Becoming A Season Allergy Sufferer

For years and years I would listen to people with allergies complain about what they had to deal with and think “thank goodness it’s not me.” I really didn’t have much sympathy for them because I couldn’t relate at all to what it was they were experiencing. I would hear stories on the news about pollen and ragweed season and ignore them….after all it was all pretty much foreign to me. Then last spring I had what I thought was a cold for several weeks and when I finally went to the doctor I was told that it was probably allergies that were causing my symptoms. My initial reaction was, “that’s impossible…I don’t have allergies” because I assumed it was not something you all of sudden could develop at age 53. As usual I assumed wrong but again I did not think much of it when my allergy symptoms went away a short time later.

It appears I have joined the ranks of the millions who suffer from seasonal allergies because all of a sudden over the weekend I started with sneezing, a bit of a runny nose, post-nasal drip, congestion….you get the picture. My first reaction was to think I had a cold but then I remember watching a news story just the other day in which they said this would be a rough season in New Jersey for ragweed because of all the rain we had during the summer.

Then just yesterday I talked with a few people who felt pretty much the same as I did and said it was their allergies and now I have to accept the fact that I’m one of them. It’s expected to be a rough few weeks for us allergy sufferers with ragweed pollen season to last until the first frost which seems like a long way off. I guess I’ll start experimenting with the many over-the-counter medications that can help curb the symptoms because this is not a good time for me to feel under the weather with the start of high school football season next week.

The only positive to come out of this is I am now very sympathetic to those of you who have been living with this for years. However I’m hopeful this is not something that I’ll have for the rest of my life as apparently some people who develop allergies in their later years say they may go away as fast as they arrive. I’d like to end up in that category sooner than later.