Third Age Warrior: Fighting allergies

Apart from seeming to be allergic to the world, my health is excellent. I have no cure so don’t assume I can help you with your sneezing, wheezing, itching and headaches.

I spent most of my childhood going through a packet of tissues a day. I can understand why people say ‘a snotty nosed kid’ because I was definitely one. I sneezed and sniffled through every class at school. I think it may have been chalk dust as well as other things that set it off.

At the age of 19, I’d had enough and decided to go for an allergy test.  I must have been desperate as I sat through that scratch test administered by a nurse who had just returned from a liquid lunch. Her lipstick was smudged all over her face, her eyes were glazed, her speech was slurred, and her hair looked like it belonged to a scarecrow. I came out of there with blood dripping down my arms, but at least I knew that I was allergic to every living and non-living thing out in the wide world.

Fast forward a few years and one day the hay fever just stopped. Oh, the relief I felt is indescribable.

Then, it seems, gradually it was replaced by other things. Drinking wine (even just a tiny bit) gave me a shocking headache. I couldn’t use nail polish remover, or be anywhere near new house paint or someone using texta pens, as a headache came on.

It escalated downward as the list of headache-inducing things increased.

I’d have to move to another area of a train if someone wearing particular perfumes sat near me. A work colleague insisted on wearing a certain perfume that gave me a headache. I asked her to stop. She said it was an expensive perfume. I told her my allergies didn’t know that. She refused. We took it further, and she never spoke to me again.

So the headaches continued (but not at work) and were joined by friends, the hives and rashes.

I retired and went to art school. While in the sculpture class I realised I was allergic to clay. My teacher’s wife was also allergic to the mold in clay, so he let me do my work at home using different materials as I was an itching wheezing mess in class. It is a pity all teachers were not as accommodating, as in 3^rd year the teacher refused to move me away from the student using turps. There were plenty of other vacant classes but he told me to get a fan which I did, but it didn’t make much difference. I could have taken it further, but after the debacle, with the workmate’s perfume, I wasn’t about to press the issue. Only people who have allergies will understand the suffering and how one doesn’t want to appear to be a wimp.

I was getting rashes and didn’t know why then stopped the krill oil capsules, and the rash went. Unfortunately, it didn’t hit home that I might have developed an allergy to all shellfish until I ate one prawn. I had trouble breathing; my throat felt like it was swollen out of all proportion and I got that blasted rash as well. No more shellfish.

Perfumes in soaps and other products set off an itch and headache, so I now make my own beauty products. I know I could take an antihistamine, which I have on occasion. Now that the non-drowsy ones are on the market I take them occasionally but really don’t want my system becoming reliant on them. Prior to the non-drowsy ones I hated taking them as I’d drop off to sleep in the most inappropriate places.

We see things on TV that are designed to make the general public aware of certain conditions, like Crohn’s disease and IBS, to generate empathy rather than indifference to those suffering. I’m waiting for something to come on about allergy sufferers. Does anyone want to sign my petition?

At least I no longer have hay fever.

Do you suffer from allergies?  What do you do to try to alleviate them?

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