Nows and Forevers

Protip: Don’t ever stop taking allergy medication until the season is through.

I learned this lesson the hard way, just recently. I had run out of my Zyrtec — my entire household takes it from March through June — and I hadn’t gotten to the store by the time evening came around.

No worries, I thought. Zyrtec takes a while to build up so maybe missing a day won’t be so bad. There will still be some left anti-allergy-ness left in me, right?

I woke up sneezing, coughing and with a sore throat.

Not for the first time, my lack of medical knowledge and common sense failed me.

I rushed out and got a refill, which took another few days before I was out of the watery eye/sneezing/coughing zone. But it got me thinking about how dependent I’ve become on my allergy meds.

From the moment I remember drawing a breath — decades and decades ago — I’ve had allergies. Spring was my least favorite season because it would signify how miserably sick I was going to be for several weeks running. My eyes would water and burn. My nose would keep running, and I’d have to carry a small box of Kleenex with me. Sometimes my throat would hurt. And I’d cough, for weeks on end.

Back then, when I was a kid, there wasn’t much of a chance to treat it, either. I would take Benadryl, which would make me sleepy, or another anti-histamine. Doctors would not have any idea what to do, other than to soldier through it and wait for June.

“You’re basically allergic to everything green,” one doctor told me. Having childhood asthma didn’t help, either.

I went to an allergist, but there wasn’t much to do. It wasn’t until the ’90s when Zyrtec (cetizirine) came out that I began to get relief, although it took a few years before I got a prescription. And then it wasn’t until 2007 when it began to be available without a prescription.

Now, I take it from March through June and then again in hay fever season, August and September. I know it takes time to build up in your system, so I get out ahead of any potential pollen and allergen by taking it long before the buds begin. This year, I was in Florida in late February so I started even earlier than I would.

So far in my second course of allergy medicine, I’m doing OK. I woke up this morning with a fit of sneezing and coughing, but that went away. I expect that it will only be another month or so and then I’ll be able to stop the meds until ragweed season, which I started getting allergic to about a decade ago.

Can’t wait.