HEALTH | WELLNESS | ALLERGIES | HUMOR

Got Allergies? Throw Everything At Them — One At A Time

One Pharmacist’s Way of Surviving Seasonal (or year-round) Suffering

Unflattering Photo of the Author Getting Ready to Mow Her Yard Photo by the Author

You’d think by the photo we were still in the pandemic, and I was getting ready for work, trying to avoid the invisible virus that plagued the planet and changed our world for several years, but no, I’m just getting ready to mow the lawn.

You might laugh at my measures, but prevention is better than suffering, and if I don’t mask up, all those little allergens will cause me a world of hurt.

I moved to California’s Central Valley in the 1990s, and after one year of sensitization, seasonal allergies manifested themselves with a fury. The first few years I only suffered during the spring blooms of trees and grasses. But year after year, they’ve gotten progressively worse.

Photo by on

At first, I only needed an occasional oral antihistamine like loratadine or cetirizine to calm down my nose and not have it leak like a faucet. Working in a hospital, the constant drip from my nose, nose-blowing and handwashing was a pretty…