Thursday, March 28, 2013

Seeing snot

Since I don't have any questions to answer, and I have been kinda busy lately, I am just going to post something quickly.

I can get pretty paranoid about people seeing my nose being snotty.  I make a large effort effort when I am around others, or if others can possibly see me, in hiding any snottiness.  When I am alone, its not much of a big deal to me, but I hate for anyone else to see it.  I am usually not able to blow my nose so my sneezes can get pretty snotty and sometimes my nose can run really badly.

I always use tissues when I sneeze because of that and I often wipe my nose and I often check in a mirror to make sure nothing can be seen.  I have been told that using a hankie would be better, but i don't see how it would be.  I use a tissue and when its used, I can grab others.  With a hankie, I think I'd snot it up kinda quickly, then it wouldn't be of any more help.

Trees have started pollinating and I'm certainly feeling it.  Allergies have been starting to get bad.

Give me some stuff to answer or at least make some comments please!


PS.  Nothing to do with allergies, but its something I just thought about recently.  In cartoons, many female superheroes or with powers that can fly tend to wear skirts.  That makes no sense to me.  Its a pretty silly idea to wear a skirt when you can fly!

Saturday, March 2, 2013

No, I don't have a cold!

Since its still winter, I wanted to talk about something that happens to me in the colder months.  Sometimes people think I have a cold instead of allergies.  Most of the time people will say 'oh, you have a cold?'  or 'are you sick?'  and I tell them no, I have allergies and that's it.  Sometimes though a person will tell me that I'm wrong cause I can't have allergies in the winter   And sometimes I get someone who is really scared of germs and will think I'm lying and will get really annoying about me 'spreading germs everywhere' and things like that.  Those people are very frustrating!

Ok, I just needed to vent on that a bit.  I have some Q+A that I'll try to answer as best I can.

Q:Did you attend traditional undergraduate college? How did you deal with that? Roommates? Lecture halls?
A: Yes.  It was hard at times.  Lectures I would sit where it was easy to leave and if my allergies got bad I'd run out to the bathroom.  Some days my allergies were (are) so bad that I'd have to skip class.  Labs were usually similar but sometimes problematic, especially when I was having bad allergies and it was testing time. I struggled through though.  Some professors were pretty understanding, and a few weren't.  Roommates were all over the board.  Some were totally understanding and one was super-helpful.  One i remember tried to be helpful but failed miserably.  I wanted to be upset at her, but it was hard to when she was trying so much.  A few didn't really care and didn't go out of there way to be helpful, but none were downright mean or nasty luckily.  It would have been easy for a roommate to make my life constantly miserable!

Q: One question based on your comment in the opening that you need to be able to get as much work done as you can in the window when your allergies are less bad; what are you able to do to manage your time so that you are able to function with your allergies? Like would you be able to schedule work into times during the day, or even during the month/year when things are less bad. There must be times they have a real impact on day to day life.
A: I know all the work that needs to be done for all my classes each semester, so I try to get as much of it done and as much studying ahead that I can during the times my allergies aren't too bad.  For lab work and teaching assisting, it was very difficult, but my mentor professor was very cool and helped me get an altered workload so I can do the usual things times when my allergies aren't too bad, and when they are bad, I can do different work that i can do on my own.  I do have to miss classes or things at times, but once again, this professor has helped me out.  Its gonna take me longer than it should to graduate, but i can do it.  Yes sometimes my allergies have a major impact on my daily life, but luckily sometimes it has very little.

I feel like I might not have answered the questions fully.  I could go on and on but I wanted to keep my answers short and coherent.  If you need clarification, or more of an answer, just ask me some more.

As usual, feel free to ask me more questions, please make comments, and drop me a line if you'd like!