Allergies? Who decided they were a thing?

(Okay before starting i’d like to point out that the thumbnail is an Alder tree, just because i mention it quite a bit.)

Now for some reason, and note for a while I had no clue why, my nose is always angry at me. Allergies suck, i forgot to take certain medicines, and more.

And yes, I know allergies are genetic–I understand that–but it makes me believe that new allergies just occur in every new generation. And for quite some time i have struggled with allergies, and I have some random memories from the past about them. I always knew that I was going to have allergies, but I wasn’t sure whether it was pollen, or something else. And for years I did blame it on my pollen allergy, but Washington doesn’t have much pollen. So i thought to myself, “what else could be causing these reactions-?”

Now don’t get me wrong I’m still allergic to pollen, and Arizona proved that easily, mostly because i visit there quite a lot (family, vacation, etc). I had to carry Afrin the whole trip and that was not fun, at all. If you’re not too familiar with Afrin (first of all, lucky), you have to inhale through your nose some random stuff that shoots out of a container. Yes, through your nose. It isn’t horrible (if you’re used to it), but the catch is you can only use Afrin for a limited number of times before it starts to backfire, and when it backfires, it backfires. My nose becomes completely clogged, and I literally couldn’t breathe through it for multiple nights on end. (Speaking of which, we’re heading back to Arizona for a short trip, that’ll be fun.) And to the curious folk, this happens because literally your own body starts to build anti-bodies towards the things in Afrin (i’m no doctor, no clue what’s in those things). So slowly, you become allergic to your own medicine. Hence why i had to put it off.

After what felt like decades of having my nose constantly angry at me, we decided to visit an allergist.

I was in fact allergic to pollen, but also cats, dogs, and pineapples (but only in spring? I don’t understand either). Though apparently pineapples are related to pollen, which is related to grass… which i’m also allergic to, long story short it’s just grass and weather relating to pineapples, funny. But I was also allergic to Alder, which is a tree that’s located throughout the entire western side of the USA. So either we move to the eastern side of the US (which we weren’t doing), or we start allergy shots. (Also I would quickly like to point out I’m allergic to dogs? and I own a dog-? But exposure therapy is helping for keeping my allergies down for dogs.) Exposure therapy is basically when you’re ‘exposed’ to something your allergic to for a while, so you start getting used to what your allergic to.

Typically, allergy shots are done weekly which is done for multiple years until you’re no longer allergic to something. I’m hoping to start this, then hopefully I’ll be able to live without my nose being angry. I also learned about sensitivities, which are allergies, but milder. These wonderful things include milk, wheat, beef, etc. So it’s funny to tell people I can’t have something and eat it anyways. (This is most likely a 1/4th of the issue with my nose). So no, I won’t die if I eat an entire steak, it’s just my nose that’s going to get mad at me.

But that’s my fun nose saga, i’ll update more once i get allergy shots hopefully!

and credits to my amazing editors for helping me, y’all are amazing.