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WHEN I think back on my youth, there are whole sections missing.
Not because something dark or depressing happened during that period of childhood.
But because I was loopy as a loon, my head wobbly from one of the many bottles of antihistamines, decongestants or other elixirs that filled our medicine cabinets.
For much of my youth, mornings started with a rapid-fire succession of sneezes, wheezes and snorts.
During several seasons, that wake-up wackiness was followed by days of alternating between explosive sneezes and a nose that ran like an artisan well.
These memories are vivid this week because spring pollens have me running once again.
The good news is that because of modern medicines, caring doctors and a long regimen of allergy shots in two stretches during my youth, allergies hit me for only a few weeks each spring.
But even one day of it is enough to remind me how allergies made some of my youth no fun.
The choice back then was between the miserable symptom or getting dosed into a catatonic state by drugs that left me dopier than a pickled troll.
These days, doctors can dispense drugs that alleviate symptoms without knocking you out. And there are even over-the-counter drugs that can stop the suffering without sending you to la la land.
My salvation as a youngster was allergen immunotherapy, a series of allergy shots that worked like a light switch, quickly making me symptom free.
To get them, my stepfather and I would travel from Warsaw in Richmond County to the office of Dr. Charles Griffith in the Mount Holly section of Westmoreland County.
In the initial years of going there, the doctor would dispense medicine right there in the office.
His nurses would prepare it, pulling down on the pump tops of the large vats of the medicines to fill plastic bottles that would get hand-written labels and dosages.
The thing my kids never believed was that the shots I got there when I was very young came courtesy of syringes with needles the size of pencil leads.
When allergies returned after I moved to Fredericksburg years later, it necessitated another round of those shots here.
By the time I began that round of shots, they'd figured out that you could mix some of the allergens together, helping me feel like less of a pin cushion.
The other huge improvement was the introduction of the small needles that I would barely feel.
Though I'm cured for much of the year, one of the early spring pollens still sends me scurrying for one of the modern medicines that turns off the drain in my nose.
In a strange way, the short stretch of suffering is uplifting, reminding me how much better life is now. Being a groggy gnome for long stretches of your life is no fun.
Rob Hedelt: 540/374-5415
Email: rhedelt@freelancestar.com
