People who have talked to me in the recent past know that my allergies have been acting up far more than usual lately. I've never really been a sickly person, but I have been sniffly and congested more in the last few months than in the last few years before that, combined.
What makes the whole experience so bad is that it makes you unfit to be in public (do *you* want to hang out with someone liable to get snot on you?) and it makes you feel miserable. I started taking medicine on a daily basis to try to keep it under control, but every now and again, it would still flare up. Worse yet, it was entirely unpredictable. I've had myself tested to try to determine to what I was allergic, but nothing conclusively really came up (dust mites, pollen). I dusted and vacuumed regularly to try to prevent any of that from building up and causing problems, but every now and then, my sinuses would just decide to rebel for no apparent reason.
I also know that although I can handle the cold, my body will react poorly to prolonged exposure. I don't mean that I'm particularly vulnerable to hypothermia; I mean that if I start feeling cold for longer than about 15 minutes, I will start to sneeze and sniffle ... for a long time. It doesn't matter if I get indoors and warm up shortly thereafter, there are about 50/50 odds that I will spend the next hour or so dealing with some angry sinuses.
Knowing all of this, I tried to minimize the damage from my sinuses before I even woke up. I routinely get up early for work, so I took steps to fend off the cold: sweatshirt, extra blankets, sweats instead of shorts, you get the idea. I'd usually keep a little bit of heat on while driving, too, just as an extra precaution. But still, my sinuses would wreak all sorts of havoc on my day.
Then, I spent a few days on vacation in the Canadian Rockies, where it is routinely cold. I had a jacket on, so I wasn't freezing, but still, it was cold. And amazingly enough, my sinuses held up for the most part. There was one night where things got bad out of the blue, but other than that, I didn't have any problems. I didn't really think much about it during the actual trip, but the thought did occur to me during the next couple of days. Even curiouser, I was out with a friend one night, and it was really cold. I lent her my jacket because she needed it a lot more than I did, but again, my sinuses held up. By now, my mental eyebrow was arched and then some.
And then, out of the blue, I remembered that a friend once complained that he was, "really sensitive to temperature changes." The light bulb lit up a little bit, and it occurred to me that my problem might not be the cold so much as the temperature change. Well, I'm a bit of a scientist at heart, so I figured I'd put this theory to the test: I took off a couple of the blankets on my bed and I didn't use the heat in the car. Suddenly, my sinuses started to cooperate a little bit more, and they behaved. Emboldened by my progress, I stopped taking my daily tablets and kept up the new routine (or lack thereof). I still didn't have any setbacks, so I kept it up.
Fast forward, and it's been several weeks that I haven't had any flare ups. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that I don't regress, but all of this leads to one single thought: son of a bitch. I was doing this to myself all this time. Whatever it is you believe in, whether it be cosmic forces, a deity, fate, or a spaghetti monster, is undoubtedly sitting out there laughing at me. Sinuses suck sometimes.
What makes the whole experience so bad is that it makes you unfit to be in public (do *you* want to hang out with someone liable to get snot on you?) and it makes you feel miserable. I started taking medicine on a daily basis to try to keep it under control, but every now and again, it would still flare up. Worse yet, it was entirely unpredictable. I've had myself tested to try to determine to what I was allergic, but nothing conclusively really came up (dust mites, pollen). I dusted and vacuumed regularly to try to prevent any of that from building up and causing problems, but every now and then, my sinuses would just decide to rebel for no apparent reason.
I also know that although I can handle the cold, my body will react poorly to prolonged exposure. I don't mean that I'm particularly vulnerable to hypothermia; I mean that if I start feeling cold for longer than about 15 minutes, I will start to sneeze and sniffle ... for a long time. It doesn't matter if I get indoors and warm up shortly thereafter, there are about 50/50 odds that I will spend the next hour or so dealing with some angry sinuses.
Knowing all of this, I tried to minimize the damage from my sinuses before I even woke up. I routinely get up early for work, so I took steps to fend off the cold: sweatshirt, extra blankets, sweats instead of shorts, you get the idea. I'd usually keep a little bit of heat on while driving, too, just as an extra precaution. But still, my sinuses would wreak all sorts of havoc on my day.
Then, I spent a few days on vacation in the Canadian Rockies, where it is routinely cold. I had a jacket on, so I wasn't freezing, but still, it was cold. And amazingly enough, my sinuses held up for the most part. There was one night where things got bad out of the blue, but other than that, I didn't have any problems. I didn't really think much about it during the actual trip, but the thought did occur to me during the next couple of days. Even curiouser, I was out with a friend one night, and it was really cold. I lent her my jacket because she needed it a lot more than I did, but again, my sinuses held up. By now, my mental eyebrow was arched and then some.
And then, out of the blue, I remembered that a friend once complained that he was, "really sensitive to temperature changes." The light bulb lit up a little bit, and it occurred to me that my problem might not be the cold so much as the temperature change. Well, I'm a bit of a scientist at heart, so I figured I'd put this theory to the test: I took off a couple of the blankets on my bed and I didn't use the heat in the car. Suddenly, my sinuses started to cooperate a little bit more, and they behaved. Emboldened by my progress, I stopped taking my daily tablets and kept up the new routine (or lack thereof). I still didn't have any setbacks, so I kept it up.
Fast forward, and it's been several weeks that I haven't had any flare ups. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that I don't regress, but all of this leads to one single thought: son of a bitch. I was doing this to myself all this time. Whatever it is you believe in, whether it be cosmic forces, a deity, fate, or a spaghetti monster, is undoubtedly sitting out there laughing at me. Sinuses suck sometimes.
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