Allergies can SUCK IT.

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 4/29/09 at 7:21am

Since this spring literally came out of nowhere (it was raining and cold less than a week ago) my allergies have been worse than I can remember. Anyone else?

I'm missing classes today mainly because of them. Can't breathe out of my nose; my eyes are watering and red; under my eyes is puffy...so f*cking frustrating. And I have never gone to an allergist to find out specifically what I'm allergic to or to get that monthly shot to make me "immune" to it. Anyone do that? Was it worth it?

[nmartin]

Posted: 4/29/09 at 7:26am

I have to take Zyrtec D every single day. If I stayed home because of allergy attacks, I would be unemployed.

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 4/29/09 at 7:50am

I've literally gone through at least ten different allergy medications.

None of them worked. I'm on Clarinex now. I'm gonna have to go to an allergist and get the shots every month because this is borderline painful for me. I've never had allergies like this in NY that I can remember. The flowers seemed to literally bloom overnight.

[WOSQ]

Posted: 4/29/09 at 9:33am

Having had the gosh-darn-freaking allergies all blankety-blank winter, I have tried all sorts of allergy meds. Finally I found one that more or less worked.

Zyrtec.

I am trying to clean up my toilet mouth. I loudly called someone at the office a "lazy sack of [manure]" and was chastised for it. If you tell the truth you get in trouble.

[orangeskittles]

Posted: 4/29/09 at 9:50am

It's not flowers, it's trees.

If this is the worst they've ever been, allergy shots are not a good quick fix. It takes months for them to take effect.

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 4/29/09 at 9:53am

I use Visene AC for red itchy eyes, it does work!

[luvtheEmcee]

Posted: 4/29/09 at 10:28am

And I have never gone to an allergist to find out specifically what I'm allergic to or to get that monthly shot to make me "immune" to it. Anyone do that? Was it worth it?

If you are really suffering, you should go see an allergist. Allergy shots are not for everyone, but they are an option. Just know that they are a massive commitment, and a very large pain in the ass. I have wretched seasonal allergies, and am also asthmatic. I got very sick very often as a kid, and had a lot of respiratory problems. I was put on allergy shots before I turned five, which is still largely unprecedented in children that small. I stayed on them for years; I tried to stop once when I was a teenager, because I was so tired of the hassle and thought I'd be fine, but I ended up getting really sick with chronic sinus infections, and went back on them before I finished high school. I continued with them all through college, and having recently moved and switched allergists, I am once again doing a trial run of life without allergy shots. We'll see.

That being said, they're not some kind of magical monthly shot that will make you feel better. With allergy shots, you are not being injected with a drug, much like immunization to the flu or any other illness, you are being injected with what you're allergic to, in a gradually increasing dose over time, so that your body will learn to fight it off. That's a large part of the reason why allergy shots are such a pain in the ass. When you start out, you have to get them once a week, and work your way up from weekly to bi-weekly to monthly. How long that takes depends on the person and on the dosage, but you generally have to remain on the weekly dose for quite some time, and it gets tedious. And additionally, you can't just get the shots and go on your merry way -- it's required that you sit in the doctor's office and wait thirty minutes to be sure you won't have an averse reaction to the shots. Every. single. time. Like I said, they are a pretty big commitment. And, it's hardly magical -- you don't just get the shots and feel better. They make a difference in how you feel overall, but it's often rather subtle, and in tandem with antihistamines. In my experience, I was not anywhere near symptom free without them, but when I was off of them, I definitely felt their absence, and fared much worse. But they don't all-out make you better. Trust me, if it were as simple as a shot making you "immune" to what you're allergic to, my world would be a much better place.

All of that being said, allergy shots are also becoming a little bit antiquated, probably because they don't really fit easily into jam-packed busy lives, and because although they are a help, for a lot of people, the difference isn't drastic enough to go through the hassle. If you go see an allergist, the first thing he or she is going to try is probably to prescribe medicine -- since you're already on something, maybe a different drug or dosage -- rather than jump into allergy shots right away. If you decide to go the allergy shot route, there's going to be a lot of testing that's pretty unpleasant. You'll have to be off of any antihistamines for, depending on the doctor, 72 hours to five days before the test, and then typical allergy testing is continuous pricks with needles to see how your skin reacts to common allergens. Regimens are then made up based on what you're allergic to; you can't just be injected with some sort of allergy cure-all, because you can't be injected with something to which your body is correctly forming antibodies, because that would be dangerous.

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask. I was on them for about three quarters of my life, so I can probably answer them.

Updated On: 4/29/09 at 10:28 AM

[pushdabutton]

Posted: 4/29/09 at 9:59pm

I take Claritin everyday and Patanol eye drops. Both help the the symptoms but certainly don't get rid of them.

[Jane2]

Posted: 4/29/09 at 10:06pm

I did the shots thing for ten years. I finally quit because they really weren't helping.

The earliest memories of my life were about allergies. We have home movies of me running around at three years old with a hanky pinned on to my dress!

Oy, I've tried it all. Nowadays I take claritin. It helps somewhat, but it doesn't make me tired so I stick with it.

[killertofu333]

Posted: 4/29/09 at 10:10pm

I've been popping Alavert like candy for about 2 weeks, but now since I have the flu they seem to be losing their gusto and I've had the reddest most watery eyes ever in the history of the WORLD!!!!

[humbugfoto]

Posted: 4/29/09 at 10:40pm

You said you've tried "ten different allergy medications". Presumably you mean things like Benadryl, Sudafed, Claritin, Zyrtec, etc., all of which are antihistamines.

Perhaps the reason they aren't working is it isn't allergies. Perhaps you have a sinus infection or something that won't be helped by antihistamines. You should probably see your regular doctor and rule out respiratory diseases before you head to the allergist.

That said, I'll add my two cents to what several people here have said - allergy shots are a waste of time. The problems with allergies is half the time they can't ever tell what you're allergic to. Its easier with foods, but with environmental things like plants and so on, the most they can say a lot of time time is "grasses and pollens". Oh, and "trees". Very helpful, especially since there's no way to avoid those, short of wearing a gas mask all the time.

It seems to me there's not a whole lot of attention paid to doing research into allergies, not like there is for the more serious diseases. But I think (and I know this is a loaded statement) that a lot more people suffer from allergies than get cancer, but you can't die from allergies like you can from cancer. Trouble is, your quality of life with allergies can be so bad you might as well have cancer (speaking as someone in the grips of a truly hideous allergic condition).

Yeah, allergies suck.

[Tom's Cat]

Posted: 4/29/09 at 11:34pm

Mine is definitely allergies. I'm highly allergic to tree pollin. Last year was the worst ever for me - but this year isn't shaping up too well. Neither regular Zyrtec nor Claritin work at all for me. Zyrtec D (decongestant) is the only OTC drug that has any effect on mine. I take one when I go to bed at night and I keep a vaporizor running all night by the bed. In the morning I take another. It'll be this way all through the spring and most of the summer.

[Jane2]

Posted: 4/29/09 at 11:41pm

humbug, I agree with just about everything you said. Except, in some cases, you can die from allergies. I nearly died from halothane hepatitis, and also from eating a sunflower seed. If I have another one, I don't know what will happen.

But let's take those people whose throats swell from their particular allergies. An epipen will give them 30 extra minutes to get to a hospital, but if they don't have one, they could die pretty quickly.

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 4/29/09 at 11:45pm

Jane, and bees and peanuts! Some people are deathly allergic.

I am so allergic to cats that I will have an attack in about ten minutes. So, I do not go to any house with a house cat.

[Jane2]

Posted: 4/29/09 at 11:55pm

brd, that's who I was referring to. Those people whose allergies affect their respiratory system-especially the peanut and bee allergies.

[humbugfoto]

Posted: 4/30/09 at 12:28am

Jane, I'm so sorry, you are absolutely right. You CAN die from allergies, as luvtheEmcee would point out, and she's had some pretty close first hand experiences.

But I guess I was thinking that the majority of people who suffer from respiratory allergies probably aren't going to die from them, so that as a whole allergies aren't as overtly life-threatening as cancer. And also, as miserable as my current condition is, I'm not going to die from it (as much as there are moments when I wish I would), so that's where I was coming from, too. A lopsided perspective. Again, my apologies.

But I do wish there was as much research being done about allergies as there is about other diseases. I think overall quality of life would be vastly improved, on a very large scale.

brd, I'm the same way with cats. Ten minutes in a house with even one cat and I'm in respiratory distress for at least 24 hours. I have many friends whose homes I cannot visit as a result. It's very sad, and very restrictive. But that's my point - just imagine how much better quality of life I'd have, and so many other people would have, if they could do something as simple as cure a cat allergy, or at least invent a medication that would eradicate the symptoms completely.

[luvtheEmcee]

Posted: 4/30/09 at 1:34am

The problems with allergies is half the time they can't ever tell what you're allergic to. Its easier with foods, but with environmental things like plants and so on, the most they can say a lot of time time is "grasses and pollens".

Actually, blood tests are very accurate. They're not often used, most people do skin tests first (or alone), but the blood test results are considered by a lot of doctors to be infallible, where as skin tests can sometimes get funky. The issue is of course avoidance, which, as you pointed out, when it's something like trees, can be hard.

My environmental allergies are thankfully not life-threatening, and my asthma has tempered a lot since I was a kid -- it used to be a huge, huge problem on a daily basis. I was on a nebulizer and the whole thing. Respiratory allergies are generally not life-threatening in and of themselves; what makes them so dangerous, though, is that they amplify the severity of a lot of common illnesses -- people with asthma and respiratory allergies are more likely to get critically ill when they come down with something like the flu. That's the reason people who have asthma and environmental allergies are often so strongly encouraged to get flu shots, because those are a lot of the cases in which the flu turns deadly. But yes, I do have extremely severe food allergies, one of them being to peanuts. Scary, scary, sh*t those are.

There's a lot of research being done, particularly on food allergies, it's just not very highly publicized. There's been a recent (somewhat) breakthrough study regarding peanut allergies that's getting some news coverage, but for the most part, it's off in its own little sector, largely because it's been long, tireless work with little conclusive information.

Updated On: 4/30/09 at 01:34 AM

[SweetQintheLights]

Posted: 4/30/09 at 3:12am

I take Xyzal and and flonase, and although I'm still a bit stuffy, it works really well.

And then I have an allergy to latex but that's a whole other kind of deal.

[Jane2]

Posted: 4/30/09 at 8:51am

Humbuug, no need to apologize whatsoever. I'm sure more people die from cancer than allergies!

For me, the scary part is having an allergy that you don't know about in advance. That's why I had a near death experience with halothane, an anesthesia which was once used commonly. It was administered to me in error, first of all (oy, another story), and I got halothane hepatitis from it, as I was the one in ten million to be allergic to it. I was sick for a year and had a 20% chance of recovery. I feel lucky to have survived it.



and how was I know I was allergic to sunflower seeds, another rare allergy? One bite of a cookie which contained them sent me to the ER.

anyway, I just have to be extremely careful. Allergies can be scary!

p.s. I used to go to bed after praying that I would wake up without allergies.

Updated On: 4/30/09 at 08:51 AM

[lesmis]

Posted: 4/30/09 at 5:59pm

The allergy season has especially bad these last few weeks. I have seen a lot of people with allergy symptoms who've never had them before. Updated On: 4/30/09 at 05:59 PM

[nmartin]

Posted: 4/30/09 at 6:02pm

I never had bad allergy problems till I started my new job. I teach at an ancient high school that is full of mold. From the moment I waked in there, my allergies went crazy and haven't stopped since August. Zyrtec-D is the only thing I have found that helps.

[Spider Woman]

Posted: 4/30/09 at 7:48pm

something that works for one person may not work for another - keep that in mind.

I am allergic to all the trees, grasses, weeds, pollens... in, short - everything that grows in dirt. I take allegra 180, use a nasal spray ( which I think is the key to my treatment) and use optivar drops because I can bathe in patanol with no relief. I keep sudafed and visine ac for those "special" days.

[orangeskittles]

Posted: 4/30/09 at 8:48pm

Zyrtec daily, Benadryl as needed. Decongestants haven't worked for me since they took psuedophedrine out of everything.

[Tom's Cat]

Posted: 4/30/09 at 9:26pm

Zyrtec-D is a decongestant with pseudoephedrine. It's still sold over the counter but it's controlled. You have to show an ID when purchasing it and a register is kept of your purchase. I'm sure it goes into a DEA database, or something similar.

[xoangel2789xo]

Posted: 5/1/09 at 12:36am

I'm starting to think that I've developed an immunity to these medications...and I'm pretty sick of shots, I've been having them for three years now. My allergies are still there, but not as horrible as they used to be. But I'm chalking that up to change of location.

Here's to getting through May Flowers.