It definitely has started. Every night at 2am I wake up and can feel my nose filling with pollen. I try and delay that first sneeze for as long as possible because as soon as I start, that’s it, I then sneeze for about thirty minutes. As the first sneeze starts, there’s a frantic search in the dark for my handkerchief (tissues are no good – I obliterate them) and then the bed shakes as I convulse into sneeze after sneeze.
After the first sneeze, I now know how bad it’s likely to get and if it’s likely to last more than a couple of minutes, I just get up, get my robe on, and head for the lounge, where, strangely enough, the air seems to be pollen free. That’s why so many of my blogs are written at 2am at the moment!
My ailment seems to have started much earlier this year. Last winter, I put the date of my first real sneezes in my Outlook calendar (sad I know) so that I could be prepared (Vick up the nose, plentiful supply of hankies etc etc) and I haven’t had the ‘warning’ yet – it’s not due until next week but just as global warming is playing havoc with all sorts of other natural things, it’s also playing havoc with my hooter.
I usually have two lots of hay fever. One about the middle of February when the Mimosa trees are blooming with their brilliant yellow flowers, and one towards the end of summer when there’s just lots of pollen about. This year however, we’re about four weeks early and I can’t see a reason for it. The mimosa is not out yet so something’s blooming and throwing pollen into the air and I can’t see it – but it’s there somewhere.
I’ve suffered with hay fever ever since the year dot. I can distinctly remember being on a camping holiday in the north of Scotland with my pal when we ran out of money and the only way of making any to get home was stacking hay in a farmer’s field. After about an hour my eyes were streaming and my nose was red raw with all the sneezing I was doing but I had to carry on – it was murder. A few years later I recall playing in goal for our work’s football team on a grass pitch which had been newly mown and my eyes were out on stalks as the pollen swirled around, invisible and debilitating. All my mates couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t jump to catch the ball but I just couldn’t see it. It was just a blur.
So for years I’ve suffered. I’ve tried every known ‘cure’ devised for hay fever. Pills and potions, sprays and lotions. And then last year my mate Ashley told me of this new device called Medinose which uses a certain wavelength of light to desensitise your nasal passages and although it sounded like an April Fool’s wind up, I decided to research it, found it on Amazon, sent off for one and have been using it since summer of last year.
I have to admit, you do look like a proper idiot when you use it with its two bright red diodes stuck up your nose (see picture) but it appears to work. Last autumn, after a few weeks use, I suffered less than usual, although as I’m a born sceptic, I’m always looking for alternative reasons why things happen. Maybe the pollen isn’t so bad this year? Maybe I am getting cured, 50 years after my doctor said I would ‘grow out of it’!
This year I had planned to start having a ‘red nose’ in a few weeks time but I’ve had to get it out of the cupboard early and sit on the sofa at night looking like a decoration which has missed Xmas by quite a few weeks!
You Tube Link for Medinose below but if you’re interested search on Google – it can be half price in the UK.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZdE73e5y30
1 comment:
Oh, good luck with the allergies Tom! I know how brutal they can be.
(Though I think I'd trade allergies for the bitter cold weather we're having here!).
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