Allergies rampant in all seasons

Jan Brown
Posted 3/21/03

I found out I was allergic to penicillin when I was in grade school and under constant attack by a pair of vicious tonsils. The only time my tonsils called a cease fire was during the dog days of summer - also known as polio season in the olden days before polio vaccine. Doctors didn't like to remove tonsils during polio season and they didn't like to remove tonsils while they were acting up - in case the tonsils made some sort of ugly scene in the operating room, I guess. So in an attempt to tame my tonsils long enough to yank them out, my doctor decided to give me a shot of penicillin. The place into which this shot was injected (a place which will remain anonymous if you don't mind) turned into one big hive and also turned its next-door mirror image body part into a mirror image hive. It was official - I was allergic to penicillin.

I found out I was allergic to spring when a neighbor girl rubbed dandelions all over my face. My face proceeded to swell up with the same enthusiasm that my anonymous body part had done. When my parents took me to an allergy specialist, he poked a variety of other pollens into a lot of little holes he had poked in my back, and many pollens that are rampant in the spring got a reaction. It was official - I was allergic to spring.

Now it turns out that I am allergic to money! I should have figured that out years ago, but none of my nursing school classes, none of the nursing journals, and no continuing education courses ever mentioned any sort of money allergy syndrome. Over the years, I have done a lot of research on this money allergy syndrome - accidental, unintentional research, but research just the same - and here is what I have discovered. An accumulation of money - any amount greater than $100 in my case - causes the allergic person to break out in some sort of medical condition!

The first time the allergy struck me was soon after I became a wage earner. I signed up for the payroll savings plan and immediately started having back pain. When the account balance passed $1,000 for the first time, I ruptured a disk! If I had been carrying 100,000 pennies, the sheer weight of the money could have been blamed, but I was nowhere near that money! The surgery and resulting recovery time quickly got rid of the money that caused the allergic reaction, and I was fine until a few hundred accumulated in that account and triggered the allergy again and I ruptured another disk. I had repeated allergic reactions the whole time I worked as a nurse. A few dollars would pile up in my checking account and a tooth would go berserk and require an expensive root canal. I'd make a small deposit in my savings account and the cartilage in my knee would go to pieces and need a pricey arthroscopic fix. When I tried to start an IRA, I ended up with a duodenal ulcer!

I finally realized I had a money allergy when I got an insurance settlement after a car accident. It wasn't a lot of money by anyone else's standards, but it seemed like a fortune to me, so I decided it was time for me to become an investor - like all the other grownups.

This was about a year ago when everyone was saying that the stock market was bound to rebound very soon if not sooner, so I got a reliable, responsible organization to invest my meager funds in ethical, responsible companies. The stock market did not rebound. Slowly but surely, my investment got a little smaller every day - just like all the other investors. But slowly is not fast enough for my money allergy, and so that allergy jumped up and bit me! This time it bit me right in the ear! My hearing needed to be tested, my head needed to be x-rayed, and other expensive things needed to be done. It was official - I was and always will be allergic to money!

Two things are going to happen as a result of my allergy. First, things will need to be done to my ear until all of my investment is out of the stock market and into the healthcare system. And second - as soon as my investment is no longer invested, the market really will rebound! So if you say hello to me on the street and I can hear you, you'd be wise to jump into the market with both feet! And if you want to damage me or do me in, throw money at me! The allergy will work its worst, and no one will ever be able to pin anything on you!