Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Dust, my microscopic nemesis

I'm finally back to normal after a horrendous evening of pain. It was brought on by dust, of all things.

Last night I went through my closets and drawers, looking for any spring clothing that's too big on me. I'll see my mom in a couple weeks, and I promised her I'd bring her some clothes to try. We're both losing weight, but she's a couple sizes behind me, so it's helpful to her when I bring her my oversized clothes.

In exchange, she's going to go through her closets and give some stuff that's too large for her so I can sell it at the local consignment store.

Now, I do have dust allergies but never expected anything as bad as what happened yesterday. After I'd gone through clothes for about half an hour, and had separated the clothes into bags, I was looking forward to a nice evening. The Gryphon was coming over, and I planned to spend a little time with him after finishing my work.

But then I began to sneeze. And sneeze. And sneeze.

Sneezes are your body's way of getting rid of bad things like allergens. But my sneezes must not have been effective, because I continued to sneeze, blow my nose and then sneeze some more.

What began as simply annoying became painful, as the muscles in my face that I use for sneezing began to get sore. I knew some sort of action had to be taken. That's when I took a non-drowsy antihistamine. Then it was a matter of waiting for it to kick in.

In the meantime, I was struggling to do my evening assignments and finding it very hard to concentrate with all the pain. I took a five-minute break, boiled some water, then put the pot on a tray, held my head over it, with a towel over top, creating a mini-steam bath. I soaked this way for a little while, and I could feel my pores opening up as the sweat flushed out many of the allergens my body was upset over.

I then rinsed my face with clean water, feeling some relief immediately. But the muscles in my face still hurt. Nothing but rest would fix that, I decided, so as soon as I finished my assignment, I put my pajamas on and went to bed.

I didn't even tell The Gryphon what I was doing. He was in the front room playing video games until he finally came in and saw me, sound asleep. I was vaguely aware of his presence but too out of it to respond.

Through the night, I slept fairly well. In the morning, I still had pain in my facial muscles, so I took some ibuprofen and went back to bed. When I awoke, the pain was finally gone.

It's cold this morning, but not quite as bad as yesterday. Una and I are taking our morning walk and then I plan to work out at the gym to try out my new weight lifting gloves. It's funny: you never really appreciate how good you feel most of the time until, for awhile, you don't.

Copyright 2005 by Alyce Wilson

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