Friday night I was sitting downstairs participating in a pre-Passover sedar and suddenly I felt a tickle in my throat. Was it Passover or was I getting sick? The tickled turned into scratchiness and it lasted for a couple of days. I dosed on Airborne thinking I could battle the cold before it hit hard. No such luck. Finally I bought some cold medicine which eased it a little but in the middle of the night I kept waking up choking for air.
Last night, while taking a cab home from Fruitvale BART, I was chatting with the driver and he said, "get Claritin, it's allergies." He was kind enough to drive me to Walgreens for no extra charge. The Walgreens generic version of Claritin helped somewhat but today I went one step further and bought Zyretec to see if that does the trick.
I am not the only person walking around coughing, sneezing and with watery eyes. The checkout woman at Walgreens says that people are really suffering this year. Believe me, she is the authority. This is a difficult year for allergies. They say it takes something like seven years living in a place to develop allergies and the funny thing is that when I previously lived in the San Francisco Bay Area I didn't suffer. Now that I've been gone for three years and returned I'm feeling it.
