Of Spring and Its Symptoms

Now the poet will sing of spring as a symphony of renewal, a sweet time when birds chirp and even the voice of the turtle is heard. The romantics speak of quickened pulses, the dizzying fever of new love. Naturalists note the flora, the fruit tree blossoms and fields of flowering crocuses, while sportswriters unwrap their most purple prose in praise of baseball’s return, the crack of hickory on the old horsehide, the first whiff of the fresh-cut grass--ah, spring.

Myself, I sneeze.

And clutch my throat.

And hack.

And hide under covers alone.

It happens every year. First come the blossoms, followed by a telltale yellow dusting on the car hood. No matter what the calendar might say, spring has arrived in California, along with the usual symptoms. Within days, the allergies reach full flower. The head throbs and expands. The sinuses feel as though someone has hung them on hay hooks. Great whooping sneezes rise up from below the rib cage and rocket out the scalp. And somewhere down deep in the throat, the ghost of Ty Cobb slides wickedly, again and again, into second base, spikes up.

*

I remember the first time. It was an afternoon in early March. I was riding my bike home from grammar school. My throat caught fire and clamped shut. About every third house or so, I’d dismount, find a garden hose and gulp down all the cold water I could hold. The relief was temporary, just enough to make it to the next hose. This was in Fresno, which I have since learned not only leads the nation in per capita auto theft, but also ranks as the country’s unofficial center for spring allergies.

Agriculture and suburban landscaping, combined with a stubborn, air-trapping inversion layer, make the San Joaquin Valley a happy home for the pollen and molds that cause the body to go haywire. Today most of my boyhood friends still living in the old hometown harbor dreams of early retirement in Pebble Beach, where presumably the breathing will be easier.

Unfortunately, on the allergy front, Fresno is actually but a few paces ahead of the rest of California and the West. Seasonal pollen counts have been surging upward almost everywhere for several years. According to the experts, what has happened is this: First came migrants from the East, seeking in our arid climes relief from the agonies of hay fever. Once here, the newcomers began to long for the green grasses of home--so they did a little landscaping.

“They planted parks,” said Dr. William Ziering, an allergy specialist. “They planted front yards and back yards. They planted all the greenery from home. And so they didn’t escape their problem. They brought it with them and transplanted it.”

Ziering has worked as an allergist in Fresno for three decades, operating a clinic that is overrun each spring with hordes of hacking snifflers. He monitors the pollen count as part of a global research effort. He oversees an experiment in “sneeze-free landscaping” on land provided by the state university. When I caught up with him Friday by telephone, he was not in Fresno, but rather was spending his customary weekend in Pebble Beach--my definition of a smart allergy doctor.

*

He told me all sorts of interesting things. He told me how the pollen count has risen about 15% every year and that allergies annually cost the nation--through medical expenses and lost productivity--something like $8.4 billion. He explained that as people approach their individual threshold for pollen and mold they become more and more vulnerable to allergies: “The priming effect, we call it.” He told me one in five Californians now suffer spring allergies. He said the symptoms, seen and unseen, can linger for as long as 19 weeks and often are misdiagnosed--as a common cold or bronchitis in adults, as ear infections in children.

“It’s not just runny noses and sneezes,” he said, and here, wiping my nose, I became most interested, because I never have bothered to seek out an official diagnosis of my seasonal misfortunes.

“It can be a nose blockage,” he said, and I began to breathe through my mouth.

“It can be a pain in the face, above the sinuses,” he said, and I began to massage my aching forehead.

“It can be a deep cough,” he said, and I hacked twice.

“Not only do you not feel well, but you don’t function well. You don’t have so much energy. And you don’t think so well,” he said, and here I yawned and silently reviewed my plans to devote, in this time of great societal tumult and woe, an entire column to the subject of spring sneezes. Thus, in my mind, was the diagnosis cinched.