DONNER, PARTY OF ONE

In today's episode of Boring Whining, I examine why the fuck I may or may not be having a persistent, minor allergic reaction to something in my house, in basically just one exact spot on my entire body, and like what am I supposed to do about this. Last September I started having this problem with one of my eyes (and I have had alarming eye problems in the past, so I was NOT EXCITED about this) where it felt like something gross and squishy was in there and it was just constantly watering, to the point where it was hard to even sit down and write a letter. I love my current eye doctor but I was annoyed when everyone in his office agreed that it was just a minor rash-like allergic reaction under the corner of the one eyelid, and that's the only thing it could possibly be.

[I become VERY IRATE when a clinician tries to tell me something anomalous is "just allergies," when my whole family has suffered from various allergies for our entire existence and I could not possibly be more familiar with allergies. I'm still mad at the doctor I went to for a signed document confirming a covid infection in 2020, because I needed this document to beg for refunds on transport/lodging/events for my fucking birthday, and the fucking guy told me it was "just allergies" no matter how many times I said "this is not like allergies" and he was incredibly condescending about it, so I had to come back the next day after a positive home covid test, and I was confronted with a different doctor who treated me like the stupidest idiot alive when I repeated what doctor #1 said, snarling "IT'S THE COVID, HONEY" -- a phrase that has been echoing in my mind ever since.]

The allergy diagnosis here bothered me because I'd had the problem consistently for weeks-into-months, it was totally localized to just the inside corner of my left eye, and I had made absolutely no lifestyle changes -- no new products, medications, bedding, pets, dietary changes, absolutely nothing new at all. (And I do take a daily antihistamine, but I understand that not every medication affects your whole system, like beyond the respiratory) I was even more annoyed when I obediently took a course of antihistamine eyedrops, and then a second course of stronger antihistamine eyedrops, and there was absolutely no change whatsoever. I also took a course of antibiotic eyedrops with a steroid, and then a second course of the same but stronger, and there was no change. Then I took a low level oral antibiotic for a couple of months and I showed some very gradual improvement, but it wasn't perfect and I can't be on that thing forever, so I'm back to just the constant baseline feeling that there is something thick and weird under my eyelid that I can't do anything about. Plus, it's subtle enough that other people probably don't notice, but *I* can see that that area always looks a little puffy and unnaturally wrinkled and fatigued now, and it's just frustrating to permanently not be able to look my best because of whatever-this-is. (And I agree with the doctor's assessment that this is not an infection, since there's no pain/discharge/redness/throbbing etc)

So even though up to now I have been shooting my mouth off about how this can't possibly be allergies, I *have* noticed, slowly over time, that I've started waking up in the morning with these minor, allergic-looking blotches on my face. That should help me triangulate what's going on, but I still can't figure out what they're coming from and I think narrowing it down could be a huge, nightmarish, possibly inconclusive chore. It doesn't seem to matter whether or not I have just put on fresh, clean pillowcases, and it also doesn't seem to matter whether I take the pillowcase from the closet or directly from the bag of clean laundry (from the laundromat we have been using for 13-14 years). I could probably stand to change my old ass pillows and clean the hypoallergenic zip cases they're in more often (in fact I am in the process of all that), but I still feel like this is really weird. We lived for 10 years in an apartment that was scarcely big enough for one person who doesn't own anything, let alone a married couple one of whom (ahem) is a terrible pack rat, and that place was extremely poorly ventilated, full of mold, and in the middle of a Venn diagram of very-nearby major polluters...and I never had anything like this happen, just my completely-normal itchy sneezy wheezy allergy shit. Which I have not experienced almost at all now since we moved ~3 years ago to our comparatively palatial apartment that gets tons of fresh air and sunlight and is easy to clean, and has no pest problems to speak of (KNOCK ON WOOD). So like, what the fuck.

I could and probably should start using air purifiers again just to see if that does anything...which is another thought that just makes me mad, because in that case I *should* use the fancy one that I already have, BUT I have to subscribe to get refills of their proprietary filters, and this previously caused one of the top three worst customer service experiences of my life. I started using it when covid was heating up and I was locked up in our toxic apartment all day, and like I am sympathetic to the fact that all the delivery services were suddenly totally overloaded, but we were having an impossible time getting anything shipped to us and it was driving us insane that we were constantly accused of being "not home" as if we could possibly go anywhere. I wish the various parcel services could have devised a different default excuse for why things couldn't be delivered that wasn't so frankly fake and personally insulting, but ANYWAY. FedEx was defiantly marking my stupid air filters as undeliverable because supposedly I wasn't home, when I was in fact under lockdown like everybody else and just sitting next to the window watching FedEx not show up at all until I inevitably got a random notification saying it was ME who wasn't there. (I've been dead for the whole movieeeeeee!) When I contacted the air filter company about this, explaining the situation and saying they needed to resend the filter, they were very explicitly like "We understand that FedEx was unable to deliver your package because you weren't home." And I was very explicitly like "No you DON'T UNDERSTAND, I have been obediently at home every single second doing social distancing, I don't even have a job right now, I have nothing to do but wait for your not-inexpensive product to get here and FedEx is lying for whatever reason, so sorry but you owe me a fucking filter." And they were like "Yeah it's OK, we understand that because you weren't home FedEx couldn't do their job," and I kept re-explaining what was happening, which was surely happening to a lot more people than me all over the country, and finally they were like "OK well even though you were a bad little girl and you weren't home when you were supposed to be so that FedEx could deliver your package, we are going to graciously send you a *free extra* filter because we're so nice even though this is on you," and I was like "OMFG THIS IS NOT MY FAULT, AND THIS IS NOT A FREE EXTRA FILTER, IT IS THE ONE SINGLE FILTER YOU ALREADY OWE ME PER MY PAID SUBSCRIPTION, BUT FINE FUCK IT WHATEVER." I've had customer- and client-facing jobs before and if I had ever been caught explicitly telling someone, untruthfully, that it was their own damn fault that we didn't do whatever we were on the hook for, like, something really bad would have happened to me. It was like either this company had no CS training and/or internal philosophy of how to handle complaints, OR they had put their heads together and formally agreed on the strategy "The customer is always wrong, defend FedEx to the death!", and I really don't know which is worse. But anyway, air purifiers, probably won't work but it's something to try, grumble grumble.

So, short of that I don't really know what to do. Like if this seemed to be food or hygiene-related, I would pare down all my routines to the absolute basics and then slowly add things back in until I reacted poorly to one of them. But to do that in this case would be like, taking every single thing out of the house, deep cleaning it, and putting them all back in until my eye didn't like something. Which is like, uh, pretty unrealistic. The possibility I'm facing now is, going to an ophthalmologist who, my optometrist is sure, will stick a needle into the inside of my eyelid to inject me with steroids -- an option that even my current doctor and his staff seem scared of. Which in a way I appreciate, because a lot of doctors take the tack of treating you like a dumb little baby if you are scared of something obviously scary, as if THAT makes anyone feel brave! But I said to them, Well look, after the specific surgeries I've already had I don't really care how bad this is, I genuinely appreciate your honesty in the matter but I just want my problem taken care of. And they were like OOOOOHHHH right, we forgot you had those surgeries before you started coming here -- you can probably handle ANYTHING! So yeah, cross my heart, hope to die etc, pray 4 me XXX