My first Texas-sized breakdown

Friday I finally had my appointment with the allergist, which I'd been looking forward to since we brought Gigolo inside. Because when I say I'm allergic I don't mean he makes me sneeze, I mean he gives me asthma. Not-breathing asthma. And I didn't write about it online because Mama Sly's been known to read what I write, and as soon as I said "can't breathe" she'd have shown up at the front door and worried at me. And Mama Sly's got enough to worry about - have you met my brother? He's a complete reprobate. (Hi Dave, smooches!)

Kidding, he's a good guy. But not worrying my mom was a good plan.

So I went to the allergist and told him that I knew I was allergic but brought the cat inside anyways, and he looked at me in genuine bewilderment. "Why did you do that?"

me: "He was hurt!"

him: "You're not allergic to dogs, why didn't you adopt a dog?"

me: "There were no hurt dogs wandering around."

Then he just looked at me with these confused eyes, magnified by his glasses, until I blushed and looked away.

He decided to do allergy testing to make sure he knew what exactly was going on. When they do allergy testing they inject you with a histamine to see what a positive allergic reaction looks like. Then they prick you with 50 different types of typical allergens and see what you react to. My histamine control was about the size of a dime and bright red. Certain grasses, trees, and mold swelled to the size of a quarter, overlapped their neighboring allergens and made me want to tear my skin off they itched so badly. The cat prick only swelled to the size of a dime and turned bright red. I thought this was a good sign.

Until the allergist sat me down. And said that just because I'm insanely allergic to other things doesn't mean I'm not very, very allergic to the cat. That if I was his wife or daughter he'd tell me to get rid of it. That the cat was making me sick. That he'd help me no matter what I decided to do, but that for someone like me to bring a cat into the house was ridiculous, especially with all my other allergies attacking my system.

I held in my tears until I was in the car, and held in the sobs until I was home. I didn't tell Ed I was hysterical, just that the allergist said to get rid of the cat, and he came straight home.

He's worried about my mental health if my only friend in San Antonio gets taken away.