Allergic Reaction Troubleshooting

We had a very busy weekend filled with a bit of shopping, bake and craft sale, entertaining for a large group which translates into me doing a lot of extra cooking and basically just enjoying the weekend.  I woke up with that feels-like-a-cold is coming on ick feeling.  My throat was scratchy, I was feverish and my ears itched horribly all day Saturday.  I didn't feel much better on Sunday, just considerably more tired from the night before.  Mid-afternoon I had a lovely asthma flare-up, the first one in a few years.  I forgot how much fun those can be <sarcasm>.  Today has just been a blah, asthma threatening, ears itching, scratchy throat, one eye constantly leaking, itching/burning mucosal membrans, feeling to cruddy to swear, deer in the headlight perma look - in short a horrid mess of a day.  However, this is not a cold.  It is an allergic reaction and like all allergic reactions with each exposure they get worse to the point of becoming life-threatening.  The problem with any allergic reaction is troubleshooting for the cause.  The huge problem we are up against is we bought a home with all hard flooring meaning allergens have no place to hide and be slowly released.  Instead they immediately become airborn causing faster, stronger and more severe allergic reactions.

Thursday night I ran a load of laundry using the new Era HE laundry detergent my husband bought because they were out of All Free and Clear and I used what I thought was Fleecy fabric softener as the store was out of Purex.  You know I should know better!  Laundry detergent and fabric softener are two things we seldom experiment with because sure shooting one or the other will trigger an allergic reaction or asthma flare-up.  In fact, according to my allergist the worst triggers is the Tide/Downey combination and he said if you can still smell the product on your clothes, not to use it.  Today I started reacting rather strongly in the laundry room and realized the fabric softener wasn't Fleecy, it was Snuggle!  The only thing I can think happened is in our haste to get the shopping out of the way we accidently grabbed Snuggle.  I've always reacted horribly to Snuggle including an itchy rash and asthma.  One of our kids breaks out in a very nasty rash using Snuggle so we are usually very careful but I could have sworn I grabbed Fleecy.  Now I have to go back and rewash everything that I washed using Snuggle or anything that has the smell of Snuggle on it so now I have extra laundry to do :(

Compounding the problem is I know I'm reacting to the remaining pet dander in the house.  We are lucky that there is no carpeting and we have been rather ruthless at vacuuming to get as much of the pet dander as we can.  I'm vacuuming daily not only the floors but anywhere that pet dander can hide.  We don't have pets and won't have them in our home still it will take a good six months to rid our home of pet dander from the previous owners.  We have arranged to get our HVAC ductwork cleaned after our winter vacation and we have special filters on the furnace and vents that should help filter out the dander until the ductwork is cleaned.  Good gosh, can you tell I'm having a lot of fun with this one?

Garden Gnome
©2006-2011