Achoooooooooo!

Ever since I can pretty much remember, I have suffered with some form of allergies. It was around the time that my family moved to our house in Middleburg Hts., OH, I was 7 yrs. old, that I remember spending many summer afternoons knocked out on the couch from the allergy medicine I was given. If I wasn't on the medicine I was miserable. I sneezed a hundred times a day, had itchy watery eyes, runny nose and broke out in hives. It was awful!!! As I grew older, I adjusted to living with allergies, I had no other choice. Fast forward to today and I still have days that I'm knocked out on the couch  bacause of my allergies.

During the past 35-36 yrs I have been dealing with this, about every 7 years or so they say, my allergies would change. I would start to be allergic to something new and maybe stop being allergic to something I use to be and then some would stay the same. I had been to many doctors about it and tried numerous medicines to relieve them. I have gone into Anaphylactic shock a few times that landed me in the hospital on more than one occasion. It sucked really. When I was younger it was plain scary but after the first time it happened I knew when it was coming on and what to do and what to avoid if possible. For many years I carried an Epi Pen with me everywhere, just in case. Luckily or unluckily, whichever way you want to look at it, I never had to use it and the one time I did need it, it was expired and I had to rush to the hospital. Of course it always came on in the most inopportune times so it became more of a nuisance than anything. The trigger of those sever allergic reactions would be food. I was told I was allergic to mango's, Red dye #4, chicken skin, dairy (milk), store bought spaghetti sauce and the list goes on but those are the main ones. My parents made the changes to my diet and I of course thought it was a the worst thing ever to have to give up certain things I loved but I did it and it was fine. I knew what to stay away from and again, I knew how to handle it. Along with the food allergies I had, I was also allergic to cat dander, pollen, fresh cut grass, dust and random unknown things that they didn't find. I sneeze more times in a day than Neil does in a whole year. If you know me, you know that I almost always have a tissue or two with me at all times, along with my allergy medicine. I am always open to trying something new and natural to make them better and through a friend who recently said to try raw apple cidar vinegar everyday. I haven't yet looked into that option but believe you me, I will! It's just one of those on-going battles I deal with and my family just knows that's part of what makes me, me. I'm hopeful that when I grow up, they will just go away....a girl can hope, right?

Now having dealt with anaphylaxis and every other allergy, I think I can say that I don't know why all of a sudden schools have made peanut allergies such a huge deal. Whereas they have devoted entire classrooms and lunch tables to children with nut allergies. Everyone is so overprotective about what is brought into the classrooms if you are sharing with other kids. Believe me, if a child has a severe peanut allergy, then they know not to eat certain things or not to accept a treat that they don't know what's in it or if they are too young then the teacher should know but I do not think that entire classrooms should be devoted to nut allergy kids. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't care about those children who suffer with nut allergies, I do and I understand what could happen, I've been there. I mean I went into my child's school to have lunch with her and was not even eating anything, did not have any food with me, sat on the chair at the nut allergy lunch table and was immedietly shooed off saying I could harm the other kids at that table. Ok...here's the thing, you can't shelter those kids who go to a school that not everyone has a peanut allergy. They will come in contact with children who have eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or someone who has touched a peanut, whether it be on the playground, bus or walking in the halls. I just don't get it. It's too much. If your child has that severe of an allergy towards something, that you fear for his or her life, then sending your child to a school that most of the children there do not have allergies, then no amount of seperation, aside from seclusion, is going to matter.

Anyway, been dealing with pollen allergy attacks lately with crazy itchy eyes and chalk it up to the time of the year, Spring. I will continue my search for a snake oil remedy, as my husband likes to call it, in hopes that I'll find it sooner than later. If you suffer like I do, I feel for you. But know this, I don't let it ruin a single thing I want to do or eat anymore. I figure that is the only way I'll know if things have changed or not and I'm not missing out on anything! Maybe I've lost my marbles thinking that way but never been one let myself be sick without fighting every second of it.