GARP

( This isn't actually a standalone gag. But it's topical. )

Both ends

I have this thing, where in the middle of the night this post-nasal drip happens and I have to get up for an hour till I stop coughing. It's been happpening infrequently for years, usually during the winter when the heat's on so it seems to be related to being too warm (as well as related to I have the seventeenth most active sinus in the world). Except over the past few months it's been happening more frequently with less severity; when it happens at nighttime I'll wake up coughing but not usually badly enough that I have to get up, but sometimes it happens more than once in a night. And it happens during the day now, at the new reduced severity level.

Ten years ago when I was allergy-tested one of my sensitivities (aside from every pollen known to medical science) was cats. And the new kitten is much freer with her claws than the cat we already had. I formed the hypothesis that this new pattern of coughing attacks was related to the advent of the new kitten.

Now, I have an Allegra prescription for the past several years. About a year after I got my present job on a campus where all the soda pop for sale is Pepsi products, I developed a sensitivity to something I only encounter in Pepsi products. Good thing I prefer Coke. Anyway, I've been taking the Allegra not daily but as needed, on occasions when resorting to Pepsi products. (I also carry an Epipen, like the boy has in Signs, because after making the allergist appointment which resulted in the Allegra prescription, about a week before that appointment was scheduled I drank a Pepsi or a Mug and had my tongue swell up and qtrhorserider made me go to the emergency room.) So about a week and a half ago, when I formed the hypothesis about the kitten and the post-nasal drip, I decided to test it by taking my Allegra daily at bedtime.

It seems to be working. The only night since then that I forgot to take my Allegra, I woke up coughing twice, and finally took my Allegra at two in the morning. It doesn't stop the coughing fits during the day, but it lets me sleep.

But the next morning - yesterday morning - I woke up with a headache. I also woke up with a headache two other times since acting on my hypothesis, one of them today.

I don't wake up with headaches. Sleeping at night has always been what's got rid of headaches for me. I hate to think the Allegra is causing them and I don't want to go off it to find out.

On the other hand, I'm writing this entry instead of doing my math and theology homework, because I don't want to do homework with a headache or I'd be all cross and wouldn't enjoy it.