2024 Life Logs, Day 51: An Allergy Mystery
Date: Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Weather: Sunny; High Temp 33, Low 26 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth MA
So, I came home from the birthday luncheon yesterday and walked with Shadow. When I came back inside, I found I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open. This has been happening to me many afternoons since my back surgery, but I don’t always succumb and lie down and take a nap. But I did yesterday. I was on the living sofa surrounded by my jasmine plant on the windowsill and a vase of roses on the end table. When I woke up, I had a drippy nose and runny eyes. This happened to me last week one day and I was fine the next, so I started looking around to see if there was something I could be allergic to. My new jasmine plant is in the living room, but it has been there for at least three weeks. Heather sent the dozen roses I gave her for Valentine’s Day home with me when they left for Vermont because since the roses arrived at their house, the cats have been eating the leaves causing them to throw up. At least that is the theory for the cat tummy upsets. But I’ve never had an allergic reaction to roses before. I dug deeper and realized I had on the same sweater I had on last week when I had the allergic reaction. I have had that sweater for over 30 years, maybe 40. It is one of my favorite pieces of clothing, but. it is very heavy, and I only wear it when it is really cold. I can remember a number of times in my life when wearing that sweater, I have gotten instant cold symptoms, but nothing like yesterday. I took off the sweater, put it in the panty, and shut the door. And I put the roses in the half bath off the living room and closed the door. Almost immediately I was better. I still had some symptoms this morning, but I am feeling fine now. I always assumed that sweater was cotton and I could never figure out why that would give me an allergic reaction. But I just looked at the label. The sweater was made in China, and it is 55 per cent ramie and 45 per cent cotton. I had to Google ramie. The first thing that came up was the ramie plant that produces a fiber that it is an alternative natural fiber to replace cotton. It comes from the plant Ramie Boehmeria nivea, a flowering plant in the nettle family native to eastern Asia. Could I really be allergic to this? Strange. I am going to take the roses out of the bathroom and if I don’t have a reaction to them by tomorrow, then I am going to get rid of that sweater. As Mark’s mother would say, “Sadness doeth prevail.” But enough, is enough.
My big accomplishment today was finishing my current book, The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese. It is an epic tale following the members of a family for over three generations, some 77 years. It incorporates the history of southern India, the geography, the food, the culture, all while telling the story of family members who suffer from an affliction they call “the condition.” Family members with “the condition” have often been known to be eccentric, lose their hearing early I life, and die by drowning, often in shallow puddles. Why? It is a bit of a mystery, is definitely a story of deep and lasting love, and the characters seem so very, very real. It is set in the state of Kerala on the southwestern Malabar coast of India where 44 rivers weave their way from the mountains to the sea. Mark and I spent six weeks anchored off the city of Cochin (the British name), Kochi (the Malayalam name), but often called Ernakulum, so I loved the geography woven into this book. I watched part of an interview of Verghese by Oprah this afternoon. She admitted that it is hard to give a one sentence summary of what this book is about. But I will try. It is about human nature and all of the wonderful, and sometimes terribly tragic things that happen to ordinary people. It is 715 pages in length, so epic in more ways than one. Definitely worth the read.
