(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.
Do you remember how long is your longest sneezing fit? After having these huge attacks, how do you feel?
ReplyDeleteHiya Kate. That's a pain re: the service animals. ADA law says you deserve reasonable accommodation same as the person needing the dog. In the future, maybe there's a way to check with the class scheduling to make sure you don't get into a lecture hall with someone needing a service animal.
ReplyDeleteI know it could get really awkward trying to work with your needs and the needs of the person with the animal. I know you said that wearing a filter/allergen mask is tough for you because of the frequency of your sneezing, but perhaps trying something like one of these when you know you're going to be in that environment would help cut down on the severity of symptoms: http://respro.com/store/product/respro-allergy-mask
Thanks for the suggestions. I really have a hard time with any masks, but I'll look into it. :)
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