Saturday, November 30, 2013

Service animals

(I meant to post this back in October, but I just recently discovered I never hit the 'post' button!)

I'm very allergic to dogs, and other animals in general (cats are my worst).  Over the years, there have seen more and more service dogs around.  It hasn't been an issue for me until recently.  I have seen some around at the school, but I never needed to have much interaction with people with service dogs.  I have been running into some problems now though because there are service dogs in some of my classes.  One class is a pretty small class, and it gets bad for me pretty quick, so I sometimes have been skipping classes and gettign notes from people and/or looking at material on-line. 

I kind of worry that dander for the service dogs will stay around in the classrooms (I doubt they clean classrooms that well!) and cause me more problems even when the dogs aren't around.

Thats whats been on my mind allergy-wise lately.  Please make comments, and please give me some questions to use in a Q+A.  I am going to make an effort to post more by talking about any allergy-related things that happen to me, but I might forget or put it off too long if they aren't that major.

Monday, November 25, 2013

Catching up with a short post and Q+A

Ok, I know I have been bad and not posted in a very long time.  I had been really busy and I kept putting it off.  I finally got a bit of motivation to make a post.

Now that pollen is gone, my allergies aren't as bad.  I do have to deal a bit with dust and stuff moving around for heating systems coming back on on the dryness that it can create, but its not as bad as dealing with pollen.

I am not sure what other update to give right now, so i will go into 2 questions I got:

Q:Have you ever considered moving to a different climate? For example I'm in Seattle and I know of someone who moved from here to Medford, OR for relief from sinus issues. Would a drier, desert-like climate help? Would there be less triggers? Or would the air conditioning bother your allergies? 
A: I have looked into that and I have been told that it doesn't really work, and if it does it would only be for a short time, as new triggers would start to bother me.  I have moved from the northwest to the northeast and i didn't see any difference.  A/C I don't think bothers my allergies in and of itself, but they are prone to mold and I am pretty allergic to mold.  I once stayed somewhere and my allergies we going really bad and it took us a while to realize it was a very old A/C unit that hadn't been kept up that well that was causing much of my problems.

Q:One of the things I find most awkward about sneezing repeatedly is how people feel the need to say 'bless you'. I wish that courtesy did not even exist, I wish sneezing was like coughing. When people bless me I feel like I can't even say thank you in between sneezes and it's even more awkward when they keep saying it after every few sneezes, and even more awkward when they finally give up and I'm still sneezing! It just makes me more embarrassed than I already am. Do you like people to acknowledge your sneezes with a 'bless you'? 
A:  I hate the bless you thing so much!  It just draws more attention to all my sneezing, and I end up feeling bad because most people just eventually give up blessing me in the middle of my fits.  Whats worse is when they switch from blessing to things like 'wow are you ever gonna stop'  or 'I blessed you enough, you can stop now' or 'I can't bless you that much', and other weird or annoying things.

I know I have posted about this before, but answering the last question reminds me of all the crazy things people say to me.  Some makes me feel really embarrassed, some upset me, some make me feel mad.  Some people are actually pretty nice and helpful but sometimes they are the total opposite, either on accident or on purpose. Some of the worst stuff I have heard it people telling me: I am doing it just to get attention; my allergies ruin my looks; and even a few times people have gotten upset that they were trying to have a conversation with me when my allergies were really bad and I wasn't answering them.

Ok, I didn't want to leave off on a depressing note!  So, I'll say my allergies are being a bit better because of the season, and in a few days I will have a few days off :)

As usual, please read and share and ask me more questions and feel free to contact me to chat if you want to!  Happy TG!