"I'm just going to prick your skin five times," said the allergist. That didn't sound so bad. And then she came at me with an apparatus that looked kind of like spiked brass knuckles, with six clusters of nine tiny needles. And just like that, her "five pricks" became 270.
Dissatisfied with the results, she asked if she could do a more accurate test, this time inserting a traditional hypodermic needle and injecting the allergen. "I only want to test for two things," she said. Why, that didn't sound so bad. She then proceeded to bring in 14 vials of allergens to inject: 8 molds and 6 plants. Somewhere around the 13th injection, I asked her how she lives with herself.
"It's not lying, mostly," she said.