it’s officially pollen season!

At last Sunday's brunch table the conversation turned to pine tree pollen's annual assault on my town of Chapel Hill, NC. Various websites and TV weather people were cited as sources of the predicted starting, peaking and ending dates. Algorithms were bandied about as if we knew what the hell we were talking about. After a few minutes of this, we pivoted to less frightening subjects like the war with Iran.

Then Tuesday night the Carolina scourge arrived like the latest toy in the meteorologist toy box, the bomb cyclone of pollen. I was asleep and must have been carelessly inhaling because when I awoke my throat felt as if rubbed with coarse sandpaper. Cup after cup of water washed the grit down, but by Wednesday morning the corridors between my nose and the backs of my eyeballs had shut down like irate French farmers and their tractors on the Champs-Elysées. The movement of air was stopped in both directions as if a big truck had jack-knifed during rush hour.

When my now stuck-open mouth became the key to my survival, I was freaked out by the sensation of drowning. I launched the futile search for cold remedies every American has in their linen closets and cabinets. DayQuil and NyQuil, the orange and purple super heroes of the respiration wars, were necessary, but had apparently retired from active duty in my medicine cabinets, replaced by every manner of balm, ointment, salve, cream and homeopathic treatment for the several joints damaged by the arthritis that had welcomed me to my eighth decade on this formerly habitable planet.

      Soon I was standing bleary-eyed and out of breath in the Cough and Cold aisle of the Walgreens. The antihistamines and decongestants had already been picked over like shelves that formerly carried white bread and toilet paper before an approaching snow event.

      Not knowing what else to do, because by this time oxygen deprivation and brain fog had set up shop when logic and proportion had decamped, I persisted in the Cough and Cold aisle until my watery eyes caught a glimpse on a shelf below my ankles of the familiar orange and purple, but the words on the labels were wrong. By this time I was kneeling, not quite in prayer, but close to it, hoping for focus.

      When it came for a second, I read Daytime and Nighttime and said out loud, I think, "close enough" which is precisely what the marketing and branding geniuses at Walgreens hoped I would do. I threw orange and purple bottles plus a few more things into my basket, like a supply of Kleenex (it wasn't enough) and a sixpack of Coke Zero, headed home, skipped the Daytime (orange) and the Coke and went straight for the Nighttime (purple). After an eight-hour nap, I awoke to the same column of French tractors blockading my nasal membranes and called my doctor.

      I have an excellent primary care physician. During routine physicals she examines me like everything matters, down to the rap of her rubber hammer on my knee. She leaves no stone, so to speak, unturned in her annual search for pathology.

      She answered my call, listened to my inarticulate complaints, and gave me a plan of attack: a nasal steroid spray (Flonase), a regular nasal spray (Afrin), and humidification. In a tone of voice that said "I really mean this" she asked me to update her.

      After several rounds of sprays and humidification, my face was throbbing from the engines of a thousand French tractors. No air was clever or cute enough to get through the barricades. My lips were starting to tingle. My vision had stopped displaying anything recognizable, and the insides of my eyelids had switched to some random screensaver. At 9:30 p.m. I texted her "blockage complete in both nostrils. Humidifier on full. I’m freaking out here a little."

      At 9:37 p.m. she texted,"Try putting a warm compress over your face and nose or get in a steam environment to see if that helps." That was the last text of the night.

      Thursday morning I called the office to make an appointment and learned that my doctor was at a medical conference, but she had arranged for coverage by Dr. Wilson. I asked for the earliest possible appointment and was told that Dr. Wilson doesn't make appointments. "We call him and typically he says 'let me put on my pants and I'll be right over'." I thought "OK. This is going to be interesting," then wondered if I should stay or just go straight home and see what the situation in my liquor cabinet might be.

      The nurse led me to the examining room, measured my temperature and blood pressure and left me alone for just a few minutes until "knock knock" and there was Dr. Wilson, fully dressed. He was a cheerful-looking guy; would have looked perfectly comfortable in a Santa suit and smoking a pipe.

      After introducing himself he sat and did not do what all doctors now do: open a laptop and read silently. There wasn't actually a laptop anywhere in sight. He looked me right in the eye and said, "hop up on the table and let's have a look" first in my ears, then my mouth. He felt my throat, listened to my heart and lungs, and said "I read your chart" before asking about one of the medicines he saw there; one that's advertised on TV showing a rainbow coalition of healthy people with good teeth paddling kayaks and frosting birthday cakes.

      "Here's what I'd like you to try," said Dr. Wilson, and he proceeded to describe the critical first step in clearing out the French farmers and their tractors from my nasal passages. "Go to Whole Foods and get a bottle of lavender oil and a bottle of tea tree oil."

      Here's when I started to think again about my liquor cabinet.

      He continued, "Put six or eight drops of each in a big bowl of very hot water. Place a towel over your head and the bowl and inhale the warm vapor for about five minutes, twice a day.

      “Your nose will clear up enough so that now you can spray the Flonase (a nasal steroid), and it will be able to reach the membranes it needs to work on but couldn't before because of all that congestion."

      He must have seen the skeptical look in my eye because he explained, "It's a homeopathic remedy, and I can see by the skeptical look in your eye that you need to hear this story about when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the mountains of Korea. I caught some kind of nasty intestinal bug that had me losing stuff from both ends. A local woman brought me a concoction she had brewed from nearby plants, and told me to drink it. I was so delirious and dehydrated that I did as I was told. I woke up two days later. Cured."

      My recovery wasn't quite so dramatic but the French farmers retreated, and by Saturday the brain fog had lifted. I don't know how to paddle a kayak nor can I make anything resembling a birthday cake. But I was able to complete my taxes.