Pinkeye, allergies, and essential oils

Calm, non-scratching Sophie

What a day. I woke feeling draggy and wanting nothing more than to go back to bed. My left eye was funny--puffy eyelid, puffy below the eye, and it kept tearing. I kept running to the mirror to check it's progress and color compared to the other eye. Self diagnosis: pink eye. I cancelled physical therapy and lunch plans and alerted my daughter, who said she wasn't coming near me and to be sure to call the doctor. Though she did begin the conversation with, "How does a 76-year-old woman get pinkeye?" Darned if I know!
As the morning progressed, both me and the eye began to feel better. More running to the mirror. By lunchtime I thought it looked pretty good, but friend Subie came by, shared lunch with me, and said both eyes were a bit swollen. I wanted to tell her she should have seen them at six-thirty in the morning. Over the phone, my doctor's nurse and I decided it was allergies.
After a nap, both eyes looked normal. Jordan and Jacob came for happy hour, though he declined to spend the night as was planned. Golf camp wore him out.
Meanwhile, Sophie was having itch problems. She had them a week or so ago and I thought they got better, but tonight she was rubbing her back on the underside of the coffee table. Again, it had been a phone diagnosis: allergies. I read that the very wet weather we've been having caused a lot of dogs to itch, and I sparingly gave her Benadryl.
Jordan wanted to try lavender oil on her (she's convinced Young Life Essential Oils are miracle cures for everything). She emailed to find out what to do. I had envisioned her trying to get the oil through Sophie's thick coat on the spot that apparently itched. Not so. She was to put two drops on a hind paw.
That took a bit of doing. When she got her oil kit out, Sophie began to look leery (as she does when we put flea and heartworm medicine on her back). Jordan finally hauled her into her lap, where Sophie looked very ungainly and awkward, but Jord loved on her and quieted her. Then Jacob put two drops of oil in Jordan's
palm and she rubbed it on the bottom of Sophie's back paw. Sophie stayed in her lap and enjoyed good loving for a long time.
And you know what? It worked. She didn't scratch again at all, and she was much calmer than usual. I think I'll put lavender oil on the bottom of my foot tonight.
Four to six inches of rain due tomorrow--the tail end of Hurricane Bill. Flood watches and all that accompanies these heavy rains. Meantime, tonight, I'm watching a bird on a dead branch at the very top of my tall elm tree--rain doesn't bother him. He's preening and surveying his world. So far away I can't tell what kind of bird, but I like him.