allergies

The Swarm


Mosquito

Image by Gravitywave via Flickr

If it’s not birds, it’s mosquitoes. The near constant rain has resurrected a long dormant type for double teaming duty with the regular bloodsuckers we normally have. The new variety though isn’t nocturnal. It likes sunshine too making it impossible to avoid being bitten.

The Fort’s soccer fields and playgrounds practically pulsate with them. Dee and I have been swarmed twice in the last week and it makes me wonder how people coped back in yore without pesticide deterrents.

By “swarmed” I mean literally covered. Remember those commercials where the guy sticks his arm into an aquarium filled with the little pests and it disappears under the creatures. That kind of swarmed.

I don’t even have to be bitten to itch. For some reason, just contact sets my skin aflame with intense itching that last for about 10 or so minutes after.

And with West Nile and encephalitis being a mosquito carried threat anymore, it’s hard to shrug the plague off as just a summer side-effect to be endured. It also makes me feel a bit guilty leaving Dee to fend at soccer camp this week, slowly eaten by mosquitoes all day.

Summer in Alberta is not as awesome as years past.

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Ow! My Ear Hurts!


Ear Infection

Image by clappstar via Flickr

Ear infections were the bane of my early childhood. I vividly remember having my ear drum lanced when I was about 4 years old. Easily one of the most painful medical procedures ever and remember, I’ve given birth and had my tonsils out as an adult – among other things, so I have a vast base for comparison.

Ear aches are common for me again because of the whole sinus issues thing. I had hoped the recent allergy testing would prove revelatory and provide a basis for relief.

No such luck.

I am allergic to nothing though I am having histamine over-reactions. Blood is off somewhere being micro-analyzed but the allergist doesn’t hold out much hope of finding a concrete cause because my irritants are man-made/chemical in nature.

“Well,” Rob said, ” at least we know that earth isn’t rejecting you. You are rejecting the earth.”

Only the man dominated parts of it.

The last couple of nights, as I also battle a mutant cold, my eyes have puffed like and itched and I couldn’t figure out why until it occurred to me that the blanket we’d brought up from the living room for extra warmth smelled like Rob’s mother.

The perfume was the culprit and the offending blanket is now in the wash.

But it’s frustrating not knowing what will trigger a reaction and I am tired of taking allergy medicine daily when the reality is that I don’t come into contact with triggers daily.

An allergic reaction to sawdust right before the holiday laid the foundation for sinus issues which triggered my ear trouble and set me up for a hard fall with this cold I now have – courtesy, we believe, of the soon to be FIL.

Years of allergic reactions have damaged my Eustachian tubes until the weenies clamp closed at the slightest provocation.

Going to the doctor in the old days of my American life meant antibiotics and a swift return to the land of the tolerably living, but in the Canadian wilds, I am told to use OTC’s and suck it up, which – unsurprisingly takes longer and about half the time lands me back in the doctor’s office with a “take to my bed” kind of infection.

What to do? What indeed.

Personally, I loathe taking Rx drugs because I am the kind of person for whom side-effects are a given. And though life is flexible enough that I can take to my bed – bed is boring.

Home remedies only take a person so far but so far so good in my case. Without a fever (and I pretty much have to be consumed with disease to run a fever at any rate), I can expect little action from the medical profession.

Yoga starts up again tonight. It might be a seated posture class. Just saying.

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A Session with The Reiki Master


reiki cat

Leslie, my old college chum, sent me a message via Facebook not long ago asking if I would be interested in helping her out. She’s studying Healing Touch and needed to practice her distance healing.

Iowa to Alberta is a purty fer distance so it qualifies.

I’ve mentioned Les before. She has always been the most interesting and open to all things of my friends. Her training includes Reiki and she is at master level, but she is exploring Healing Touch too. Similar and yet not, it involves tapping the cosmic energy or the universe or God – whatever resonates most for you in order to wrap your understanding about what amounts to super-sensitive/charged beings manipulating life force to promote well-being, health and healing if necessary.

Do I believe in this?

Totally.  I can see the air after all. Multi-colored specs ripple all around me. I was probably five or six when I realized that not everyone could see them, and as it is hard to explain exactly what I see without alarming people, I learned to keep it to myself. It’s a bit like my useless talent for knowing when/if people will have children or not, or my daughter’s ability to dream snippets of her life in advance.

She took my “history” and asked about problem areas in much the same way a massage or physical therapist would and we set up a time.

This morning I experienced “healing touch” and I must say it is in no way magicky or new age. It was very much like massage in that it can be felt in an immediate and tangible way.

I’d explained to Les that my forearms were sore from yoga. The muscles are tight and they are one of the last remaining holdouts in my quest to liberate myself physically as the low back and hamstrings have long since surrendered to the void and my shoulder unknotted ages ago.

Quickly into the session, they warmed and began to feel as though wrapped in soft warm flannel or cotton casts.

Since my allergies are acting up, I asked her to focus on the sinuses too and throughout the session they drained. The fullness and pressure vanished and an intense flushing occurred.

When we talked later, she told me that she’d also done a lymphatic flush and mind clearing. The latter was truly interesting because close to the end of the session I was suddenly aware of a thin red line swirling around my head at eye level. It reminded me of the scanners at store check-outs, but instead of being a steady line, it gave the impression that it was shooting around my head.

Right now I am feeling a little wrung out. The lymph flush no doubt. Therapeutic massage has the same effect though it tends to lag about 24 hrs whereas this hit within hours. Not likely something that would happen if I were not battling allergies and had a good night’s sleep under my belt. Last night was fitful because I am not tolerating the sawdust. My eyes swelled and itch intolerably. Gogi berry caps are good but not decisive in quelling the histamine reaction entirely.

The past couple of days has given me a chance to gab girl-style in a way I haven’t been able to for quite a while. I am reminded again of my isolation living here without family and old friends. Though it is a ways off still, the planned trip to Iowa is welcome. I plan to take advantage of proximity and indulge in old ties.

Reiki and Healing Touch are not so far removed from my yoga training as they might sound. It’s all energy based. We are essentially bits of charged matter that decided for reasons unknown to take solid shape. My yoga teachers and my massage therapist talk about transference of energy in physical adjustments, and I was a public school teacher long enough to know that there is more than a bit of energy corralling and exchange going on in the pupil-teacher relationship.

That the distance healing could work was something I did not question though the intensity was a surprise. I didn’t expect it to be as immediate and intense. Of course, why wouldn’t it be? Energy is not confined in its pure form by time and space  (pardon my ignorance of physics here because I know there are rules).

I will try this again. I don’t want to abuse or presume on our friendship though. Like yoga, healing sessions should be remunerated as we value what we must pay for in some way more than what is just given to us even when it comes from a generous intention.

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