CATCHING UP - ALLERGIES

Okay, probably one of the more boring posts in catching up. My allergies have been the worst ever this year! I have a theory about why they've gotten to be so bad in the last few years, but I won't go into that now. If anyone really cares that much about my allergies, just ask and then I'll tell you my theory :-) So anyway, they're really hard to deal with this year because of being pregnant - hard to find medicines that are aggressive enough, but safe for pregnancy. It's been about 4-5 weeks now of symptoms, and after the first 2 weeks of putting up with the symptoms, I finally gave in and spent the $50 on the prescription I needed. My usual allergy medicine would have been cheaper covered more by our insurance, but it wasn't safe for pregnancy, so I spent the $50 to get another kind I knew worked, but it was more because they only sell the name-brand. (On a side note, I did get the $50 refunded thanks to the Flex Plan that I've finally figured out! Also got our portion we paid for two root canals refunded (over $1000) and Mike's contacts refunded ($200)!)

So this expensive prescription helped for about a week - then one morning I woke up feeling completely awful, it was like I was sick, but I knew it was allergies - I was completely drained, I felt like I could hardly breathe, and my eyes were SO red and itchy, it hurt to keep them open. I just survived through that day with the girls until Mike got home and then went in and spent 3 hours at Urgent Care - it took awhile because, like I said, hard to find medicines aggressive enough, but safe! Finally I left with two nasal sprays and an antihistamine to use in addition to the spendy prescription. Those medicines have seemed to be enough to keep the symptoms to where I can bear them, but they're still not all gone!

I'm hoping that in the next two weeks they improve greatly...I'll be out of the $50 medicine then. They've already gone longer than usual - they usually last about 3-4 weeks in June (it's the grass!). They've been especially bad route days - 5 hours of the wind blowing in my face is not good! Saturdays I take a shower immediately when I get home, but so far on Tuesdays I've been too pooped, but then I always pay big time on Wednesday morning (that's the day of the week I went into Urgent Care).

WELL! Enough of that boring-ness! ---- SORRY! Not quite...I posted that last night, and now it's Thursday morning and I have a new story. Poor Mike, I haven't been sleeping in our bed a lot of nights because our bed is up next to a window that is always open, and right outside are a lot of the offending plants, so I wake up with a lot of symptoms. Instead I sleep on the couch in a room with A/C and do a lot better. Last night I tried sleeping in our bed, and this morning I woke up with hives all over my back, in my armpits, all around my neck, on my scalp, and other miscellaneous places on my body. I just took a shower and some medicine, but I couldn't find any benadryl which is best for stopping the hives from progressing any further. So I'll just sit and itch and wait, and hope that they don't get worse, and that my airway stays open. If it does get worse, I'm not sure what I'm going to do since Mike isn't here and I don't know if I can use my EpiPen while pregnant....I should probably check on that and get a game plan for if I do need to go to the hospital. The worst part of this is when I was falling asleep last night I had some tell-tale signs that sleeping in there would be a problem - I was itching in all the usual places that start itching first before I break out in a full-blown case of hives.

Update - It's Thursday night and I've made it through the day without going to the hospital, but the hives haven't gone all the way. Basically I get randomly itchy, and anywhere I scratch I get a welt. But my toes and fingers get them here and there even if I don't scratch. I have a good topical lotion (called Sarna), and that helps, I'm just wondering how long this goes on before I should go to the doctor? I think tomorrow I'll go get some Benadryl and see if that helps, otherwise I'll probably go to the doctor, which I really don't want to have to do!!