My Allergies

Two things that set off my allergies to the point of borderline bronchitis, asthma reactions, and sinus infections, without fail are cigarette smoke and birds/bird dander.

The later of which is rather unfortunate, because I love birds, I love working with them, and many of my friends have them. I'm not sure what it is with avians, but I can't sleep with feather-down anything without horribly miserable results. I can normally handle several hours at someone's house that has birds and I have worked at pet stores and wildlife rehab where we had huge rooms with nothing but birds. Just seems longer I stay, the worse my symptoms get. Taking allergy or sinus medicine only helps so much, so normally if I know I am visiting one of my featherhead friends and their flock or working a job with birds, I'll take meds before going or while there if I have to. Must find a way to overcome this, so my dreams of falconry can one day become a reality.

I am highly sensitive to cigarette smoke and residue, and I have come to the conclusion with repeated experiences that it doesn't have to be from a live burning smoke either. If it is an environment where someone frequently smokes, or something that is exposed repeatedly to said smoking, it kills me. I suffered through it for years because my mother is a smoker. She tried quitting, and she always tried to smoke outside or in the utility room, or roll the windows down in the car so it didn't bother me as badly, but it didn't help much. After years of living on my own in a smoke-free environment, it's like night and day when I am around smokers, and maybe because I have not been exposed to it every day for upwards of 7 years now, and with my other health problems, I have become far more sensitive to it, the smoke and residue or whatever else it is with the crazy chemicals that go into those things.

When I visited my family, I couldn't ride in my mother's car long because it made me ill. Visiting friends or family who smoke, it's on clothing, on furniture, everywhere. It's worse for people who freely smoke in their homes or vehicles, or even some I know who did for years but no longer do, because it gets absorbed into the furniture, blankets, fabric, and other surfaces. Mike and his mother told me horror stories about how his grandfather used to chain smoke indoors, and their shock and horror when they went to clean the house after he passed, and when wiping down the wall, yellow came off and they thought they had somehow ruined the paint, only to realize those walls were supposed to be white, not yellow.

I don't have a problem with people who smoke, many of my friends and family do. When I am around them and they decide to light-up, I will constantly change position around them so the smoke does not drift toward me, and stand downwind so it blows away from me. It's something I have always subconsciously done, I learned to with my mother, but once I got older and started to get odd reactions from people wondering what on earth I was doing, I had to explain I was just trying to avoid the smoke because I was allergic.

I normally won't say anything because I am afraid it will seem rude or nagging or complaining, especially if I am a guest somewhere. Most people feel bad because they didn't realize I was allergic and don't want it to cause a problem for me. Many will try and limit their amount of smoking around me, which I appreciate. Taking allergy medicine doesn't seem to make a difference, which is why I think it's developed into a combination of allergy and chemical sensitivity.

It is what it is.