read middle-aged books, and I have a supply of those carefully set aside, though sometimes their ink turns out to be too fresh because they haven't been read enough yet. Sometimes I really can't read the middle-aged books, because a few hours after the shot, I start going through allergy symptoms in rapid succession (hives, flushing, confusion), and I just can't concentrate on reading.

(I've gone on writing rather longer than I meant to. This is all introduction to reviews of the last set of movies I watched during an allergy purdah, as I prepare for my next allergy purdah. I'll post those reviews later.)