I have severe allergies. Hay fever and the like. I once even took a test to prove it. Unfortunately, the internet was only just beginning it's invasion and domination of the human race when I took the test and instead of being subjected to mouse clicks and webMD, I was sublimated to the archaic black magic that passed as medicine back in the 80's. The first step was to draw a 20 x 5 grid in my left arm with an ink pen. The second step was to stab my arm 20 times with needles filled with things that people are commonly allegric to. After about 15 minutes, they brought a measuring device that was essentially a piece of metal with different sized holes in it. They then placed a hole that was about an inch in diameter over the places where I had been injected to see if the massively swelling area was of adequate size. If it was, they declared "Well look at that! You're allergic to tree sperm." If it wasn't, they stabbed me again with a larger quantity of whatever they wanted me to be allergic to, waited 15 minutes and measured again. After 53 shots, they were able to determine that I'm only mildly allergic to cats, but everything else makes me spew snot like one seriously pissed off slime volcano. Where I live it is primarily maple tree ejaculation that aggravates me the most. So for about two weeks each year I have the choice of either being completely miserable and unable to function or taking medicine that requires a background check and says in small type on the back of the box that they may be slowly killing some of my better organs. Quality of life over quantity though, right?
Anyway, none of this is what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is hookworms. Hookworms? Yes, hookworms. Small nasty little critters that burrow into your skin and set up shop eating your innards. The reason I want to talk about hookworms is that we recently acquired the cutest little puppy dog and she happened to have a bad infestation of spaghetti noodles. I know that she had a bad infestation of spaghetti noodles because after giving her medicine, I watched her poop them out. But after several days of treatment, we were confident she was cured. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for them to get reinfected (apparently spaghetti noodles are persistent little buggers). We are not certain she has hookworms. Could be other types of worms, but I want to talk about hookworms. Why do I want to talk about hookworms? Because in reading about them I learned that they're great for allergies. Come again? Hookworms are great for allergies! That's right, apparently people who are infested with hookworms do not experience extreme allergies or allergy attacks. The speculation is that what causes allergy attacks and extreme allergies is that the immune system is too strong and is just sitting around with nothing to do, so when tree sperm or some other allergen gets lodged up one's nostrils, the immune system, like any good mall cop, responds with a heavy measure of extreme brutality and indescriminate tasering. The hookworms apparently create a bunch of proteins, which act like roving bands of hoodlums and therefore keep the mall cops occupied and unable to over-respond to such insignificant albeit demeaning situations such as tree sperm up the nostrils.
So, in short, I learned today that I am superman, Lex Luthor is tree sperm, and hookworms are kryptonite. Woohoo! I can fly!
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