Oh, Wichita, how I love thee — and hate you with an itchy vengeance

Yet another list came out recently declaring Wichita the worst city for allergies.

This is hardly breaking news. I discovered this personally 22 years ago when I began my love-hate relationship with the city.

I moved here from Little Rock, often No. 2 on the ugly-allergies list, where I also spent much of my time suffering.

For approximately half a day, I thought the move might help me feel better. Then I started sneezing. And wheezing. And coughing. And complaining.

It pains me to think you’ll think I’m simply a garden-variety whiner. Please hear me out. Gardens and the allergens they produce are hardly my only obstacles.

Apparently, my superpower is my ability to turn allergies into sinus infections — ones that last months, not weeks.

My sinus doc tells me I’m in the top 1% of most-difficult cases ever.

I’ve always hoped to be best at something, though if I’d gotten to choose, this wouldn’t be it.

A couple of six-month stretches of infections have been my most-notable accomplishments in the decades of this battle (which, I might note, started as soon as I graduated college and began working. Coincidence?).

Sometimes, when friends or co-workers lament a cold they’ve had for more than a week, I have to stop myself from laughing and borrowing an oft-used phrase from a friend: “Suck it up, buttercup!”

To which I would add: “Come see me when you have a real problem.”

You may be thinking the same of me. After all, it’s not like I have a terminal illness.

However, it’s changed the trajectory of my adulthood.

I’ve had four sinus surgeries, only one of which did any good, and I was seeing an infectious disease doctor before COVID made it cool.

I’ve done crazy-but-helpful treatments such as washing my nose out with baby shampoo and hanging my head off my bed upside down (doctor-ordered — really) and dropping liquid steroids into my nose for five minutes at a time twice a day. And you don’t even want to know about my daily routine to fight allergies. Trust me.

Few people understand it (including the doctors I visited at the Mayo Clinic to try to find some help) and fewer still have sympathy for someone who is always sick.

Well-meaning friends have questioned why I’m so often ill. They suggest I look inward and examine what’s going on in my head, emotionally or mentally.

Yes, I agree, the problem is all in my head because that’s where my sinuses are.

Tricky decision

My brother in Florida sent me one of the many recent national news stories about Wichita’s No. 1 distinction. His subject line read: “Move now!”

So, why do I stay? Couldn’t I just pick up and go somewhere I might feel better?

That’s tricky on a lot of levels.

First, where is that place? If I knew for certain, I likely would upend my life and go.

All kinds of would-be medical experts have suggested places to try, such as Arizona. Except my actual physicians have told me that everyone who moved there for their health decades ago took all their plants with them, so now they still have the same allergens with no rain to wash them away.

Also, the things that set me off are everywhere: dust mites, mold, cats, dogs, trees, grass, pollen — the list goes on.

Once, when I was getting an allergy test, I had so many welts pop up that the doctor held my hands, gently to comfort me yet firmly to prevent me from wildly scratching.

You should have seen me earlier this spring. I clawed at my itching eyes in a way you would have thought I didn’t mind if I accidentally blinded myself.

A trip to Atlanta finally gave me some relief, which is highly ironic given that Atlanta made national news that week for having such thick pollen that the city was blanketed in yellow.

Still, it was better than Wichita.

Other cities could borrow that slogan.

Yeah, we have problems, but we’re still better than Wichita.

I’m just kidding. Really. Wichita is fabulous in many ways.

My husband and I immediately made friends upon moving here. Somehow, it’s easy to find your people in Wichita.

And nowhere else could two poor, relative to some other professional workers, journalists already have their house paid off.

There always seems to be something to do, too. I truly want to smack Millennials, or anyone else, who say they’re bored here.

Also, I always return from driving in other invariably congested cities even more appreciative of Wichita’s easy access to everywhere (though the forced road diet the city has put us on makes me crazy).

And I’ve never, in all the states and countries I’ve visited, seen a more stunning sunset than over my backyard.

Though it’s true that I’d probably still choose an ocean or perhaps a Great Lake for my view, given the choice and the necessary financial means, I am regularly in awe of how remarkable Wichita’s sunsets are.

They’re so beautiful that once, when seeing the much-ballyhooed sunset in Key West — a daily tourist attraction — I said, “Seriously? This is it?”

Check the news

So where does this love-hate relationship leave me?

Stuck, I’m afraid.

My husband, Joe Stumpe, is entrenched in Wichita’s music and culinary scenes, playing regularly at area bars and restaurants and teaching cooking classes at Mark Arts. Neither of those careers is easy to replicate when moving to another town.

In order to finally divorce Wichita, I’d probably have to get an actual divorce, because I don’t think Joe is going anywhere. Such is Wichita’s hold on him.

I guess I can keep hoping for a cure — along with many others who suffer from allergies and resulting infections to various degrees.

For awhile, I sought help at KU from the head of the otolaryngology department (he’s the one who prescribed the crazy upside-down routine). After getting treated by him numerous times, we had what turned out to be our last appointment. I asked if he one day happens to find a cure for sinus infections, could he please call and let me know?

“No,” he deadpanned, “I will have won the Nobel Prize, and you can read about it in the news.”