Allergies

You know it's coming. You wake up with itchy eyes and a slightly scratchy throat. You sneeze about 33 times before noon. All afternoon your nose drips--not enough for a blowing, but enough to make you wipe your sleeve casually because you don't have any Kleenex around. You just hope no one sees you do it. By nightfall your left ear is stopped up and your nose is no longer dripping. It's so stopped up your eyeballs fill squished by your cheeks which are rising into your lower eye lids from the swelling and pressure. You know the migraine is coming if you don't pop twice the normal dose of Advil--which will make you constipated later on, but I'll take it any day over a migraine.
You will yourself to sleep only to awaken ninety minutes later gagging on the snot that is flowing down the back of your throat. You have cotton mouth, your lip just cracked open as you attempted to lick it. You spend the rest of the evening propped up by a myriad of pillows of different sizes and thickness trying to get that just right angle--not upright, not horizontal, more than 45 degrees, neck straight instead of bent because then you'll have a crick in it. Allergy season has begun.
I haven't blogged this week because between wiping my own nose, I've been soothing my babies noses and listening to their dry hacking coughs and wheezes. The three of us are under serious attack by some histamine in our body that doesn't like spring. Mercifully for me, the nurse practitioner at the CVS gave me some allegra and flonase and sudafed. Along with lots of water and ginger-lemon tea with honey I'm going to make it. My older son has been on Singulair for almost 3 years now. With round the clock benadryl when the symptoms arise, he is usually okay. He has shadows under his eyes from lack of good sleep and a hack from the post-nasal drip, but otherwise, he's okay. The poor baby has to wait until he's two to start that Singulair, but you better believe I'm going to ask for it this fall. Poor kid. Between the eczema and the runny nose/cough the kid hasn't slept well in two nights.
This morning I woke up with a start at 530. I just knew something was wrong, but nobody was up. Then I heard it. This pitiful weak little cough from the nursery. He was so tired he couldn't even cough well. He sounded like an 80 year old man in there snoring. I rubbed his back and started the music and stood there for a while to make sure he was still breathing. Then I heard the other one, "mmoooommmy" so softly. The older one was half-awake. He was having a cough attack too and his nose was crusted over. I got a wash cloth and washed his face and gave him some water. Then we settled on the couch to snuggle--at a 45 degree angle so we could both sleep. After about 20 minutes we gave up and made breakfast.
Once we get to the end of June we should be okay until the end of September. Spring is one of my favorite seasons. But allergies are wretched. There isn't much I can do for the boys. It's so hard to keep them quiet when they really want to go out and play. Usually I let them go play and we just hose down every night to get the pollen off. I spent ten years of my life cooped up inside and I don't think I was better off for it. But we didn't have the wonder drugs we do today to help me deal with it and my wheezing made my parents walk the floor. I don't know how to keep little boys quiet anyway. We're on 3 1/2 hours of movies already today. We've been through every toy, every game, every puzzle, pretend play, pretend trick o treating, emptying the pantry--even jumping on the bed. The only thing left is art, and unless it's really messy (meaning outside mud pies or chalk) they don't like it.
Welcome Spring, do your thing and bring on Summer. Hurry please.