I’ve written before of my frustration at being unable to distinguish a really bad hay fever day from the early stages of a head cold. Because we had such a mild winter, this was one of the years where I never got a break from hay fever. My frustration and confusion have been exacerbated by the fact that I was more or less continually sick from early January until (I hope) a bit over a week ago. What I think happened was this: I caught the virus that was going around this year making people very sick for a week or so with flu-like symptoms, then lingering for many weeks after with low key (but still annoying) symptoms. And while my immune system was bogged down fighting the virus, I got a bacterial infection in my throat, that was spreading to my sinuses by the time I went in to see the doctor and got the first prescription for an antibiotic. I got slightly better while on the antibiotic, but the throat infection surged back as soon as the pills ended, and spread to my ears before I went back to the doctor, who took more swabs to culture and put me on another, longer round of antibiotics

At the end of the second round, the sore throat came back along with a new, keep-me-up-half-the-night cough. The doctor didn’t like how my lungs sounded, so I got chest and sinus x-rays along with more swabs before the next round of a different antibiotic. And so on.

And each time I was on antibiotics, I felt better, but never completely well. Which both I and my doctor figure was probably because the original viral infection was still lingering. Except during that three month period, at least two other bouts of some sort of cold seemed to run through my office. So it’s possible that it wasn’t one long lingering viral infection, but really three or four unrelated viral infections that each hit me one after the other.

But we have also had a lot of high pollen/allergy alert days during that time. Coincidentally, some of the highest pollen count days happened to occur right after the end of each of the first two rounds of antibiotics. So each time that the sore throat and sinus symptoms started to re-occur, I told myself it was probably just allergies, and didn’t call my doctor right away.

Regardless, it’s been ten days since the end of the last round of antibiotics, with so far no sore throat and no ear ache. I think that means that the bacterial infection is finally gone. And while I’ve been having sore sinuses, congestion, and itchy eyes throughout for that entire time, nothing that isn’t very typical hay fever symptoms have shown up.

So far.

But I’m still feeling paranoid. So when I woke up feeling overheated and more congested than usual, I panicked a little. Until I remembered that because of the work being done on the exterior of the house, we’ve closed up all the windows and disabled the air-conditioning vent in the bedroom. It merely took opening the front door when I took out the garbage minutes after waking up to make me feel much more normal.

Though I had pollen alerts on my phone from both a weather app and my pollen tracker, and I see we’re going to be in the red all week. So this congestion and itchy eyes and sinus headache are probably here for the long haul.

Dang it!

Anyway, could you pass me that box of tissue, please?