The past week has been hell for me. It started out with a bad runny nose/blocked nose and teary eyes. I thought I had fallen sick, but strangely though, I did not feel one bit tired or lethargic. After 3 days of taking over the counter medication and not feeling any better, I decided to make a trip down to the school clinic. The doctor took one look at me and said I was having an allergy.

I have never suffered from hay fever and the only thing I knew about how bad it is is from watching a red, puffy-faced Takuya Kimura talk about it on Music Station yonks ago and seeing Chun Ming suffering from it last Spring. The doctor told me that some people only get it after they’ve been in Champaign for 2-3 years. Right, that’s me.

Miserable Elisia is miserable.

Just after that trip to McKinley, my right eye decided to get infected with conjunctivitis. I had been dabbing my eye the whole afternoon and by evening, my eye was tearing so badly and I was feeling pain. I stared into the mirror and realised that my eyeball was swollen on the right side. It felt squishy like there was a sac of liquid. I had no idea it was conjunctivitis then and was panicking. I did a search on the internet and found out I was suffering from conjunctivitis and that it could be due to hay fever. Wow, added problems on hand.

If you can’t tell, I’m suffering from conjunctivitis.

That night was the worst night ever. The medicine I got from McKinley was hardly working. My nose was still blocked as ever and runny. My eyes were tearing so badly, especially the right eye. I could hardly sleep. I got out of bed in the middle of the night to wash my eyes and put more eye drops. I was frustrated and miserable. I didn’t know whether to throw a tantrum and cry because I knew that even if I cried, the problem was not going to go away. For the first time in a long long while, I actually prayed.  I prayed that God would bring me relief of my pain for a while so that I could actually get some sleep. It must have worked because I actually got some shut eye after that despite the discomfort.

From then on, out of all the medicine I got from McKinley, it seems that the eye drops worked the best. By last Sunday, the conjunctivitis had almost gone away. Monday, my eye started to itch pretty badly again. I could only pray that my eye was not about to get bad again. Last night, both eyes started itching and teared quite a bit. I woke up to put eye drops and prayed yet again that the conjunctivitis had not spread to my left eye. Thank God the eye drops worked.

I never thought the masks my mum gave me would come in handy one day. She gave me about 20 pieces to use last Fall since H1N1 was still going around. I had not used any of it then since I was not sick and I felt it was stupid to use one even when I wasn’t sick. I started using them last Friday. Screw looking normal and feeling uncomfortable of people staring at me. I am not about to let myself suffer further. At least it acts as a barrier between the air and my nose and I won’t have to breathe in the pollen-filled air.

I’m still not totally well yet, but I’ve improved quite a lot. I still have a bit of a runny/blocked nose and my eyes itch and tear sometimes, but I’m feeling a lot better.

Stupid pollen. Stupid flowers. Stupid (male) flowers.