The Allergy and Fever Chronicles!

This weekend has been amazingly charged, hectic, really draining and sometimes bordering on torture! Spending a lot of time with my grandmother, aunt, uncle and my mother all of who are down with the flu, its no surprise that I'd to get it a day before the ceremony and have it peak just on my cousin's wedding! I know I've no chance for reprieve once the fever with the trademark body ache sets in!

At this moment I just feel like sharing some stuff and some tips which the doctor otherwise will never tell you. I can tell you very safely that as a chronic dust allergy patient a standard viral will definitely leave you more weaker and susceptible if you do not take proper rest.The problem here can be split into 2 subproblems : The allergy and the viral fever itself.
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Allergy can be defined as abnormal sensitivity by the immune system of the body to certain substances such as air borne particles, insect stings, food, medicines etc. I'll be mainly concentrating on dust allergy since I'm more familiar with its kind of suffering.

Risk factors for allergy can be placed in two general categories, namely host and environmental factors. Host factors include heredity, sex, race, and age, with heredity being by far the most significant. There have been recent increases in the incidence of allergic disorders, however, that cannot be explained by genetic factors alone. The four main environmental candidates are alterations in exposure to infectious diseases during early childhood, environmental pollution, allergen levels, and dietary changes.

Common symptoms indicating allergy affects organs such as

• Nose: swelling of the nasal mucosa (allergic rhinitis)
• Sinuses: allergic sinusitis
• Eyes: redness and itching of the conjunctiva (allergic conjunctivitis)
• Airways: Sneezing, coughing, bronchoconstriction, wheezing and dyspnea, sometimes outright attacks of asthma, in severe cases the airway constricts due to swelling known as angioedema
• Ears: feeling of fullness, possibly pain, and impaired hearing due to the lack of eustachian tube drainage.
• Skin: rashes, such as eczema and hives (urticaria)

Dust Allergy is quite a broad term and that itself doesn't lend much help to treating it effectively. It is imperative to know what exactly is the 'dust' that triggers your allergy. A diagnosis is usually done by "Skin Testing". This involves marking several spots on the upper arm and introducing small amount of suspected allergens poking with a needle dipped in it or through a syringe. The reaction may range from slight itchiness or reddening of the skin to full blown swelling. It takes approximately 30 minutes for the reaction to generate.

Going by my experience this was a real horrible thing. I'd had skin testing done on my left upper arm in 20 different spots. Well the poking part pains a lot and my arm did swell! Though my symptoms comprised incessant sneezing and sinusitis, the tests revealed I was allergic to all kinds of dust (house mites, paper, saw etc) in addition to flies, cockroaches and mosquitoes and several other things!!! Risk factor in my case was my mom who is a chronic allergy patient and also an asthmatic. Right after the tests, I embarked on a year long journey of immunotherapy which consisted of injecting small amount of allergens irritating me in my body to make my immune system more resistant. However looking back now, I would have rather not made that choice! Because immunotherapy while suppressing one problem of the immune system sometimes leads to another problem possibly resulting in another allergy! Its best to leave your immune system alone! The therapy was effective only for a while after I finished the treatment but my susceptibility to fever and respiratory tract infections catapulted to new levels. I also developed intolerance towards having anything cold. The easiest way to get fever was to have a glass of extremely cold lime juice with 5-6 ice cubes and go to sleep. Since the immunity level of the body is lower when one sleeps, after getting up I'd have sore throat and by next morning fever!

However one must never lose hope!I got really fed up after the immunotherapy had failed and gotten me a new allergy! I used to be actively involved in sports but now running even halfway across the basketball court would leave me gasping for breath, sinus became my shadow and sneezing was and still is my unwanted attached companion. Several things I tried was...

• Started living as though I had no allergy. I wouldn't care if I'm in a dusty place and had cold stuff suiting my whims and fancy. I hated being a delicate darling! Sadly it didn't work out. Getting fever 4 times in a month is not very enjoyable with high dose of antibiotics that render your taste buds dead and manifest its side effects with breakouts on face, dysentery and increasing heat in the body. Further the wheezing had also begun. Time to stop living life pretending allergy doesn't exist!
• Next I focused more on prevention than cure. Prevention included avoiding the allergens and resisting the temptation to have ice creams, extremely cold drinks especially during the pollen season during which I am highly prone to hay fever. In my quest for preventing the most effective tool in my armor was EXERCISE! Yoga was a real lifesaver. The Alom Vilom and the Ujjayi Pranayama were particularly helpful. I used to go running every morning. I could slowly feel the breathlessness reducing and my endurance greater as weeks passed by. The change is extremely slow and it requires several months before a considerable change can be observed. The most important thing exercising taught me was to learn to listen to my body and interpret it's signals.

Now I can expertly sense if I'm going to come down with a fever and I swear the last time I thought I'll compromise by having a bowl of cold boondi raitha I had a very very very bad bout of sneezing making me miss even one of my sessional papers, literally as if I was being forewarned "Hey don't eat me!"

However if you also come down with a fever,

• Make sure you see a doctor at the earliest. Sometimes taking usual off the shelf fever/headache tablets will barely have any effect because your fever will be related to your allergy. In case of an infection antibiotics will be prescribed.
• If you suffer from cough after the fever your doctor would most likely prescribe you an expectorant or a bronchodilator. Avoid all cold things with a vengeance because the cough is hard to get rid off as it is.
• Take your antibiotics on time. Never ever miss a single dose because your condition will get worse and in extreme case the antibiotic may not work effectively and the dosage will have to be made more stronger!
• Eat well before having antibiotics unless you want your stomach to be on fire like a supervolcano erupting from within. It's an inexplicable sensation. It happened to me once and I guzzled 2 liters of cold milk. But it didn't work anyway! I'd to bear it out.
• You can safely make out you are badly infected and you need to see the doctor if the mucous has turned green and you've sore throat for starters. Ignoring this and pretending to be as if nothing has happened and having cold stuff again will make you lose your voice, medically known as laryngitis. The cold kills cold theory will not work so do not try it out!
• Viral/bacterial fever is often accompanied by severe body pain and weakness so make sure you rest adequately. The medicines prescribed will be sedating so it's normal to be sleeping and feeling drowsy or lethargic.
• Have a lot of healthy stuff to eat, the vegetables and the works you know. The best way to protect your body is to eat right and exercise. But save the exercise part till you've recovered completely!

Well...That's all for now! You can't make it vanish but you can definitely minimize it's effect on you. Basically, you just go to learn how to live with it :) ! As for the wedding it was quite fun. I still can't believe that my cousin is married. She's just beginning to believe it herself!!

I can hear a bowl of soup calling out to me now! So Ciao! Stay healthy and eat well!