The Garden of the Blind

During the last few years, I’ve had a problem with allergies. It wasn’t always this way, but lately I tend to sneeze a lot and get a bit congested once the weather starts to warm up. It’s mostly just an annoyance, and so I put up with it.

This morning, I blew my nose, and my wife suggested that I take some allergy medicine that we have. I don’t usually take any medicine unless whatever is ailing me is significantly impeding my function (e.g. I have a headache that distracts me to the point that I can’t pay attention to anything else). However, since I recently started taking some vitamins, I am getting used to taking pills. Without really thinking about it, I popped one of these tiny, bitter tasting pills.

Still not thinking about it, I drove to work, and almost immediately upon arrival, I noticed that I was really tired. I’m tired a lot of mornings, but this was not your usual “I can’t handle mornings, or consciousness in general” fatigue. It’s closer to how I feel after 20+ hours without sleep. I screams out for me to just close my eyes for a second, and then it will all be better.

It turns out that, like all allergy medicines, this one may cause drowsiness, but they’ve put in a stimulant to counter the effect. Apparently the stimulant doesn’t work on me, and so I have drowsiness. Instead of providing relief to minor symptoms, the cold medicine has given me a major, performance reducing side effect. Tomorrow, I’ll just bring along a clean hanky to blow my nose with.