The month of August is hard on my respiratory system. This is the time of year where the pollen I am most allergic to, ragweed, is floating on the wind. The State Fair starts on the 25th and the pre-Fair horse shows are happening every weekend before, adding hay mold to the atmosphere. Bringing the occasional rose bunch into the house is more than my regular allergy meds can handle. With all of this, I become a swollen, headachy, snotty, wheezy, sore-throated mess.
In the days before COVID, I use to wonder if I had caught a head cold. I eventually figured out the difference: the duration of symptoms and their response to an extra helping of Allegra. If the worst symptoms lasted more than 9 days and was mitigated by another dose of Allegra, it was my allergies.
Now I play a new August game: Is is Allergies, a Cold, or COVID?
In 2020, I could rule out a cold pretty quickly as I was never in contact with anyone who had a cold. Because I was never around anyone outside my family and we all stayed home. But the transmission of COVID was still somewhat of a mystery, and there was still debate about if it was transmitted through contact or through the air. Maybe I had COVID, and got it because I had recently stopped washing and wiping down everything that came into the house from the outside. The thermometer was my friend. On bad days, I’d take my temp a couple times a day, and it always registered normal. Allergies it is.
In 2021, I could rule out COVID because I had been vaccinated. Back then, it was thought that the vaccines PREVENTED you from COVID, like say the smallpox vaccine. My close friends and family had been vaccinated, and we only gathered outside and socially distanced. No one had had a cold in over a year, so I felt safe to call my August hell an allergy attack.
This year, it’s all back on the table. We know the vaccine only mitigates the worst of COVID. People started getting colds again in January. I have been out and eating at restaurants for special occasions. I’ve been lazy. When I started to feel rough, I looked at the calendar and started to wonder what was going on.
I can almost rule out a cold (knock wood), because it should have been worse by now. I just ruled out COVID last night, after a Bachelorette party at the end of July where one participant didn’t understand the quarantine and masking rules was talking to me for an hour straight. She said she was following CDC guidelines. In a conversation later in the week, it turns out she wasn’t following them correctly. She phoned a nurse and got straightened out quickly.
I still feel like mild crap, so I am assuming it is allergies. I went to a wedding this weekend and masked for most of it, but there was a meal. I’ll test myself again in 6 days just to make sure. I’m very thankful to have the home testing kits and the skills to use them properly.
So for now, I will double-dose the Allegra, mask outside and with people, and stay attached to my inhaler. And keep knocking on wood.