Allergies

[Splendid Splinter]

Anyone else have allergies? How severe? Do you take anything to help? Is it all year round?

 

[micropolitan guy]

Nasacort. Works great for me; I live in the grass-seed capitol of the world and it can be hell from April through June-July.

Nasacort ® | Adult Allergy Relief Nasal Spray | Over the Counter

 

[Cosmo]

Never got them until last year. Did not realize allergies first appearing in your 40s was a thing. Not severe, just a lot of dry throat and stuffy nose. Haven't really needed to take anything other than nasal spray for them yet, at least.

 

[outofplace]

I was diagnosed with allergies when I was very young, maybe six or seven years old. One thing I've learned in over 40 years of being treated for allergies is that doctors do a ****-poor job defining what they are and how they work.

I also have asthma, so I'm always on one set of meds or another. Allegra is a good non-drowsy option.

 

[User 150927]

Claritin and flonase worked for me. Both are over the counter now, but were subscription then. I got allergies late and the list most of them when I moved to FL

 

[Cosmo]

Had a girlfriend once who said, "I like Claritin but I can't take the Claritin D because the D makes me crazy."

 

[Regan MacNeil]

Had a girlfriend once who said, "I like Claritin but I can't take the Claritin D because the D makes me crazy."

 

[Michael_ Gee]

I have moderate hay fever grass allergies. I am also deathly (not an exaggeration) allergic to Brazil nuts. If I ate one, I would go into anaphylactic shock very quickly. Only happened once, 50 years ago, but that's why I have an epipen. Fortunately, Brazil nuts are easy to avoid in normal life. Oddly enough, I have no other nut allergies at all.

 

[playthrough]

Been fighting them my whole life. Went to see an allergist shortly after moving to a new town once, and she gave me the skin test where they prick your back with 100 or so allergens to see what's what. My back lit up like the Vegas strip and she said she had seen very few like that before. (So I've got that going for me.)

Took biweekly allergy shots for 30-plus years, then once I moved out of the south for good I gave them up. Just couldn't stand the hassle and figured it was time for my body to fight them itself, with the occasional Zyrtec or whatever. My body hasn't exactly been winning. Granted, I have grass allergies and I'm not giving up golf, so it is what it is.

 

[ChrisLong]

Been fighting them my whole life. Went to see an allergist shortly after moving to a new town once, and she gave me the skin test where they prick your back with 100 or so allergens to see what's what. My back lit up like the Vegas strip and she said she had seen very few like that before. (So I've got that going for me.)

Took biweekly allergy shots for 30-plus years, then once I moved out of the south for good I gave them up. Just couldn't stand the hassle and figured it was time for my body to fight them itself, with the occasional Zyrtec or whatever. My body hasn't exactly been winning. Granted, I have grass allergies and I'm not giving up golf, so it is what it is.

You're the first person I've heard of who had the back thingee and got significant reactions. I developed vertigo and they did a bunch of tests, but never determined the reason. It still cracks me up that the nurse did the needle pricks and said, "The doctor will be in shortly to read your back." I have total respect for everybody in the medical profession, but if I was ever going to call someone a quack, it was this allergy doctor. He said, "You're mildly allergic to a lot of things, but nothing serious. Sorry I couldn't help you." He walked out before I could blink. That guy was a Goofball with a capital G. Incidentally, they probably used about 20 needles on me, not the 100 that you endured.

 

[MileHigh]

I did the back test as a kid and also lit up with environmental allergies. I fight them what seems like year-round. I'm constantly blowing my nose just to clear things out. Daily Claritin not strong enough. Just something I live with. And now it's spring.

 

[Wenders]

After 20 years of cycling through allergy med after allergy med, I went to an allergist. I did the skin prick test and the blood test. Nothing. Zilch. I am not allergic to anything, which is a condition known as non-allergic rhinitis. It ****ing sucks and the only thing they can do is tell me to use nasal spray, which seems to kinda work.

But yeah, Benadryl was my go-to as a kid. I can use it for rashes and bug bites, but not sinus allergies now. I was on Allegra so long that it is no longer effective. Claritin puts me to sleep. Zyrtec does nothing. I literally have a box of Kleenex in every room of my house, in my car and carry pocket tissues in my purse, because my nose is likely running 365 days a year. (I once had one of my many sinus infections and the RN asked "how long have you had a runny nose?" Me: "It's Tuesday, so...about 34 years..."

 

[outofplace]

I'm so used to congestion and coughing that I barely notice, but man, people around me have noticed a lot in the past year.

"No, I don't have COVID. This is pretty much how I've sounded every day of the last 40 years, so unless I got a really early strain of the virus and it never went away..."

 

[PCLoadLetter]

Did the skin prick thing on the back when I was a teenager. The section where they did grass all grew into one massive welt. They listed my allergies on a scale of 0 to 5 and every single type of grass was 5+. (Also, when he read the list of things I'm allergic to in alphabetical order "hemp" and "hops" were back to back. Fun times.) I was allergic to pretty much everything in my yard growing up. For foods it's peanuts, which is pretty normal, and rice, which is weird.

I used all kinds of medications until my doctor gave me Flonase. That stuff works miracles. Pollen counts have to be going crazy for me to have a reaction now.

Nasacort. Works great for me; I live in the grass-seed capitol of the world and it can be hell from April through June-July.

When I lived in Eugene, in the spring I would frequently wake up in the morning with my eyes sealed shut because of the goop from my allergies. I would literally have to walk blind to the bathroom, find the sink, run water and splash it on my eyes until the crust loosened enough for me to open them.

Don't miss that.

 

[Neutral Corner]

When I was maybe six years old, I kept getting sinus infections and earaches. I was all the time going to the ENT, getting my sinuses packed with cotton soaked in medicine. They finally sent me for allergy testing. I was young, so they didn't do my back. I sat in one of the school chairs with one arm that you write on and they pricked my inner arm. I was allergic to two pages of stuff, to include grasses, pollens, milk, eggs, and chocolate and a multitude of random stuff. I got two allergy shots a week for two years, a shot a week for two years, and a shot a week for another year. By the time I'd done that for a year or so needles didn't scare me. I was rolling up my sleeve while patting my foot, like "C'mon, get on with it, I got places to go".

My poor mother had to figure out how to feed me. I got fed a brand called "Hillbilly Bread", a whole wheat bread made with water instead of milk. Bowls of cereal with water on it instead of milk, stuff like that. Canned goat's milk. (Ecccchhhhh).

The allergy extracts worked though. I have pollen issues this time of year, like virtually everyone else. Other than that I just roll on.

 

[Scout]

You should take allergy medicine year round if you have allergies.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

Anyone else have allergies? How severe? Do you take anything to help? Is it all year round?

Cat dander, oak pollen and juniper pollen. Didn’t know about that last one until I lived in central Oregon for a year.

Claritin once a day PRN.

 

[outofplace]

Cat dander, oak pollen and juniper pollen. Didn’t know about that last one until I lived in central Oregon for a year.

Claritin once a day PRN.

Exposure is another important element of allergies. Sometimes allergies won't develop until you have prolonged and repeated exposure to an allergen. For me, that was cat dander. I tested positive for dogs when I was very young, but was always negative for cats. With that in mind, my wife and I got a cat when we moved in together. About a year later, we got another one. I think it was the second one that put me over the top. I was not feeling well for a while, so I went to the doctor. They did a new scratch test and cat dander came up positive.

Damn allergies.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

I suffered for years with sinus crap. Then one day. I was in a store, grabbed a package of Zyrtec, took one pill, and was able to breathe fully for the first time in, like, 40 years.

So I take one Zyrtec every morning. I still have occasion times when it feels like there’s a band of phlegm in my lungs and I end up hacking it up so loudly my entire neighborhood can hear me.

 

[Dog8Cats]

You're the first person I've heard of who had the back thingee and got significant reactions. I developed vertigo and they did a bunch of tests, but never determined the reason. It still cracks me up that the nurse did the needle pricks and said, "The doctor will be in shortly to read your back." I have total respect for everybody in the medical profession, but if I was ever going to call someone a quack, it was this allergy doctor. He said, "You're mildly allergic to a lot of things, but nothing serious. Sorry I couldn't help you." He walked out before I could blink. That guy was a Goofball with a capital G. Incidentally, they probably used about 20 needles on me, not the 100 that you endured.

Man, what is it about allergy doctors? I went to one - one spring 25 years ago, when I lived where I live again now, I couldn't go out to get the mail without sneezing and having a runny nose for an hour - and the dude was late, condescending, indecisive, unhelpful.

But he did give me a gift certificate for an ice cream cone at some worse-than-a-chain small outfit.