Oh, Azelastine, my torturer, my savior!

I can't breathe.

This season, my allergies have been especially hideous. Which is odd because my most common allergy is to dust mites, which are a non-seasonal problem dealt with best by changing the sheets regularly and a decent vacuum cleaner.

I do have a mild reaction to oak. The pin oak in the front yard retains its leaves all winter, then drops them in spring as new buds grow behind them. The past two days of beautiful, 70F (32C) weather has inspired it and all its brethren to claw deep into the earth and begin signalling to their peers that reproduction has commenced. The spew of oak bukakke everywhere threatened to keep me up last night.

But there is a solution, of a sort. Normally, I just use ceterizine and a steroid inhalant, but the steroid takes three days to kick in. If I want to breathe, I need a solution. For that, I use probably the most painful drug in my current arsenal, azelastine. Azelastine turns off the mucous-producing mechanisms in your nose. It makes delivering the steroids to the right receptors possible. It lets me breathe.

Not being able to breathe or sleep is better than the alternative, but the alternative is a burning, constant but completely unsatisfiable wish to sneeze. It feels like gnomes are pickaxing up in the space behind my eyeballs. Worse, I can't really smell anything. I almost ate a bowl of scrambled eggs and salsa for breakfast this morning before my tongue informed me that the salsa had gone bad-- my nose couldn't tell.

I can't wait for the steroids to take hold.