Status Update: Dec. 8, 2013

Something occurred to me today about this tight throat issue.  I had respiratory problems in April, and again in Sept.  Both of those times are the start of two different allergy seasons in Minnesota; pollen in the spring, and ragweed in the fall.  Pet allergies can aggravate those allergies, especially the fall ones, as dust/pet dander buildup is worse during the dry season.  I'm allergic to pollen, ragweed, and dust.  In Tucson I had pollen reactions (just about everyone does) but I haven't really been exposed to ragweed in some years  So in Sept. during some hacking respiratory problems, I saw a physician's assistant in my primary care office who prescribed flonaise (a topical nasal steroid spray), ProAir (Albuterol inhalant) and a daily allergy pill (I've been using Claritin).

Okay, so today I began to wonder if the effect of these things was causing excessive drying of my nasal passages to the point where I feel that tightening of my throat just under my jaw, resulting in occasional twinges up my ears.  I see the next doc (an endocrinologist) on Wed., but between now and then I'm going to stop all three of these things and see what happens.  I was told it could take a couple of weeks for the nasal steroid to kick in, so I'm not sure how fast it will wear off, but I'm going to find out.  I think from an allergy perspective, it's a good time to try this as we've had unusually low temps in the last week (0-10 centigrade and sometimes lower at night).  The pets are the only real issue remaining,  and I'll continue with the nasal irrigation as that's never caused me any problems, and in fact always seemed to help before I started the other things.

The throat symptom, by the way, wasn't present when I first had the allergy symptoms, but has developed since then.  Tonight I reread the pharmaceutical info on the Flonaise and found that a common side-effect is dizzyness and slight headaches - both of which I've had quite a bit of in the last month (which is partially why we were looking at my heart).  But now that that seems not to be an issue, I wonder about the allergy drugs, esp. the steroid, or the steroid in conjunction with the other things.  The paperwork did say allergy reactions were possible but rare, and though they mention swelling in face, lips, tongue, they didn't say throat.  Still close enough for me to test out the theory.

I'll update in a day or two.