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Having just gone for about a 15 minute walk outdoors, I can say with fair certainty that cetirizine HCl is helping with my allergies. I'm definitely feeling a strong tingling in my nose like I'm on the verge of a sneezing fit, but I'm pretty sure that undrugged I'd be in the midst of a full-on attack that would have me sneezing and blowing my nose on and off all day.
Hey, if anybody out there with more medical knowledge than I wants to do me a huge favor:
There was one allergy medication that worked for me that I alluded to last post. It was called hismanal. It was pulled off the market because they found a connection with increased risk of heart disease.
If someone wanted to check out hismanal and the current set of offerings and see if there's anything which works in a similar fashion and is thus more likely to be effective for me, I'd really appreciate it.
My allergies are back in force; probably to stay this time as I'm not expecting the weather to crash back to the 50s again anytime soon. They've been driving me crazy.
I realized in conversations today that I haven't tried the most recent crops of available medications. While I suspect the timeline for me to be able to get a prescription this year is prohibitive, I realized that cetrizine hydrochloride [brand name Zyrtec] is now available over-the-counter, and I haven't tried it yet.
Swung by CVS and got the 90 day supply container in the store brand ($30). Just took the first one. I figure I'll at least give it a couple weeks and see if it helps. If it seems to be doing nothing at that point (or in the unlikely event that I have an adverse effect), I can always try to sell off the remainder to somebody at a mutually beneficial price.
It would be so amazing if this stuff actually works. I think it's been about 15 years since I had an allergy medication that actually helped. (I'm, thus, also really skeptical about it.)
Last night I remembered one of the factors which probably contributed to my becoming a typically nocturnal person. My allergies aren't as bad at night. I think maybe plants release more pollen into the air while the sun is out, so by around 10 a bunch of it has settled out, perhaps? That and evening showers are pretty common, which would tend to take stuff out of the air. In any case, they aren't as bad.
I don't think I've really talked about this here yet. I have pretty severe seasonal allergies. I forget if it's grass pollen or tree pollen. They hit every year, and there's usually a few days when I'm a pretty complete wreck. Those started yesterday. I get full-body sneezes in strings of 6-12. My nose is constantly stuffed/runny in a way which is not only annoying in terms of massive consumption of tissues and rubbing the skin of my nose raw, but also strains muscles up my back in the effort to blow my nose. I lose a lot of sensation in taste/smell, which makes me less inclined to eat. After a bit of this, most of the muscles in my body are even tighter knots of tension than they usually are.
Worst, though, is that my nose gets sufficiently stuffed that it impairs my breathing. This is not just annoying, but makes it very difficult for me to fall asleep, and tends to lead to my sleeping less effectively. So on top of my other symptoms, I start floating around in a haze of sleep deprivation. Dehydration, puffy skin, touch-sensitivity, sensitivity to temperature extremes, difficulty thinking as clearly as usual, further reduced appetite; all that fun stuff.
I'm certain the occasional body-wracking, noisy, forceful enough to blow things around sneezes make me less fun to be around than usual. And the constant sniffling; the loud, frequent, two-tone nose-blowing; and the little piles of tissues that build up in the nearby trashcan or in my pockets can't possibly be inviting either.
No, drugs don't work. I'm sure I've tried every over-the-counter remedy known to man at some point in the last c. 20 years of allergy suffering. At best, they do nothing. At worst, they make me more drowsy than I already am but have no positive effect (not even helping me sleep, just making me want to more). We've played with various prescription drugs a few times. We found one that worked wonders for me around the end of Jr. High School/beginning of High School. It was taken off the market a couple years later--turns out it causes an increased risk of heart disease. No, I don't want to try to get some of it on the black market--I have significant family history of heart disease; that's not a risk I'm prepared to take knowingly.
So I go nocturnal, 'cause I can breathe a bit easier at night so being awake is less unpleasant. Except I can't necessarily actually fall asleep, so my sleep schedule becomes even less predictable than usual, drifting around as I manage to lie down and fall asleep (rather than lying down and having so much breathing difficulty that I need to get back up because I feel like I'm choking).
Ok, enough whining. If I'm particularly cranky or tense in the next couple of weeks, please bear with me. On the plus side, maybe I can channel the screwed up sleeping into the beginning of an experiment in polyphasic sleep...
I don't think I've really talked about this here yet. I have pretty severe seasonal allergies. I forget if it's grass pollen or tree pollen. They hit every year, and there's usually a few days when I'm a pretty complete wreck. Those started yesterday. I get full-body sneezes in strings of 6-12. My nose is constantly stuffed/runny in a way which is not only annoying in terms of massive consumption of tissues and rubbing the skin of my nose raw, but also strains muscles up my back in the effort to blow my nose. I lose a lot of sensation in taste/smell, which makes me less inclined to eat. After a bit of this, most of the muscles in my body are even tighter knots of tension than they usually are.
Worst, though, is that my nose gets sufficiently stuffed that it impairs my breathing. This is not just annoying, but makes it very difficult for me to fall asleep, and tends to lead to my sleeping less effectively. So on top of my other symptoms, I start floating around in a haze of sleep deprivation. Dehydration, puffy skin, touch-sensitivity, sensitivity to temperature extremes, difficulty thinking as clearly as usual, further reduced appetite; all that fun stuff.
I'm certain the occasional body-wracking, noisy, forceful enough to blow things around sneezes make me less fun to be around than usual. And the constant sniffling; the loud, frequent, two-tone nose-blowing; and the little piles of tissues that build up in the nearby trashcan or in my pockets can't possibly be inviting either.
No, drugs don't work. I'm sure I've tried every over-the-counter remedy known to man at some point in the last c. 20 years of allergy suffering. At best, they do nothing. At worst, they make me more drowsy than I already am but have no positive effect (not even helping me sleep, just making me want to more). We've played with various prescription drugs a few times. We found one that worked wonders for me around the end of Jr. High School/beginning of High School. It was taken off the market a couple years later--turns out it causes an increased risk of heart disease. No, I don't want to try to get some of it on the black market--I have significant family history of heart disease; that's not a risk I'm prepared to take knowingly.
So I go nocturnal, 'cause I can breathe a bit easier at night so being awake is less unpleasant. Except I can't necessarily actually fall asleep, so my sleep schedule becomes even less predictable than usual, drifting around as I manage to lie down and fall asleep (rather than lying down and having so much breathing difficulty that I need to get back up because I feel like I'm choking).
Ok, enough whining. If I'm particularly cranky or tense in the next couple of weeks, please bear with me. On the plus side, maybe I can channel the screwed up sleeping into the beginning of an experiment in polyphasic sleep...
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