Stephen Yeargin

Going to the doctor to try and cure a common ailment has always struck me as a bit overzealous on the part of the patient. Home remedies abound, and surely it is better (and cheaper) to manage symptoms at home than it is to drive to an office just to have someone tell you something you already knew. This has always been my approach, and it has taken a few rough extended illnesses and three years of marriage to convince me otherwise. We will call today “Exhibit A.”

(We will pretend for a moment that I have inserted a nice, long piece about our country’s urgent need for comprehensive health care reform, particularly reform that guarantees coverage for every citizen and makes it against the law to deny coverage because of prior illness. Now, back to the post.)

I have fairly debilitating allergies, to what exactly I do not know. Cats, yes. Dogs, no. Dust, maybe. Pollen, likely. Whatever triggers them, I am instantly out of commission. Try as I might, little said during a meeting can be adequately committed to memory or reacted upon if my nose is running and I am sneezing every 45-90 seconds. As the nurse practitioner at a nearby CVS Minute Clinic told me today, “You will just keep having to take [this medicine] until the first hard freeze.” Well, we live in Tennessee. That first freeze might not be until the middle of January.

Six steroid pills in the last four hours and two doses of nasal spray later, I am starting to feel a bit more back-to-earth. I may actually break with my traditional avoid-doctors-until-it-hurts strategy and see about allergy shots. My livelihood revolves around whether or not my head is thinking clearly, so it strikes me as a worthwhile investment. In the meantime, I will just keep tons of tissues and a box of generic Sudafed at the ready.