KAFUNSHO

Hay fever

As I child, I suffered only one allergy, poison ivy. I got it bad but I didn’t let it stop me from enjoying summers outside, camping and hiking or just romping through the woods. I can tell you from experience that sunburnt poison ivy is a special kind of misery.

It was during my 3rd stint in Japan that led to the diagnosis of allergies for house dust and dust mites. I was living at the time in a tiny apartment under a highway in a Tokyo suburb. I recall walking late at night from one convenience store to another in search of OTC meds for sinus and chest congestion. After visiting several, the clerk told me that in Japan a pharmacist is required to be on duty even for the sale of OTC drugs. I suffered horribly over that weekend until I could go see a doctor, often not knowing where my next breath would come from. This whole episode was an eye opening experience on the realities of the Japanese national health care system. Impressed I was not, but that is for another time.

Suffice it now to say, my dust allergy is more than just something to sneeze at. It can be very bad. Despite doctor’s orders to the contrary, I vacuumed and dusted at least weekly. Yes, I was instructed to just let the dust pile up as disturbing it would aggravate the symptoms. I would have dusted more frequently had I had the time. Winter is bad for dust as windows are closed blocking out fresh air, blankets and coats, awesome in their abilities to collect, hold and make dust, are broken out from stowage and in wide spread use. Fall is little better and summers here hot and humid necessitating closed windows and air conditioning. Spring was the one season I could breathe easily and it was a great relief and pleasure to be able to throw open the windows on the nicer days of Spring.

Shortly after we started dating, my preexwife began to suffer from hay fever. By the time we were newly weds, she angrily demanded that I shut the windows and kept them shut until Golden Week, the first week of May. She complained bitterly at our one trip to a famous Ume grove one Spring, our last. I thought she was exaggerating. After all, I had dealt with what at times could be severe effects from my allergies, which would later be learned include hog weed, which is why Autumn is not kind to me. As a child I knew one classmate who had hay fever but he never made it out to be anywhere near as bad as my wife did. Surely, it wasn’t THAT bad.

IT IS.

It was during our 5th anniversary that I had my kafunsho debut, as my kendo mates called it. We stayed at a hotel quite some distance from Tokyo but down wind of it. We did spend a day exploring the area but cancelled all other plans and stayed in the hotel room making frequent calls to room service to empty the trash cans that quickly filled with tissue and I making run after run for more bags of tissue boxes. I bought eye wash and nasal flush for the both of us and we spent a day taking turns in the restroom washing our eyes and flushing our noses. This room too small for the both of us at the same time, the one not inside jumping up and down telling the other to hurry up like kids waiting to use the toilet.

The biggest difference between my dust, dust mite and hogweed allergies and hay fever is what the latter does to the eyes. It is as if there are billions of microscopic living caltrops in the eye socket.

They are always there but start stabbing enmasse when agitated. As disgusting as it seems to do, you wish you could plop your eyes out of there sockets, wash them with soap and water and with a pressure house, blast out your eye sockets. Instead, we use eye drops with menthol. This is preferable to not using eyedrops, menthol in the eyes. The loss of the one season that I could enjoy without any distractors was a huge blow to my quality of life in Japan, but I have now lived with it for 16 years and have adapted to it. Still, escaping it when I return to the States will be a great relief.

The last car we had came with a special pollen filter in the air supply system. It WORKED. Otherwise, I could not have drive to the one class I had to drive to. Sneezing fits come on suddenly and can last for prolonged lengths of time. This makes any task take much longer than it does any other time of the year. The ever running runny nose is another debilitating symptom. Can take HOURS to empty one load of dishes from the dish washer. Put a couple of dishes away and then run for the tissue box. After varying lengths of time there, you wash your hands (who wants to eat off of dishes handled by someone who did not wash their hands after blowing their nose?) and by the time you remove another dish from the washer, you need a tissue again.

It also causes a unique headache that there is no relief from since the time it begins until the pollen is gone. While it almost always is gone by the first week of May, it can begin as early as the previous Fall. Thankfully this year it started late, at the end of March. The sinus pressure upon them and the watering of the eyes make focusing a challenge. The brain fog is like the London fog of black and white horror movies set there.

In the States it is called hay fever because it is a condition that largely affects city folk when they visit the countryside, where we hayseed bumpkins live, and are assaulted by tons of pollens their dainty beaks are not accustomed to. We country kids are not bothered by these as we have been exposed to them since very young. In Japan, it seems to be the reverse. The preexwife is from a prefecture that has the offending tree in great supply. A student of mine lived in a part of Japan where his car was orange every morning from the pollen. Yet, in both of their cases, they did not have hay fever until they moved to the Tokyo area and lived there for several years. In my preexwife’s case, three years. In my student’s case 5. I lived in Tokyo for 8 before it over took me.

There are many theories as to why this should be. The one I hold as likely closest to reality is that it is not necessarily an allergy to the pollen but that the pollen acts as a carrier for the pollution and dust of the big cities and industrial areas of Japan. My symptoms are greatly relieved when hicking on a mountain that is not down wind of one of these despite being surrounded by trees and other plants.

Now, it gets interesting. There are other symptoms too, though just annoying and not debilitating as others are. Suddenly, one may find themselves itching all over or just regionally. Long periods of time might be distracting by a horribly itchy scalp. Often, it feels as if those eye dwelling caltopopods have escaped and are dangling upon your entire face. Temporary hives are not unknown. General malaise, a profound lack of energy perpetual exhaustion and insomnia are more in the debilitations camp but I forgot to mention them earlier. Joint pain. This year, this last has a new comer. My injured knee that recovered so miraculously with DMSO hurts enough at night to either keep me awake or wake me up. But it is not just this knee but all my joints just that this knee is the newly crowned King of Kitsune’s joint pains and aches. The pain is strange. While not as severe and not the exact quality of what it was before treatment, it is as if it is mocking the pain of the intitial injury, like a clouded memory.

I mentioned this to my exboss now again new boss who, after first expressing that that was weird, thought for a moment and corrected himself. He observed that arthritis is an immune system disorder and it may not be unexpected that hay fever would cause joint point. While I firmly believe all these symptoms are due to an over reactive immune system, I never thought deeply enough on the topic to consider arthritis. Are we hay fever sufferers more inclined to get arthritis? What role does or will the clot shot play in the severity of hay fever? Is the pain in my knee a sign that my immune system is undoing some of the repair work stimulated by DMSO? How about my other joints. I think there are other questions this raises but none have come to mind thus far.

I have long wondered if childhood vaccines lead to allergies. Far from a study, I admit, but I know no one from my parents’ generation, boomers, or before who had any allergies. I saw TV commercials for allergy medicines since early childhood, so I know there must have been some who did, but I knew no one. I went to a different school each school year until 5th grade, so I met many kids my age, yet knew only a couple who had asthma and IIRC only one who had hay fever. I and a couple of others were allergic to poison ivy and another to poison sumac, but that was it.

My first Japanese language exchange partner has two I boys, one who is probably in college now. When they were babies, both suddenly became allergies to “everything”. My friend had great difficulty finding foods and ways to prepare them that her kids could eat. It was at that point that I began to wonder if there was a link.

As an adult, I have gained allergies for house dust, duct mites, hay fever and possibly hog weed. I say “possibly” as I had difficulty camping in Fall back home at least as far back as my 20s. That may have been hogweed that triggered those. My wife has hay fever caused by the same pollen as mine on another that I am not allergic to. She too developed her hay fever allergies as an adult. The Kid has allergies to everything each of their parents have and some of their own. They have also played pin cushion for the jabbby jabbers more than either of their parents have. At this moment, they have labored breathing and the preexwife just got off the phone with a consultation nurse. It may be due to changing their hay fever meds today and we are discussing if we should make the trip to an emergency room.

What are your experiences with allergies and vaccinations? Does there seem to be a link or do your experiences seem to disprove one. Do you know of any one studying a possible link? Have there been studies on this?