How Pollen got me down

Photo by Nathalie De Boever (Pexels)

After 5 months into this year, I can confidently say that this year, from a health standpoint, is not my year. It felt like sickness after pain after sickness. A never-ending loop so to say. Otherwise, 2023 has been great thus far and I have got nothing to complain about. 

Early February it started with a bloody cold because why not start the new year lying in bed sick. Technically I still went about my day as usual as possible but being ill makes simple day-to-day tasks seem very difficult and unachievable.

Then Pollen season started and it just doesn’t seem to want to stop. This has been going on for quite some time now. Some days are fine but some other days are miserable. However, I could not stop day-to-day life just for some pollen. Life must go on.

It started in early March when the flowers all started to bloom. To be honest, I just love the spring season. It is my favourite season of the year with natural life awakening and the sun coming out more frequently than during the cold winter months.

Nevertheless, it is proving really hard to like the season which is brutally making your life as miserable as possible just by simply letting pollen fly around. The reawaking of nature is both beautiful and really brutal.

Now it is the end of May and the start of July and the pollen is still going strong, I believe I am so affected by the pollen season because my immune system is already weakened so anything small things can bring me down.

In some previous articles, I did mention that my immune system is actually quite good besides the occasional yearly sick week but this year my immune system is really giving up on me, making every second week a sick week.

As a child, I never had to deal with Pollen allergy or any allergy for that matter of fact. But now as I am growing older, allergies just spring up upon me left and right out of nowhere. According to medical professionals, it is normal but I find it bloody annoying.

During my childhood, I could play in the flower garden and the grass fields without an issue. To be fair I probably still can but when I get home, I would feel the effect of my childhood pastime of playing in the flower garden and the grass fields.

If I can be perfectly frank, I never got myself tested since I didn’t find the time to give the friendly neighbourhood doctor a visit. However, I strongly believe that I have some sort of pollen allergy keeping me out of whack for weeks on end.

And if I can be fair again, the allergen is irrelevant to a certain extent since there is no prevention of the allergen during its peak season. I guess I just wanted to know what the allergen is which is causing the vigorous immune response so I can track the peak days and take measures to ensure a milder immune response.

My current hypothesis is that I am not only allergic to one allergen but against two since it can´t be that I am still feeling the symptoms of the pollen after a specific season for the pollen has already ended some while ago.

The allergy in combination with a bad period or something else which requires an immune response caused me to call in sick since I find myself incapable of leaving my bed much less leaving my bed to go to a lecture and go all the way back without fainting on the spot.

I currently don’t have a medically proven food allergy but I suspect that I am allergic to apples and cherries since my tongue seems to swell up every time I eat cherries or apples. But luckily a pollen allergy does not cause such drastic symptoms upon contact.

On the one hand, a not-so-drastic symptom is fantastic but the symptoms of a pollen allergy do not quite make up for the symptoms showing upon contact with a specific pollen during the horrendous pollen season.

Ever since I was a child, my nose was always an issue during the cold seasons and the nose will not relent during pollen season either. During the very lovely time of the year filled with pollen, my nose would make life difficult.

During pollen season, my nose will either be really runny or be really stuffed, there is no in-between with these things. And runny nose means a sleepless night blowing the nose which means the skin around the nose would suffer too. Not pleasant at all.

One of the main symptoms besides the congested yet runny nose, there is also the constant sneezing. I get that it is an immune response to foreign objects since the pollen entering the nose is also irritating it causing a sneeze so there was a lot of endless sneezing this pollen season.

Another really annoying symptom is a sore throat. Since the nose is stuffed, one tends to breathe through the mouth causing the throat to be slightly dry. And then the pollen enters your airways through one´s mouth and you find yourself unable to speak.

I am not even kidding, after sneezing and breathing through my mouth for some time, my throat became bloody sore, and I tried taking cough drops to remedy that but guess pollen was quicker rendering me unable to talk for two days.

What I didn’t expect was the sinus pressure I felt. The sinus pressure caused facial pain which made the slightest ray of sunlight unbearable. I don’t know if the sinus pressure also cause my everlasting headache or if it was the ever-changing weather but what I do know is that the pressure made the headache worse

During the Pollen season my face especially, my cheeks were redder than normally but I am not sure if that was the pollen or something else but the fact remains that I don’t like that my face looked slightly swollen and red.

Another symptom, I felt severely was the fact that I felt bloody exhausted all the time because the immune system needs time and energy to recover. So during the pollen season, I felt exhausted no matter how much sleep I got the day prior.

I also guess that sleeplessness from the symptoms makes sleep really bad since there is no peaceful night if you have to blow your nose every hour or two. If you are lucky, you sleep through the night but falling asleep with allergy symptoms proves to be hard as well.

The symptoms I luckily got to experience less of were itchy and watery eyes. Since itchy eyes are red eyes and red eyes don’t look good. However, I still had the displeasure of experiencing occasional itchy eyes.

To remedy the itchy eyes, I have an eye dropper which proves to be really useful during the pollen season since it calms down irritation and makes the itchiness go away in a matter of seconds. And a few seconds less of displeasure is a few seconds which need to be cherished.

Nevertheless, there are also symptoms I luckily didn’t get to experience at all and those include decreased sense of taste or smell and increased asthmatic reaction. I don’t have asthma so that wouldn’t have been an issue but decreased taste and smell would have been tragic.

I have always been a person who has been praised for her heightened sense of smell and taste so if I cannot taste or smell, it would be really weird and would have brought me further out of whack than I already was during this particular season.

Through a combination of all symptoms and the ever-changing weather, I seem to have fallen ill more frequently than what I am used to. Before this pollen allergy started, I felt somewhat immortal since I rarely get ill but now this makes me feel weak.

Feeling weak is not fun especially if it is unfamiliar. You need to get used to something completely different than what you are used to and now you also get to experience what normal people feel when they get ill. As mentioned, it makes me feel weak and that weeks on end.

This pollen season hasn’t been the kindest to me but what I have learnt thus far is that what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. I do hope my immune system comes down when the next pollen season comes around since I don’t know if I can take another pollen season filled with pollen allergy symptoms.

What I did find rather helpful during this arduous season was the wonder known as modern medicine. The allergy tablets made for pollen allergy season do true wonders by reducing the immune response.

In all fairness, you will occasionally sneeze or blow your nose here and there while taking those allergy tablets but the number of times one has to sneeze will significantly decrease. It truly does wonders during such a hard season.

Another thing that helped me was nose sprays for when the nose is dry, when the nose is stuffed or when the nose is runny. It helps sometimes when the spray clears the clog or makes the dry uncomfortableness disappear.

Some other times it barely works because the pollen made it unsavable. I mean the clog clogging up your nose would be lighter than before but sometimes it just feels as if nose sprays don’t work at all because the effects are barely experienced.

I also found that since you need to blow your nose so often that you are hurting the skin around the nose with the tissues that you use to blow your nose, it is helpful to have a cream protecting the skin around the nose so it doesn't lead to further irritation.

Drinking plenty of water also helps. Not only is hydration good for your health in general, but hydration also helps “flush” out the irritation-causing pollen so it would no longer cause sore throats and makes the nose feel less dried out.

Then I would suggest finding out what exactly you are allergic to. There are pollen counters and statistic so you know on which days you should take it easy and give your body time to rest so it can recover from the allergen irritations.

Another thing I haven’t tested out was air filters since I haven’t had the time to put research into those but according to articles and online reviews, those air purifiers do wonders at home during pollen season filtering out the irritation-causing pollen.

Last but not least, I would suggest, getting plenty of rest since pollen season is tiring. Overworking the body would take away energy from the immune system which makes the immune response flare up longer than necessary.

If pollen season is not getting better or becomes unbearable, then I would sincerely suggest seeking medical advice since allergies are already not fun. Having to suffer through worse makes something already terrible worse and nobody would want that.

I really do hope that this will be the worst pollen season so I don’t have to bear through future pollen seasons. But if this is not the worst pollen season yet to come, you will probably hear from me again. I really hope that it won´t come to that so not until next time.