Allergies

In my last fortnight in Canberra, unlike the other five years previous, I developed severe hayfever. So severe that it stopped me from packing, because it’s really hard to concentrate on thoughts like will-I-need-this-brush-in-the-next-year when you are sneezing so violently and randomly that you can’t talk and you fall over. Heidi, best flatmate ever, not only went out and found herbal anti-sneezing tablets (I'm allergic to antihistamines, natch), she even said ‘I don’t mind if you are sneezing all over the floor [I was, great gobs of phlegm, ew], it’s not like you’re contagious!’. Ah good times.* I was a bit upset about the hayfever, as Canberra had previously been my allergy haven – I thought perhaps the cold, dry climate agreed with my persnickety nose.

I hung on grimly with the thought that at least if it didn’t clear up I would be leaving Canberra for the North Coast, where these days my allergies are merely present, more than disabling. After that – i.e. coming to Timor – I was not so sure. I figured that with my delicate and temperamental sinuses I would probably be allergic to some plant or something that nobody else ever is in Timor. So, resignedly, I packed some more of the awesome herbal anti-sneezing tablets, ‘cause hey, this is me. I sneeze. A lot. And not just cute little a-tishoo! -type sneezing. Oh no. Children cower and animals flee when I sneeze, a giant honking sneeze I believe I inherited from Dad.

But so far... two weeks... and nothing. I don’t wake up in the morning and have to blow my nose. I don’t go out to work and sneeze eight times in a row in the first hour. Both of these things are normal, everyday, non-hayfever-festival occurrences for me. If anything, I have got healthier, because the cough I have had *since May* has just about cleared up.

• Heidi, I have never had a sister and I know as an only child you have often wondered what it would be like. I am pretty sure that both the sweet and the slightly gleeful sides of your evaluation of my sneeze-o-rama illustrate what sisters are about pretty well.

EDIT: As of Monday 8th, I was sick. Not with hayfever though, some kind of tonsillitis-y thing. Ah well!