But it's important to know that a cold, the flu, and pneumonia can all cause those symptoms.
They failed to mention allergy attacks.
I don’t know exactly what I am allergic to, but my allergy attacks typically occur in the late fall and early winter months but only once, twice or up to perhaps three or four times a year at the very most. And in fact I got one on Thanksgiving Day.
Some people’s opinions and my research tends toward it being a leaf mold, mold, wood mildew, dust or dust mite allergy, but I don’t suffer enough or often enough to want to go through getting the allergy testing. And I have a problem taking many OTC cold and allergy meds – they make me drowsy at first but then I get very hyper and I also have to be careful what I take because I have HBP, so I usually just suffer through.
But the thing is that when I get an allergy attack, it feels just like I’m coming down with a very bad cold or the flu, but more like the flu as it comes on very suddenly – it “hit’s fastâ€.
It starts at first with an itchy nose and then a very stuffy nose and then watery and red and burning eyes and then very quickly goes into severe bouts of sneezing, but that’s expected in most allergies. But I guess all the sneezing and the post nasal drip makes my throat very raw and sore and often causes me a lot of coughing and sometimes wheezing, a lot of throat phlegm…yuck!
And I also get pretty severe body aches, sometimes with a headache and the feeling that even my skin and hair hurts, and I feel very tired and “out of sortsâ€, just like one gets when coming down with the flu. I often feel very hot and flushed but with severe chills at the same time. I also get extremely thirsty like I’m dehydrated but lose all my appetite to want to eat anything.
If I take my temperature, I may not have a fever even though I feel like I have one and my skin especially on my face is quite hot to the touch or sometimes I will have a very low grade fever. But it doesn’t matter as by then, all I want to do is crawl into bed.
On Thanksgiving Day as I was leaving my niece’s house, my SIL gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek and told me I was hot, like I was burning up with fever. My niece touched my cheek and forehead and concurred.
I went home and went to straight to bed. But the next morning, aside from a very slight stuffiness that went away as the morning progressed, I felt fine – all my symptoms went away.
The only way I can tell that is not the flu but an allergy attack is that just as suddenly as it comes on, it goes away just that quickly.
