Anaphylactoid
I was sitting here quietly fiddling around on my computer. And one of the guys who lives here came out of the bathroom. He’d anointed himself in cologne. My first thought was that he needed to learn to just apply a little, not marinate in it.
Then my nose began to run. My lungs filled up. My eyes watered. My throat began to constrict. I was coughing badly, but still having extreme difficulty breathing. My blood pressure dropped by quite a bit, and quickly. I could feel it change very clearly, and felt like I was on the verge of passing out.
Anaphylaxis is something I’d never experienced. I didn’t have problems with bee stings. I had an allergic reaction to something in the air here in Delano every fall, one that would sometimes make one of my eyes swell shut. That was the worst I’d experienced, and it’s been that way for years.
But something in this particular cologne did not like me. I was able to breathe, though it was difficult. But that was still pretty scary to struggle for breath the way I was.
The onset was fast. Damn fast. Maybe a minute and a half to two minutes from the time I first noticed the strong smell of the cologne to fighting for breath. It also passed fairly quickly once I got away from the trigger. But the ten-ish minutes that it went on scared the hell out of me. It felt a lot longer than that.
I can ask him not to wear that cologne. As a matter of fact, he’s already said he’s going to be throwing it away. But I can’t control what the rest of the world does and does not wear. So I’m now looking to speak with a doctor and get myself an Epipen in case of another round of this, or worse.
And now that it’s over, I’m very, very tired from the stress and the physical reactions. All I want is sleep.
Aaargh. Grrr.
For fuck’s sake.
I swear, when I can finally move out of this hellhole, I’m divorcing every single fucking member of my family except my mom. They can all fucking rot. Dysfunctional, abusive, judgmental, self-centered, useless, uncaring, compassionless assholes, the lot of them. And that’s the better segment of the lot.
If there were any way to do it, I’d get my mom and walk out. Right the fuck now.
Maybe they should all be put in a cage to fight it out among themselves. Then the survivors can be shot down like the rabid dogs they are.
Fucking sick of it.
