It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a blog entry, and that’s because I’ve been busy. Busy procrastinating. However, I thought that as long as I’m not allowed to go to sleep quite yet, and as long as Camino keeps deciding that every word I type is misspelled, which it never did before (strange), I thought that I’d blog about my experiences today.

You may know that I’ve had a nearly continuous bout against allergies since January. Strange, because I’ve virtually never had allergies before, but since January, allergies to SOMETHING have sprung up inside me, and nothing has been able to kick it. Not antihistemines, not Claritin (unless the definition of “Claritin clear” is the same as San Francisco on a foggy day), not Sudafed, and not even Flonase, which was prescribed to me a few months ago.

At first we had thought that my allergies were just the residual effects of a rather bad case of the flu that I had had in February. Then, as they persisted, we decided that allergy season must have been taking an unusually strong toll on me this year. But it’s October now, and so I’d say that allergy season has wrapped itself up awhile ago. But then, last Tuesday night, my allergies got so bad that they woke me up in the middle of the night and kept me up half the night blowing my nose. By the time I had to go to school, I had about 4 hours of sleep under my belt and was in no condition to be awake enough to go to school. I stayed home last Wednesday, and after sleeping till noon (literally), went to see the doctor. Allergies had won the first round, but for Round 2, I sought professional medical assistance.

This morning, I had an appointment with an Allergy Specialist, thanks to a conveniently-timed no school day, which proceeded to give me an allergy test. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever had one of these allergy tests before, but they start by marking up both of your arms with numbers, and then proceed to prick these sections of your arms, which applies a small amount of a certain pathogen onto your skin. The feeling of this is essentially like being pricked with a sewing pin, but about 25-30 times within a minute. Yeah, not fun. They then send you outside to watch a movie about dealing with allergies in your home (dust mites in particular), to give 20 minutes for your poked-up arm to do its thing. The problem is that your arm starts to feel itchy, and these spots that were pricked start to see little bumps coming up, a few of them worse than the other ones. Luckily, once they finally re-examine your arm, they wipe off all the pathogens with a swab of alcohol, which helps it to feel better, and then measure the size of the bumps to determine how allergic you are to these particular symptoms.

It turns out that I’m really really allergic to dust mites (so I no longer have to say that I “might/mite” be allergic to them), which probably can explain why my worst allergies are in the morning and while I’m in my bedroom. I also have a relatively smaller allergy to cats and dogs, and am also slightly allergic to cockroaches. However, in practice, I’ve never really had much problem with cats or dogs, so I’m told that I’d probably be okay with making sure I wash my hands after petting. And I certainly hope that I’ll never have to meet a cockroach. However, I’m not allergic at all to pollen or mold, which throws all of our old theories out the already-opened window.

However, there is now a number of things that have to happen to help rectify my problems. First up, we have to do everything in our power to decimate the presence of dust mites in my room. That means, regularly wiping hard surface, regularly washing fabric surfaces and stuffed animals (that means all the stuff animals belonging to my brother, and also my phpBB Bertie Bear), putting hypo-allergenic covers on mattresses and pillows, and finding a dehumidifier to put in here. And also probably pulling up the rug in my room as well. In short, my bedroom will probably be getting excavated soon, with the target date probably set for the week of the 15th, when my brother is away at Outdoor Ed.

There’s more. I’ve now got to start doing regular nasal irrigation. I actually just finished doing this half an hour ago, and my, it was weird. Here’s kind of how it works. We got a kit at the pharmacy today which contains a bottle and a bunch of packets. We’re supposed to fill the bottle with lukewarm distilled water (or else water that has been boiled and cooled; apparently plain water will cause a burning feeling), and then mix in the powder in one of these packets into the bottle. Then, after dissolving the powder, I’m supposed to bend over a sink with my mouth open, hold the bottle with the cap on (the cap has a hole in the top) up to my nostril, and squeeze gently. The water then goes into my nostril and either comes out of the next nostril or out of my mouth. Yes, it feels weird, but it feels weirder coming out of my mouth than coming out of my other nostril. I’m supposed to keep doing this in one nostril until the bottle is almost half empty, and then in the other nostril the same way. I’m supposed to do this routine twice a day, although it will be quite interesting to see how well I manage with that. Oh, and then I’m not supposed to go to sleep for at least an hour afterwards for fear that the fluid could go down my throat and accidentally get swallowed, which I’m not supposed to do. That’s why I’m typing this blog entry right now instead of sleeping.

But then, after I do this nasal irrigation routine, I’m then supposed to do a spray per nostril of that Flonase nasal spray that I have lying around. Then, if my nose is still causing problems, I can take Sudafed as needed to help decongest it. However, I need to be sure I do the irrigation and the Flonase routinely, but even then, I probably won’t notice any improvement for two weeks. Wonderful.

But, with any luck, I won’t have to spend 2008 with constant nasal congestion as I have during 2007. And I do certainly hope that this stuff will work, because the next alternative would be, *gulp*, allergy shots, which would involve me getting a shot every week for a few years. Uh, yeah. I, ahem, do NOT want to have to do that.

In short, today, I’ve been given the arsenal to go after my allergies for Round 2, and am hoping to win this round, though it will be a long, and sure to be interesting process.

Tags: allergies, Claritin, congestion, doctor, dust mites, Flonase, irrigation, medicine, nasal, Personal, Sudafed