Bear with me for a moment; I’ve got a medical complaint.

I’ve fallen into a rotten pattern that I can’t seem to do anything about. I keep having these terrible allergy attacks that end up with me having to take a long afternoon nap. What fun! you think, but let me assure you, it’s no fun at all. I pretty much feel like a pile of wet newspaper all the time. The question at all times is whether or not I have enough energy to avoid taking a nap, or whether I have to sleep for hours.

It has been like this for the past three springs and summers — first in Philly, and now in Louisiana. Nothing helps. I started taking Singulaire this spring, and it helped for a little while, but now it seems that Pez would be about as effective. It’s so bad that I finally asked my doctor for a referral to an allergist. I’m going to have to get to the bottom of this.

As longtime readers know, I have an autoimmune disorder called Raynaud’s Syndrome, which is kind of like allergy to cold. It’s mostly been just an inconvenience, and only in the winter. But in the past couple of years, I’ve had to wear socks to bed even in the summer, because my feet are miserably cold. I can always tell when the allergy nap is coming on, because my feet suddenly feel very cold, and it feels like all my energy is leaking out of them. It seems to me that the allergic reaction is not a cause but a symptom of my waning immune system. I never had seasonal allergies until my Raynaud’s got significantly worse.

Anyway, I bring this all up to ask readers if any of you have dealt with anything like this, and if so, what did you learn? The daily fatigue from this stuff is really wearing on my spirits.