kw: book reviews, nonfiction, memoirs, allergies
My first memory of my youngest cousin is of a toddler in a show suit, crying because of a bad coughing fit. Asthma. I soon learned she was living on Rice Krispies and goat milk. When we ate pizza she couldn't eat in the same room, because airborne flour dust might bring on an attack. This was in the days before the EpiPen. Her parents bought Benadryl by the quart jar. She had desensitizing shots three times a week for decades, and was able to eat her first half-slice of wheat bread at the age of twenty. That same year, she had her tubes tied, telling us all later, "I wouldn't wish my genes on another generation."
Sandra Beasley, author of Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales From an Allergic Life, has a more hopeful take on her future. She does hope to have children, and in late chapters of the book, ruminates on the precautions she might have to take if the baby can tolerate foods that she can't abide, when a kiss by her infant might kill her.
Throughout the book, we learn that for the severely allergic, paranoia is a way of life. She and those like her literally walk a minefield all the time. Just how closely can you interview the waiter or the cook before ordering a meal, and hoping that the knife used to cut your vegetables was washed after being used to cut a forbidden tomato? The severely allergic, using their bodies as probes of their environment, learn to detect the slightest tingle after having a tiny taste of something new. The devil of it is, a new allergic manifestation only erupts after that first taste, once your body has had a day or two to process all the new proteins and decide it doesn't "like" one of them. You are fine until that second taste. Day in and day out, you are your own experimental animal, your own "taster" for whom every cup may bear deadly poison.
Now imagine being a spouse or lover of such a person. Are you callous enough to sneak a square of chocolate just before greeting your inamorata with a kiss, knowing that a trip to the ER is likely to follow? Are you willing to keep a peculiar kind of Kosher household, for which nothing that is risky for the other can be allowed in the door? Not only so, when you are out and have a bite at the corner café, are you as careful as you need to be? It does no good for an allergic person to marry a similarly afflicted person; they are very unlikely to have precisely the same sensitivities, so they need to exclude everything that might endanger either one of them.
In the face of all this, Ms Beasley writes with amazing good humor. It would certainly be tempting to grow up with a pretty sour attitude, but she has not. She is attacking the problem head-on. One chapter recounts her attendance at a clinicians' conference sponsored by AAAAI (American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology). Amid reporters interviewing doctors and looking for any evidence of a "cure" for allergy, she was trying to learn what she could about any new understanding of these syndromes. So far, less is known than anyone would like, and the recent "worms can cure it" hypothesis is also wanting; it helps some folks, but far too few.
Over time, she has built up a network of others who know allergies from the inside. The allergic need such support networks. She also keeps close tabs on the latest from FAAN and FAI (those are the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network and the Food Allergy Initiative). That, and constant vigilance, plus a supply of Benadryl and a fresh EpiPen, are what it takes to live in a minefield.
Showing posts with label allergies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label allergies. Show all posts
Monday, January 23, 2012
Saturday, November 03, 2007
At this rate, our grandchildren will ALL have asthma
kw: book reviews, nonfiction, medicine, allergies
Human "progress" is a tragicomedy of "five steps forward, four steps back", and the occasional "ten back, eleven forward...much later". Medical practice has always been a mixture of keen observation and tragic speculation. As an example of the first, the large TB sanitariums set up, primarily in the 19th Century, in sunny locales based their treatment on the concept that sunlight helped "consumptives." This concept is right, and recent study of the many helpful effects of Vitamin D3 have just about proved it (See the November 2007 issue of Scientific American). So, too, the "clean air" maps made in the late 1800s of places that were best for a "hay fever vacation". More recent study has shown that those which still exist are remarkably free of pollen and mold spores.
On the other hand, with allergy in mind, the affliction was thought to be primarily nervous, caused by stress, to the point that many doctors favored extracting afflicted children from their families for extended periods of time, and some even recommended "parentectomy"!
All three practices are mentioned within a few pages of one another in Breathing Space: How Allergies Shape Our Lives and Landscapes by Gregg Mitman. The book traces the history of allergy and asthma, primarily since about 1800, though there is a some historical record from Roman times. The writing is so overloaded with facts that I grew numb in the reading. Only when the author, in the last two chapters, came to his own experience and the medical landscape he experiences, did the writing gain passion and engage me.
To me, the lesson of the book reflects I Timothy 6:10, "...love of money is a root of all kinds of evils." Note: not the only root, not of "all" evil, but a highly significant factor. In medicine, it is a rare physician who makes decisions for medical reasons only. I am still looking for an honest doctor: one whose office bears not a single advertisement from a drug company; one that has no cabinet of "free samples"; one who tries the simplest tests first.
A case in point: One third of all cases of infertility are caused by low thyroid. A test for T3, T3, and TSH costs little, and leads to a cheap ($10/month for Thyroxine supplement) treatment. I have met but one honest gynecologist, the one who, when we moved to a new state 20 years ago, gave my wife a full physical, including above the neck, and within ten minutes, said "you have a lump on your thyroid". Ten years of various and expensive and painful tests in our prior place, and no doctor had ever touched her neck! None had ordered a single blood test!! After two months on Thyroxine, my wife conceived.
In the same way, the first thing most doctors do if you present yourself with wheezing and other allergy or asthma symptoms, is go to the "free sample" cabinet, grab whatever is most abundant among the inspirators, and give it to you, "Try this for starters." If it works, you get a prescription that'll take about half your discretionary income. Little thought is given to finding if something might work even better, and perhaps cost less.
It seems the human race is undergoing a slow evolution to adapt to urban life. Some people adapt well already; the rest are getting asthma and dying young. This frightening affliction, once confined to 1-2% of the population, is now seen in about 20%!
Well, I did read through the whole book. It shows how, over and over again, that as soon as a place is found with air that is good for allergic people, a "blue-gold rush" ensues, and the resulting development ruins the air. Humans are really good at fouling their own nest! I may rant on the indoor air business on another occasion.
Human "progress" is a tragicomedy of "five steps forward, four steps back", and the occasional "ten back, eleven forward...much later". Medical practice has always been a mixture of keen observation and tragic speculation. As an example of the first, the large TB sanitariums set up, primarily in the 19th Century, in sunny locales based their treatment on the concept that sunlight helped "consumptives." This concept is right, and recent study of the many helpful effects of Vitamin D3 have just about proved it (See the November 2007 issue of Scientific American). So, too, the "clean air" maps made in the late 1800s of places that were best for a "hay fever vacation". More recent study has shown that those which still exist are remarkably free of pollen and mold spores.
On the other hand, with allergy in mind, the affliction was thought to be primarily nervous, caused by stress, to the point that many doctors favored extracting afflicted children from their families for extended periods of time, and some even recommended "parentectomy"!
All three practices are mentioned within a few pages of one another in Breathing Space: How Allergies Shape Our Lives and Landscapes by Gregg Mitman. The book traces the history of allergy and asthma, primarily since about 1800, though there is a some historical record from Roman times. The writing is so overloaded with facts that I grew numb in the reading. Only when the author, in the last two chapters, came to his own experience and the medical landscape he experiences, did the writing gain passion and engage me.
To me, the lesson of the book reflects I Timothy 6:10, "...love of money is a root of all kinds of evils." Note: not the only root, not of "all" evil, but a highly significant factor. In medicine, it is a rare physician who makes decisions for medical reasons only. I am still looking for an honest doctor: one whose office bears not a single advertisement from a drug company; one that has no cabinet of "free samples"; one who tries the simplest tests first.
A case in point: One third of all cases of infertility are caused by low thyroid. A test for T3, T3, and TSH costs little, and leads to a cheap ($10/month for Thyroxine supplement) treatment. I have met but one honest gynecologist, the one who, when we moved to a new state 20 years ago, gave my wife a full physical, including above the neck, and within ten minutes, said "you have a lump on your thyroid". Ten years of various and expensive and painful tests in our prior place, and no doctor had ever touched her neck! None had ordered a single blood test!! After two months on Thyroxine, my wife conceived.
In the same way, the first thing most doctors do if you present yourself with wheezing and other allergy or asthma symptoms, is go to the "free sample" cabinet, grab whatever is most abundant among the inspirators, and give it to you, "Try this for starters." If it works, you get a prescription that'll take about half your discretionary income. Little thought is given to finding if something might work even better, and perhaps cost less.
It seems the human race is undergoing a slow evolution to adapt to urban life. Some people adapt well already; the rest are getting asthma and dying young. This frightening affliction, once confined to 1-2% of the population, is now seen in about 20%!
Well, I did read through the whole book. It shows how, over and over again, that as soon as a place is found with air that is good for allergic people, a "blue-gold rush" ensues, and the resulting development ruins the air. Humans are really good at fouling their own nest! I may rant on the indoor air business on another occasion.
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