Blooming Blooms

So the Cherry Tree Blossom is beautiful, our tree waves its pink fingers in a friendly announcement, Spring is here, summer not far behind.

Here’s the thing….

Allergies!! Aaarrgh! I am allergic to everything!

A few weeks ago I put myself to sleep accidentally for four days, how on earth you may well ask. Stupidly I had moved a small bunch of Carnations, from the well ventilated kitchen into the living room. They were my daughter’s birthday flowers and they were so colourful and pretty I just couldn’t resist giving them pride of place. Big mistake, the air flow moved their lovely scent around the house and upstairs to my bedroom. I was like Dorothy in the poppy field and just fell into a drowsy overwhelming state of sleep. Eventually I worked out what I had done and moved the vase of endlessly flourishing flowers outside, and with that the spell was broken and I was able to awake and return to life.

So lets talk allergies, I am allergic to all scented products, flowering plants, trees, grass anything that grows and all pollen types. Just changing washing powder can put me to sleep; over time, I adjust to mild scents and seem to build up a tolerance, so I am ok so long as I do not change products. My symptoms can be an inordinate drowsiness with dreamy drugged feeling sleep to follow, sneezing, wheezing, eyes streaming is another lovely reaction and throat swelling, cold and flu onset feeling. To add to all that, my skin itches, skin rashes flare and inflame with a feeling I need to scratch myself out of my very skin.

I take prescription anti-histamines daily and this helps with my skin reactions, but each springing spring my other reactions explode. Throughout the season I rely on other allergy and hay fever treatments and wait for my body to adjust and stop attacking itself.

Sometimes it is hard to identify the difference between usual exhaustion and allergic reaction, I tend to know the difference when I wake and feel good to go in the middle of the night, air quality is so much better and I spent some of my earlier years wondering if I were nocturnal. I am out of day/night reversal patterns and so the difference is clear but for those of you trapped in this negative cycle I say, take an anti-histamine at bed time for a few days and wait and see if things improve. Oh yes always take such pills at night as even those that claim non drowsy effects could put an elephant to sleep. Nasal sprays are a good compromise, remember to always pre-empt symptoms rather than battling them head on. Sorry I can not hold back on this advice.

The blooming blooms of my glorious Cherry Blossom tree create a dazing wave of scent that sends me directly to bed. Each morning and throughout the days, I stick a red light therapy contraption up my nasal passages, the light glows out in a cross between other worldly clown or attack of the mini Lightsaber but strangely, thankfully this does work well.

At this point I am hearing the purist cries of other sufferers of this maddening malady, telling me of local honey, magical herbal treatments and the like. Believe me I have tried all and now I am sticking to my current regime as it works for me, so much so that I write this from the shade of my garden surrounded by nature budding and bursting and down right beautiful, with no unwanted effects. Yes I am awake and as alert as I can be.

My message to others is to fight through the initial and ongoing difficulties and embrace nature in all its forms. Fresh air is the best remedy!

Well that’s me wiped out for now, back sooner than before, hopefully I am in a pattern now. I am off to lounge and rest and watch the birds collecting for their nest builds.

Take care and enjoy the sunshine,

Chris xxx