are you sure asthma isn't contagious?

You may think that you know the answer to the question posed in the title of my post. But my friends and I are convinced that John is Patient Zero (as Oniel put it) in an outbreak of contagious asthma. The facts:

1) Many people have developed asthma after meeting and living with/near John. Adit developed asthma after sharing a room with John and took the extreme step of attempting revenge by contaminating John's stuff with pinkeye, which wasn't really called for, but the development of chronic lung problems does make people annoyed.

2) When I was in college and spending a significant amount of time with John, I was diagnosed with asthma, and was given inhalers as a result.

3) When I was out of college and not seeing John so much, my asthma went away. I went to India, home of air pollution, came back, and my doctor said I didn't have asthma and didn't need inhalers.

4) I have been living in John's house for the past week. Today I went in for some allergy testing. The tech had me do the breath velocity test, frowned, handed me some albuterol, and had me repeat the test. She seemed to indicate that I have asthma, although I'll have to wait until I see the doctor on Thursday to confirm.

Coincidence? You be the judge! In fact, as John has spread his asthma to more people, his own asthma seems to be gradually less severe. Hmmm.

So today was a jam-packed day. I had an extensive allergy test (more on that later). Then I went into the office and had a v. nice lunch with Alaska Matt before meeting up with Alan (my former manager) to discuss possible roles for me when I come back. Nothing was decided, but I'm talking to some more people later this week and am confident that I'll find something interesting. Then I spent some time catching up with people on and around my old team, which was super fun even if my presence probably destroyed their productivity for the afternoon.

After the office, I went to Hayward (in the dirty east bay) to have dinner with Oniel and Claudia. We always made Oniel come to the peninsula when we were living there, but we finally met him in the east bay instead. I was not a fan at first -- the street the restaurant was on also contained trailer parks, check cashing services, pawn shops, and a variety of other shops that did not instill confidence in the niceness of the restaurant. But the restaurant itself was actually great -- really delicious Italian food. I had a cannelloni stuffed with seafood (in a nod to Oniel's allergy to shellfish), followed by one of the best tiramisus I've had for awhile. Fauxneil and Claudius were good, and we had an excellent conversation, including a couple of my favorite conversation topics (the Olympics and the end of the world).

Back to my allergy test -- I'm allergic to everything! I kind of guessed this, but it's official. The tech pricked my back with 58 different allergens, and I'm allergic to 42 of them. It itched and burned like crazy during the reaction period, and it didn't help that she retested eight of them by injecting them deeper under my skin. I need to see the actual allergy specialist on Thursday to discuss the results and see if I should do the food allergy test as well, but here were the results:

Environmentals:
Allergic: cats, dogs, dust mites
Not allergic: feathers, horses, rabbits, cockroaches, hamsters, rats

Molds/Fungi:
Allergic: 4
Not allergic: 6 (including penicillin, which is good)

Weeds:
Allergic: all 12 of them! I laughed to see that alfalfa is considered a weed, since my parents actually planted it in their field for hay. Ragweed, sage, cockleburs, alfalfa, lamb's quarters, russian thistle, sorrel, and five other weeds were part of the test, and they were all major allergies for me.

Grasses:
Allergic: both that were tested (plain grass and bermuda grass)

Trees:
Allergic: 20, including Chinese elm, juniper, birch, oak, walnut, cottonwood, mulberry, sycamore, maple, and the tree of heaven, whatever that is. Basically all the trees in our yard at home.
Not allergic: 4 - pine, Monterey cypress, eucalyptus, and liquid amber/sweet gum

It's no wonder I'm a mess when I'm not taking my drugs. It will be interesting to see if the allergist thinks there's anything I can do -- I don't know that I really want to go the whole 'take shots every other week for months in the vain hope that one day you'll be less allergic to things'. But knowing which foods I should be avoiding would be helpful too.

Okay, enough allergy talk. I want to get up and actually spend a day working on my novel, so it's time for bed!