I'm alive! I'm alive, despite all the attempts to kill me!!!

As a kid growing up in an industrial town in India, I was allergic to dust, smoke, and even cobwebs.  Once, after a vigorous sweep of the cobwebs and dust around the home, I was wheezing so much that I had to get an intravenous shot of whatever that medicine was so that I could return to normalcy.

I have always wondered why my system couldn't handle dust and smoke when not only the place where I grew up, but pretty much all of India, seemed to be always in dust and smoke.  It has to be that it was a result of the physiology that I was born with.

My body does react to unknown foreign agents entering my system, and that season has just begun in Oregon.

My first spring in this state, after the move from California, I started sniffling in response to all the pollen.  Interestingly, it was not from early spring, but only late in May.  I had joined the company of tens of thousands who are allergic to grass seed pollen.

The second spring was worse.  I suppose that my body had by then figured out that the grass seed pollen was one dangerous enemy and was all set to defend itself.  But, I hadn't received that memo.  So, there I was one May enjoying the river and the walk as I always did.

I sneezed. My nose was runny.  I took an anti-allergy pill.  Showered and ate.  I was off to bed.

Slowly, the heaviness in my chest increased.  It was as if somebody was systematically increasing the weight on my chest and squeezing it.

I sat up. It didn't work.

I sat in an incline. It didn't work.

I stood up and walked around. It didn't help.

Off to the emergency room in the middle of the night.

Even as I waited for a doctor to examine me, I noticed that my breathing was becoming less difficult.  Later, the doctor explained that the highly filtered air that circulated in the hospital made it easy for my lungs.  And then handed me an inhaler and showed me how to use it.

Over the years, I have become smarter and carefully scan reports of pollen levels.  When the levels are high, which often is also when the days are simply gorgeous, I have to restrain myself from going outside.  It becomes something like a self-imposed house arrest, which is better than the feeling of elephants walking on my chest. Such a systematic approach means that I rarely ever use the inhaler.

During the sabbatical stay in India, I realized that I didn't have the inhaler with me.  A moment of panic.  My security blanket was not with me.  What if I needed to use one to drive those elephants away? Especially when I was heading to one of the smoggiest places in India--Delhi.  My friend, a physician, handed me a brand new one--what an awesome gift that was!  I never did have a need to use it during the trip, however.

I suppose the body's response to allergens is different from how it reacts to living organisms that enter our bodies.  When a virus enters the system, the body fights it, yes, but at the same time learns how to protect itself from future attacks.  However, it appears that my system has not learnt how to deal with grass seed pollen; instead, it seems to be getting weaker with every new season.

If, on the other hand, the system learnt to become immune, it would be awesome.  Because, then I can even help it develop such defenses, by slowly introducing it to different pollen, like how my system learnt to protect me from various bacteria and viruses.

Growing up in India meant that I was always exposed to many kinds of illnesses, but it is amazing that I was healthy through them all.  Right from infancy, my system was adapting to the different microbes that entered it.  Perhaps something that infants and toddlers and children do not get to experience that much anymore, which then makes their bodies less capable of defending against illnesses:

A growing body of evidence suggests that all the antibacterial-wiping, germ-killing cleanliness of the developed world may actually be making us more prone to getting sick — and that a little more dirt might help us stay healthier in the long run...
Here’s what researchers do know: Our immune systems need bugs. They rely on early encounters with germs to learn how to protect our bodies.
“Bacteria, fungi, lots of these things we think of as bad — they’re all part of our environment, and we evolved to live with them,” says Michael Zasloff, an immunologist and physician at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. Through exposure to these microbes early in life, your immune system learns what’s harmful and what isn’t, he says, and that readies the immune responses you’ll have for the rest of your life.
“The body has got to know friend from foe,” Zasloff says. If your body learns that a specific microbe or substance — any antigen, or visitor to the body — is a foe, it will send immune system cells to destroy it. If it recognizes the antigen as a friend, the immune system will leave it alone. “Exposure tells the immune system, ‘These are the things you’re going to run into all the time, so you don’t need to worry about them.’ ”

Every day of our life is another day of victory over all kinds of attempts to kill us.  It is a constant struggle to postpone that inevitable finality.

The story of humans on this planet has been one of systematically fending off various diseases that routinely terminated people's lives in the past.  Thanks to the accumulated wisdom over the centuries, we live long lives now,  Such long lives that many countries are struggling to figure out how to take care of the aged.  What a delightful problem to have, as opposed to a problem of infants, and children, and young adults dying by the thousands.

As much as I do not look forward to another allergy season, I am glad we live in a much better world now.  Further, as Nietzsche said, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger!

A view of the power station complex at Neyveli, 2002