As I write this entry, we are in the midst of allergy season. Ragweed is one of the worst culprits during the late summer season around here, and this always seems to be the worst part of the year for me. I have a long history of ear, nose, and sinus problems, and I have had a long history with allergies too. I was allergy tested several years ago, and basically I was found to be allergic to everything. This made me laugh, because somehow I had been fortunate enough to survive all of this time without an anaphylactic reaction to anything, let alone everything. As a result of the testing I ended up giving myself allergy shots for about a year. After that I have seemed to tolerate allergy seasons better, but it also could be that I exercise and take care of myself better than I ever did too.
Looking at all of my history with allergies and sinus issues, this year seemed to be going very well. I sneezed some and had some drainage, but it wasn’t really bothering me that much. Lately, though, I have had to wake up at night to drain, and again, while it didn’t bother me it bothered my husband. So, today I went to an ENT doctor to see if there was a reason for my more frequent draining. Turns out I have a secondary infection from my allergies. Wow! I had no idea! I wasn’t really feeling all that different, but I have probably been walking around with an infection for possibly a month now. Boy do I feel silly. Here I thought my allergies were the best they had ever been, and I’ve had an infection. Geez.
Today’s incident has made me feel a major lack of self-awareness. How could I miss this? How could I not sense that something was off? I’ll get over it, but I think I need to work on giving myself some grace here. Sometimes things do get missed. Luckily, a lot of times it doesn’t affect much. I assume eventually I would have started feeling uncomfortable and would have figured I should seek some help. For now, I can rest in the knowledge that sometimes I will miss things, and that doing so is part of being a perfectly imperfect human.