And, for that matter, juniper, which is a godawful hellbeast of a tree that really should be systematically wiped from the earth.
I came to New Mexico hoping that my allergies wouldn’t be as bad as they were back east. Most of the time they’re not. There’s fewer big grassy lawns to poison me, and mold and mildew is practically nonexistent in comparison. I’d previously thought that those were the two worst allergens for me.
Then I came out west and discovered that (not including the evil of cacti) there are two fearsome Death Plants out here. Chamisa, which I don’t need to worry about for a few months still, and motherfucking juniper.
My choices:
Spend nine fucking dollars on a pack of five tablets of Claritin and a few extra bucks on Sudefed. It’s mildly effective - I can sleep without choking and maybe even breathe through my nose - and doesn’t put me into a coma. But it does A) cost $9.00 for five day’s worth, which is an absolute fortune to an unemployed student, and B) leave me feeling drugged.
Shun medication, suffer miserably, go through a box of tissues every few days, and not get any sleep. This will not help the extremely important, literally ‘your entire academic career depends on this’ paper that I have due Monday.
Find a friend who will drive me to the clinic in town, wait for two hours, see someone who’s not actually a doctor, be told “try taking Claritin and Sudefed”, pay thirty bucks for the tip, call my friend back, and wait until they can pick me up again.
Or, perhaps most appealingly, I could move to, say, northern Canada or Iceland or someplace. It might be cold and barren and boring, but maybe it’ll be cold and barren enough that there won’t be anything I’m deathly allergic to.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to buy some more tissues.
Have you tried allegra-d? It’s prescription, but a little more powerful than Claritin.
Seriously, there should be some generic brand loratadine tablets (that’s the generic version of Claritin) that you coudl take. Claritin has never been really effective on super-hard hitting allergiers for me, but it has calmed down the occasional slight outburst.
One more voice here advising you to investigate generic loratidine. It’s much cheaper. Wal-Mart generally has the lowest prices in town, if you can stand to go in there.
Also, have you tried other antihistamines? I find that Chlortrimeton (generic–chlorpheniramine) doesn’t make me drowsy the way Benadryl does.
I’ve never found generic 12-hour Claritin - I’ve found generic 24 hour Claritin, but that doesn’t do shit for me.
I would suck it up and go to a clinic. Tell them you’ve tried Claritin and Sudafed and it doesn’t work. My doc put me on Singulair and Allegra-D (after spending 3 freakin’ weeks where I couldn’t breathe worth crap, even after trying every freakin’ allergy medication on the market), and I could breathe again within two hours. My allergies seem to have calmed down now (a month later), so I only take them on an as-needed basis.
The OTC stuff didn’t work anywhere near as well for me.
I used to really fucking hate allergies. I was constantly tormented either by the sneezing or by the doping. A box of kleenex would last me less than a day.
Then I stopped drinking milk.
They got better. I haven’t had to take an antihistamine of any sort for years.
Costco sells their own brand of generic Claritin - it’s called Allerclear, I believe. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper than the name-brand stuff. I have to take it every day to keep canker sores away, and real Claritin would put me in the poorhouse.
I’ve tried a whole bunch of antihistimines, the names of which elude me at the moment. When I was in middle school I went through a series of doctors visits for about two years, trying to find something that A) worked and B) didn’t just about put me in a coma. I know I’ve tried a few variants of Allegra, none of which worked.
I’ll go ahead and check out the generics next time I’m out at WalMart - I picked up the Claritin at the grocery store, because that’s where I could get a ride to and I desperately needed something.
I had to get shots. That has stopped. I am now taking Singulair and Zyrtec. Seems to work well enough and I’m allergic every know plant, animal, and mold, and dustmites. For really bad days I have flonase. I’ve also started using a netti pot. I’ve heard people swear by it. So far, it just feels really weird pouring water through my nose.
I’ve lived in the west all my life, and thought the most evil plants in the world were cottonwoods, sagebrush, and juniper, all tieing for first place. Then I moved to Las Vegas.
The most horrible, awful, very bad, terrible, evil plants in the entire world are fucking mulberry trees. I have been a stumbling snot factory for 10 days now. My face is swollen, the visible portion of my nose is raw & bleeding, my sinuses are full and continually draining without any decrease in pressure, I wheeze like a dying accordian with every breath and I am barely functioning on twice-a-day Allegra, 2 generic every-four-hours Benadryl, generic albuteral and 2 drops every 8 hours of incredibly-expensive name-brand stonger version of Elestat (Pandonal?).
I’m seriously considering researching the black market in countries that didn’t ban Seldane. Seldane worked for me, and killed only a few people.
I was reading in one of my new age-y crunchy granola magazines something that really sounded like it made sense: To help reduce allergies introduce the allergens in very small batches. Essentially, take a teaspoon of locally made honey ( containing all the allergens in your area brought to you by the bees) and your immunity to what ever it is that is bothering you rises.
Make of it what you will.
Have you tried a sinus rinse once to twice a day? Morning and a hour before bed.Great stuff
My condolenses on your allergies.
And as if allergies aren’t a big enough problem by themselves…what about people who loudly proclaim “You obviously have a cold!” and then make a big deal about not going anywhere near you? :mad:
I hate allergies too. I have to take a $60/month prescription called rhinocort to get any relief. Prior to that, I spent an entire year addicted to Afrin.
Knock over a liquor store and go see an allergist. As a kid I was allergic to just about anything. After a rather annoying regimen of shots, I am now only allergic to hard work. They might have something that can help you beyond the generics.
With the mild winter here in FL, I was hoping to be over them already…I live at the beach, and evidentally, it was warm enough here that this yellow pollen that gets all over everything came out in January, but in town, it wasn’t quite warm enough, so after dealing with it for a month earlier this year, I’m now getting to deal with it again, since I work in town.
And I love when I get to the grocery at 8:05 to go shopping, and go to get my Claritin D, which is now unavailable because the fucking pharmacy closed at 8.
I hate dogs and I hate people who own dogs and keep them inside and don’t fucking clean up after them and don’t tell you either of these details before they invite you over. Also applies to cats.
