Allergic reaction

I went to Dr. Kelly for help on someone else’s recommendation, when I was not only at the end of my rope again, but gnawing on it.

I was no longer seeing the Diane Lane look-a-like therapist. After months of sessions I found I couldn’t do it anymore. She seemed kind and she listened, but for some reason I didn’t completely trust her.

I put off finding a new therapist, because that’s what I do, and in the mean time things spiraled out of control. I spent almost an entire weekend in bed, in full melt down mode, and did something completely out of character. I talked to my mother.

Here was a woman that knew about curling up in a ball and checking out. All these years of living with this anal retentive, overly-emotional control freak that drove me nuts...and in the midst of my mess, I finally saw her. I felt ashamed of my inability to comfort her when that was probably all she’d ever wanted, ashamed that emotional displays make me uncomfortable and physical affection has a time limit.

She crawled into the bed and lay beside me while I cried. I didn’t want to talk, I didn’t want to be touched, but I didn’t want to be alone either. She’s never understood much about me at all – but this she knew how to deal with, this she could handle. When I had trouble breathing, she coached me right through it, calming me down.

I was too far gone to be embarrassed and when my sister crawled up and lay on the other side, sandwiching me between them, I just accepted it. Most days I feel as though they’re both vultures, waiting for me to show signs of weakness so they can swoop down and pick at my flesh. But that day I lay bleeding and they didn’t once take a bite. And when I finally told them what why and how, or at least as much of what why and how as I could spare, they told me not to worry and then they let me be.

Each day after that I got a little better – I got up, I cried less, I stopped staring into space and actually concentrated on something, anything else. I laughed, I went to dinner and I returned phone calls I’d been avoiding. Sometimes I’d get angry or disgusted with myself, for being what I call “melodramatic”, but generally I just “dealt with it”. And by that I mean I put it all back inside and locked it up.

I knew I needed to do something different, to seek out another therapist or take more than the occasional Xanax to numb the things that crept out of that locked place from time to time, but I didn’t. I took Dr. Kelly’s number and it joined the receipts and lipsticks at the bottom of my purse.

Until one day, not too long after my meltdown, I was sitting at work. I’d picked up my favorite fast food for lunch, brought it back to the office and ate every bite. Nothing was wrong at all on the surface, I felt fine. Except suddenly, I seemed to have something lodged in my throat.

I could still swallow, still breathe, but it was uncomfortable and I couldn’t seem to make the lump go away. I drank an entire bottle of water, even took out a mirror and examined the back of my throat just in case, but there was nothing. I got a fluttery feeling in my chest like my heart had grown wings and they were beating rapidly at my insides. My face grew hot and when I stood up I felt disoriented.

My boss walked by, glanced over and stopped. “What’s the matter? You’re very pale.”

“I don’t know. I feel strange...and like there’s something caught in my throat.” I explained all my symptoms and she told me to hold on, disappearing around the corner.

She brought back a nurse from the next department – one of the sorts that have a degree for paperwork purposes only and haven’t really practiced much medicine. I relayed my symptoms again and she nodded knowingly, perma-tanned fake boobs wobbling with every jerk of her head.

“It sounds like you’re having an allergic reaction. What have you eaten today?”

I looked at her, horrified. “Only Chick-fil-a...and I’m not allergic to anything!”

She nodded again. “Well, that’s what it sounds like. They use peanut oil, you know. Adults develop peanut allergies later in life all the time.”

“Oh no! No, no!” I had to take deep breaths at that point; the fluttering was making me supremely uncomfortable. Did people my age have heart attacks? What the fuck did Orange Boobs McGee know about it anyway? But the others immediately agreed with her and I couldn’t think of an alternate reason.

One of the other employees ran across the street and returned a few minutes later with a box of Benadryl allergy tablets, shoving two in my hand. I swallowed them and waited. For twenty minutes I paced back and forth between my office and my boss’s, sitting down and getting up over and over again, ranting.

“If I’m allergic to Chick-fil-a, you might as well go ahead and kill me now. Either that or I’ll eat it anyway and stab myself with an epi-pen every time!”

She laughed at me, but when I didn’t fall to the floor racked with convulsions she quickly lost interest. I decided I needed a second opinion.

“Mom”, I said with false calm after the receptionist connected us, “there’s something wrong with me.” I told her the problem, explaining how the feeling in my throat hadn’t gone away but got better and worse, better and worse. I told her the nurse’s theory about an allergic reaction and the Benadryl.

“But she’s got fake tanned fake boobs and I couldn’t real...”

“Alyson, do you have a Xanax in your purse?”

“Yes, why?”

“Because you’re not having an allergic reaction, you’re having a panic attack. You have no allergies, nor have you developed any. Take the pill, concentrate on breathing slowly in through your nose and out through your mouth and call me back in twenty minutes.”

“Oh”, I replied, stunned. “Ok...”

When I called her back and reported positive results, she sounded a bit smug. “What kind of nurse would tell you something like that?” But I didn’t really blame the Boobs MD up the hall – I hadn’t recognized the real problem either. I’d never had a panic attack out of nowhere before, not like that. I’d always been very upset to begin with, agitated or crying, before one presented itself. The seemingly random arrival of this one scared me and for it to happen at work, to cause me to lose an hour of my time, well that wasn’t acceptable.

“It’ll be alright”, she added after her rant.

“Thanks mom”, I said. And I really meant it.

I dug through the debris of my purse, pulled out the doctor’s number and took her next available appointment. I still had to wait a week and during that time I experienced several more attacks, including one in the car that was so bad I had to pull over. When I finally walked through her doors, I was doubling up on my precious, actually illegally procured Xanax.

Sitting in the exam room waiting on her, I wondered how much to say. Doctors can be funny about people admitting to taking drugs that don’t belong to them, but how else to explain how I’d been dealing with the problem thus far?

I was shocked when a woman that looked no older than me walked in and, truth be told, slightly miffed. I didn’t want a new doctor, I wanted someone more established. She looked more like a TV MD than the real thing.

But the minute we started speaking, I changed my mind. For an hour we talked – I answered all her professional questions and then, somehow, I was telling her about my dad and about therapist Diane Lane. And without divulging too much, she told me she’d been through some very similar experiences. My new doctor was young and optimistic – she seemed to “get it”, and she was only a family doctor. There was likely no couch in her office, in fact I didn’t even know if she had an actual office.

It wasn’t that I found someone to relate to, there were plenty of people that could say, “Yes, I know exactly how you feel and I’ve been there”. There was just something about her that put me at ease; I trusted her. I even told her about the pills. And I’d never once had that feeling with Diane Lane. With her, I’d laid out the things I thought she needed to know, resenting it and her, even if I wasn’t aware of it at the time. I wanted it to work, so I forced it until I couldn’t anymore, but gave just enough to get by and little else.

At the end of our appointment Dr. Kelly gave me two prescriptions – one for long term use and the other for more Xanax to use for panic attacks until the first had time to build up in my system. She said she thought therapy was something that I should continue with and she would call two of her colleagues for referrals, that I should keep trying until I found the right one, that it had taken her several tries too.

“It’s a shame”, I told her on my way out, “that you aren’t in that field.”

She smiled. “Don’t worry, you’ll find the right one. Call me anytime.” And I’m sure she really meant it.

Thanksgiving - Part two

The atmosphere at The Grandmother’s is vastly different from Papa’s. It’s like leaving a school assembly that only had one or two mouthy students, then walking into a circus tent chock full of clowns. Paper plates replace china, swear words multiply like Mormons, and there are running, screaming germ breeders everywhere.

The two families couldn’t be more different – a fact thrown into glaring affect as soon as I arrived at Papa’s. Stepping out of my car, I waved at a group of laughing cousins seated at a patio table. The tallest one waved back and came toward me, grinning and blowing smoke out his nose.

“Hey Al”, Tim said, wrapping me in a bear hug. He carried the crock-pot full of dip toward the house and I followed with the bastard ass Italian crème cake. I was already planning to force every single one of them to taste it, whether they wanted to or not.

“Hey whore”, shouted Tim’s wife Ellie as I passed the smoking section. “Menstrual chunk”, I deadpanned back, wrestling with my purse and the cake holder. The others laughed.

Pushing open the heavy, sectioned glass door I walked into a wall of barking dogs. There are seven – Gucci, Sonny, Dixie, Mimi, Gracie, Scooby, and Bud. For as long as I can remember Papa has been surrounded by dogs. They climb on top of him while he lounges in the recliner, sit in the front seat and get their own ice cream at the Sonic drive through, go on boat rides and trips to the city. They’re his babies. And just like any other member of our neurotic family, we’ve learned to accept them and deal with the ruckus they cause...if a little grudgingly.

And, just like every other time I’ve walked in that door, the chocolate brown cocker spaniel, Bud, charged me like a bull and nipped the backs of my calves. He’s so fat that he looks like a barrel, giving the impression that if you tipped him over he’d just roll away. Unfortunately, it’s just an impression. I’ve tried rolling him, shoving him, running from him, shouting at him...everything. I finally developed a routine that semi-works: I hang my purse low and angle it between the two of us as I walk in, screaming at him, “SHUT THE FUCK UP BUD, I FUCKING HATE YOU, YOU BASTARD!” (or something close), giving Tess (Papa’s girlfriend) time to whack him away with the newspaper. It’s the best I’ve been able to come up with. Once I’ve been in the house for a few minutes, though, he’s fine.

“Hey Pop,” I shouted at a corner table. “Hey darlin’”, he boomed back, getting up and following me to the kitchen. My Papa is a big, big man with wispy grayish brown hair, a jowly face creased with laugh lines, and simply enormous earlobes. With blue eyes full of mischief and a contagious laugh, he’s always reminded me a bit of Santa Claus without the beard. His plodding walk – feet turned slightly out, head held at a high angle and arms crossed behind his back – never fails to make my smile.

Reaching my side he rocked back and forth on his heels, arms still behind his back, and looked into the crock-pot. “Mm, The Dip! You’re early! I’m proud!” Nearly everything he says has an exclamation mark on the end and there’s no doubt about where I got my powers of vocal projection. I stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, then left him and a few others digging around for tortilla chips.

As I was rounding a corner of the island, waving and saying hello to various aunts, uncles, and neighbors, I was slammed into from behind. “OOF! Gggrrroff!” My cousin Christine had, as usual, launched herself at my back and hung there – arms tight around my neck, sending me staggering about the kitchen, trying to shake her off. She knows I hate it and she does it, I’ve gathered, to draw attention to our physical differences. She’s a rail (though she certainly feels heavy clinging to my back) and I have not, nor will I ever be, that tiny. She’s always been the pretty, petite one; I’ve always been the smart, curvy one. I often speak to her using words I know she doesn’t understand – she’s got her bullets, I have mine.

“You love me”, she screeched in my ear. I finally managed to shrug her off and with a long suffering sigh, answered, “Yes, unfortunately I do.”

After making sure the kid was safely ripping the children’s play area to shreds with the others, I made my way back out to the patio. My cousin Dooby and his wife Marie had driven down from Virginia for the weekend and I was excited to see them. “I missed my lesbian life partner”, Marie said as we hugged. We laughed, then relayed the story behind her greeting to the rest of the group. We’d both gotten wildly trashed at the Halloween party and there was a lot of lap dancing and suggestive picture taking.

For an hour we all sat, taking it in turns to make the others laugh with one story or another. When it wasn’t my turn, I found myself observing more than listening. I’d heard most of it before anyway.

Tim leaned against the brick wall, towering over everyone even while slumped. At 22, one of the youngest in our group, he managed to beat us all in The Game of Life. Recently married to a single mom with a five year old son, he’d secured a great job and bought his first house - a long way from the child of a mother in and out of rehab and the teenager caught cashing stolen checks. He’d met Ellie and her son and quickly became a family man.
Dooby paced restlessly, playing with his cell phone, while Marie sat with her legs crossed, calmly puffing on a cigarette. They’d been together for a very long time and had finally taken the plunge into marriage just a year ago. They argue often, but not in a way that causes concern. Somehow their personalities complement each other – Marie almost always appears bored and unconcerned with everything (except when she’s drinking) and Dooby gives passionate speeches about whatever strikes his fancy.

Having nursed him through his younger brother’s death and an addiction to pills, and staying with him after more than one affair early in their relationship, I’ve come to think of Marie as a bit of a hero. In the beginning I thought her foolish, but somehow she managed to pull Dooby back from the brink of destruction and piece him back together. Every now and then he’d glance up from his phone and look at her, the adoration on his face clear as day.

Soon after Christine and I had horrified the other men with a frank discussion about sex toys, it was time to go inside for dinner.

The huge kitchen quickly clogged up with traffic while everyone attempted to fix their plates. Being a veteran of the bob and weave technique, I was soon settled at the dining room table and tucking in to a plate across from Pop. “Mm, this looks good”, he shouted. I nodded, turning my lips up in a grin, mouth stuffed full of macaroni. He always says that, no matter what kind of food is in front of him.

By the time we’d made it to dessert and I’d forced them all to have a slice of my cake, (“Mmm! That’s good”, Pop said immediately.) we were in the midst of a discussion on what college my sister was going to attend.

“Where have you applied”, my Uncle asked her. He’s one of those bible thumping sorts now, but I remember when he was a drunk, getting into fist fights with my dad on the front lawn. I often find myself missing the drunk, as I’m much better at handling them than I am the “shove the bible down your throat” religious fanatics.

“I think I’m going to go to a small college close to home for a year, to get used to things. Then I’ll transfer to Charleston”, she replied.

“Charleston has one of the highest STD ratings of any college”, mom chimed in.

Puffing up, deep frown pulling his mustache down in a highly comical way, my Uncle glared at Leigha. “You know how to fight that, don’t you?!”

Leigha looked around the table, searching for help. So I gave it to her.

“Yeah”, I said, pumping my fist in the air, “wrap it uuuuuup!”

“NO”, he shouted. “Abstinence...”

“does not make the heart grow fonder”, I finished.

While he harrumphed and sputtered, everyone else laughed. Except for Papa, who ignored the whole exchange, rolling his dessert around in his mouth like a cow and staring past our heads at a western on the big screen.

Packed full of food and moaning miserably, the sexes separated. Tess and the older women attacked the kitchen, fixing up leftover plates for people to take home and washing dishes. The older men crashed in the living room and watched sports through slowly closing eyelids, while the younger ones congregated outside on the patio. Us younger women moved to the table in the sunroom and discussed mom and Ray’s coming nuptials and the possibility of another Charleston bachelorette weekend.

Then Papa summoned me from across the house, bellowing my name and sending the dogs into a barking fit. Lounging in his recliner, he informed me that I was in charge of the name drawing for Christmas again this year. “You got it, Pop”, I said happily. Nothing like being able to ensure your name goes to the person with the biggest spending problem.

I wrote down all the names, tore them into little strips of paper, folded them and dumped them in a Solo cup. Then, armed with a notepad and pen, I danced around the house and had everyone draw. I shoved Christine and Dave away from my notepad and ignored whispered pleas for cheating. There would be no cheating for anyone but me!

As I passed through the living room for the second time, finally finished with the list and very pleased with myself for getting a good name, Papa said, “And she didn’t even hear me!”

“What”, I said, turning in confusion. “What happened?”

“I paid you a compliment and you didn’t even hear me!”

“What did you say”, I asked.

“Nope...I’m not going to repeat myself”, he said, pouting.

I turned to my sister, determined to get an answer. Papa so very rarely compliments anyone on anything other than how well they cook. And when it comes to me, his loving insults are par for the course. “What’s that ugly green blob on your foot”, he asks me at least once a week, referring to my four leaf clover tattoo. Or, “Woo-wee! Where’d you get that new dress, Jackass?! Columbia Tent and Awning?”

“What did he say”, I asked her.

She smiled. “I can’t believe you didn’t hear him! He said he was proud of you, that you’ve been doing so good lately.”

“Well. I’ve been doing well”, I corrected automatically. “Well”, she repeated, rolling her eyes.

“Aww, Pop”, I said, grinning at him.

“Better keep it up”, he replied gruffly.

Feeling happy and tired, I checked on the kid then rejoined my cousins. Slowly everyone started to drift off – hauling hyper children out to their cars, toting high stacked plates, and distributing hugs. As I said goodbye to everyone, I realized that there’d been no fights at all. No arguments, no crying...not even any drinking. I wondered how much of that had to do with the absence of my father and how much of it had to do with how “well” I, the main instigator, was doing.

After making plans for Marie and Christine to pick me up, I kissed Papa goodbye and took the kid home to settle her for the night. We were going to make a beer and cigarette run into town, then meet Dooby and Dave on the dock.

It’s tradition. No matter how cold it is, the younger group always congregates on the dock or on the porch and drinks. We tell more stories, sing old songs (like a degenerate family Von Trapp), and watch the stars through puffs of smoke.

Out of all the traditions, it’s the one I look forward to the most. Not because we drink and talk about disgusting things, but because, unlike the family dinner, it’s not a requirement. No one says we have to spend that extra time together, but we always want to.

Marie, Christine and I spent the trip into town and back listening to old school rap music and dancing. Every now and then a deer would pop out of the tree lined darkness and we’d break, squealing and cursing, before going back to our dancing.

Back at Papa’s we walked, giggling through the yard and out to the dock. Huddling in deck chairs and clutching cold beers, we rolled our eyes when Dooby pointed out a streak across the night sky and started lecturing us on atoms or something. We mimicked him and argued that it was just a mark from a plane, sending him further and further into professor mode.

“How do you know all this stuff”, I asked him with exaggerated interest. “Did you study it, read it in a book somewhere?”

“I read books”, he said. “I know all kinds of things about science. I’ve...” He droned on and on, knowing I was poking fun, but too interested in hearing himself speak to let it deter him. Marie looked at me as if to say, “See? See what I have to deal with every day?”

Two hours crept by before we finally called it a night, hugged, and headed in opposite directions – Dooby, Marie, and Dave crept back into Papa’s, Christine drove back to the city, and I trudged up the steep hill back to my dark house.

I eased through the door, relishing the sudden heat on my frozen face and fingers, and went through my night time routine quickly. “One more month”, I thought as I finally crawled between the sheets, exhausted, “one more month and we’ll do it all over again.” The cooking, cleaning, decorating, shopping, working, parenting, and socializing...all repeated for both sides of the family.

I knew I should be thankful that the day went pretty smoothly, getting progressivly better and ending without any of the usual family drama. But all I could think before drifting off to sleep was, “I wasted all that money on Xanax and not one person got drunk and threw a punch. I hope Christmas kicks it up a notch.”

Even my psychotic half is an attention seeker

I stopped taking my medication.

It seems like a simple statement, but to some it’s the equivalent to “there’s a bomb on this plane” or “the rubber just broke”.

I’m terrible about taking medicine anyway. I rarely finish antibiotics and birth control pills are out of the question (not that I’ve needed them recently). I have a cabinet full of half empty pill bottles from one time or another, one sickness or another, one dark place or another. I should throw them away, but instead I line them up like mutilated sentries and shut them away in the dark with a satisfied click, too helpless to do their job.

I’m not ignorant. I know it’s not healthy to stop taking a prescription before it’s finished. The majority of the time, when it’s for a sickness, it’s because I’m absentminded or lazy. The rest of the time is more difficult to explain.

When I was kid they gave me Ritalin. I couldn’t sit still in class, had trouble paying attention, and I could be a bit high strung. The Ritalin made me settle down, sure, but it didn’t help me pay attention. I was simply bored, but back in those days it was easier to drug um’ up than ask questions. No one asked themselves why I could sit still from dawn to dusk and read a book the size of my head, but had trouble in the classroom.

I had to go to the office every afternoon for my pill and one of the ladies would follow me to the water fountain in the hall to make sure I took it. I eventually learned to let it fall from my mouth and into the little slots of the fountain as I leaned over to take a drink, shielding it with my body. When the doctor eventually decided it was ok for me to come off Ritalin, that I was (halleluiah!) cured, I smiled to myself and thought, “Idiots”.

I suppose it’s safe to say that I’m defiant, in part, for the feeling of smugness it creates. Though I may have been right not to take the Ritalin then, it doesn’t mean that I’m right now. I’m well aware of that.

But once I start feeling better, once the pills get me over the first hurdle or two, I stop. I say to myself, “You’re fine now. Good job.” And I go on about my business. I add another sentry to the shelf and turn my back – satisfied that their task is done, I’ve stripped them of their ammunition and it’s all up to me from that point forward. I can handle it. I've won.

Life goes on.

Then I’m riding in the backseat of a car on a Sunday afternoon. I’ve just finished a book and I close it with a sigh of satisfaction. But mere moments later I’m restless. We pull over for gas and as the driver gets out to pump, I stare out my window at the busy street. That’s when I see her. She’s wearing a knee length flowered dress and a scuffed, ragged looking pair of Keds. A green and white stripped sock stretches halfway up her left calf, the other is bare. Her hair is cropped close to her skull and her shoulders are hunched around her bent head, as if expecting a blow to fall any minute.

As she passes a few feet from my window I notice her battered black suitcase. Gripping the handle in a dirty fist, she trudges by. In a high pocket on the outward facing side, a grimy brown teddy bear rides shotgun. I stare at his slumped form, rolling along behind his slumped mistress, until they disappear from view.

I feel my face tighten and my eyes begin the tell-tale swim and burn. I hold my breath and lean my head against the back of the seat. “I must be getting my period”, I think. But even as the words form in my brain, I know they aren’t true.

I’m willing to bet that nothing about that woman or her ratty bear would have bothered me had I not stopped taking my meds. They weren't the cause, just the trigger. I probably would have laughed at her one striped sock and her stupid bear and forgotten all about them later. As it is, it’s been weeks and here I am recounting it to you in vivid detail.

Then, just last week, I was on my way home from work. I’d gotten off early and I was in a great mood - singing along with the radio, enjoying the sunshine through the open roof and the wind in my hair. But 15 minutes or so into the hour commute, as if in answer to a brisk snap of summoning fingers, it all went south. I can name no trigger, no real reason for my abrupt change in mood. Suddenly everything was just wrong.

Every unhappy thought or trivial problem I’d had over the past week went ricocheting around my head, gathering strength with each pass and manifesting into a giant ball of “What the Fuck”. I fought back tears and felt my face grow hot. I tried to make sense of it all, to reason with myself. Again, “Must be getting my period” and “Stop it, stop it right now”. Neither helped. By the time I was five minutes from home I’d managed to work myself up so much that I was having trouble breathing.

And all over what? - An argument with a friend, the distance of another. A sudden feeling of loneliness because I’m the last single person in my circle, attending another wedding that weekend. Pressure to be this, do that, feel something, feel nothing, smile, put on the cocky Alyson show. So tired, so tired.

When I arrived home I immediately went to bed and hugged my pillow, just laying there with my eyes closed and breathing slowly, willing myself to calm down. And after a few minutes, I did. I got up, changed my clothes, and walked down to the lake to join the pre rehearsal dinner party that was already in full swing. I was back up again, inwardly rolling my eyes at my dramatics. “Ugh. You are such a fucking girl.”

And that’s where I’m at now. At this moment I feel relatively normal and objective. I have things to look forward to in the coming weeks, things that I’m excited about. But who knows? Tomorrow someone might not call or I might see another homeless person with a battered suitcase and I’ll think it’s the end of the world. Or that my abrupt change in mood has something to do with my period.

Right now I know better. I know I shouldn’t have added that last sentry to the shelf so soon...maybe ever. And when it gets to be too much, I’ll get another and then another. Until one day the door won’t close on them anymore. They’ll band together, form a misfit army to bring me down, and I’ll be found out. Then everyone will know I’m crazy.

But I’ll wait until then. Because haven’t you heard?

Vicious cycles are my specialty.