This morning I got up at 6:15 in order to go to Fayetteville and be tested for allergies. This was something both my primary care physician and immunologist suggested after all the blood work from my recent battery of tests came back as “pristine,” just as good as anyone else’s if not better (so there). I’ve been looking forward to being tested, thinking we’d finally have an answer to my lifelong sinus infection problems and recent skin irritations. But when I got up this morning I was nervous. I thought, What if I’m allergic to dogs, dust mites, grass, and everything else under the sun? Do I really want to KNOW that?

Thinking it was quite possible for me to “flare up” in response to being tested this morning, my friend Bonnie offered to take me. “If your body overreacts and you feel miserable,” she said, “you shouldn’t have to drive.” Wasn’t that kind of her? I’ve been dragging myself to doctor appointments for months now–alone–and that’s okay–but I can’t tell you what it meant to have someone simply offer to tag along, what’s more to actually go. At the butt crack of dawn.

Talk about a good friend. (I guess that’s what I’m doing.)

At the allergy clinic, I was taken excellent care of. They even weighed me in kilograms to protect my ego. (I’m under a hundred!) Now that’s service. But seriously, I was there for a solid two hours, and half of that was them taking a full medical history and me getting to ask questions. Then came the “fun” part, when the nurse scratched or pricked me sixty different times to test me for common allergens like dogs, cats, mold, ragweed, and every tree you can think of. For this I lay shirtless on my stomach as I gripped the table and–with each needle scratch–practiced enunciating my favorite curse words.

She-it!

Son of a bi-otch!

Y’all, these expletives were justified. It felt like the nurse was planting saplings between my shoulder blades with a rusted shovel. Granted, it didn’t hurt that bad at first, but it just went on and on–poke, poke, poke–like some sort of medieval torture device. What’s worse, I could have sworn the nurse was getting off on it, like one of those demented people on YouTube who enjoys popping zits, except this woman was popping perfectly good skin (mine). I can’t say how long this went on, but I was so grateful when it was over that I rededicated my life to the lord.

Of the sixty scratches, only fifty-eight contained actual potential allergens. The other two were controls, one being saline (which shows as non-reactive), the other being straight (as opposed to gay?) histamine (which shows as reactive). As I understand it, a person is “allergic” to any substance that hives up like the histamine control. The results take fifteen minutes to “come in,” during which time you’re not allowed to roll over or scratch. The nurse told me, “If you do, we’ll have to start over.”

So get this shit.

At the end of fifteen minutes, the nurse said I wasn’t allergic TO ANYTHING. That’s right, all that worrying, and nothing on my back hived up in response to our region’s most offensive allergens. See for yourself in the photo below. (The red dots are a normal reaction to having your skin scratched WITH A FREAKIN’ NEEDLE, and the one big bump in the lower right corner is the straight histamine.)

In response to why I sometimes sneeze or have watery eyes, the doctor and nurse explained that a person can be “intolerant” of things like animals or pollen but not truly be allergic to them. (Take an antihistamine, they said.) So that was the joke between Bonnie and me on the way home–that I’m INTOLERANT–I won’t put up with allergens, I simply won’t abide them. (UH-CHEW.) Honestly, I don’t know what to do with this information. Most of me is relieved. This is good news. Really good news. My immune system works. Better than I thought it did. (I was wrong, guys.) At the same time, SOMETHING has been negatively contributing to my health issues lately, and I still don’t know what that is. Alas, I leave this mystery for another day, content for now in the knowledge that something I thought was horribly broken (me)–isn’t.