Filtering Out The Answer

For some reason my allergies have been worse this year than at any time in recent memory. Once we got through spring I had kind of hoped my sinuses would calm down and start acting normally, at least providing me with a couple glorious months of being able to breathe through my nose before the weather changed and my nieces (cute as they may be) started bringing home fresh colds from school every week. Sadly, this has not been the case, as the last few days my mornings have all started with crushing sinus pressure. I think what makes my allergies problems particularly annoying is that I never used to have them. For decades of my life I was allowed to get through the year blissfully able to ignore whatever particular allergenic was in bloom that week because none of them impacted my life. However, once I hit 30 my nose randomly decided to get all sensitive to what was in the air. I have heard it is actually rather common for people's body to suddenly shift as they get older and suddenly develop new allergies later in life as well as new taste buds, which is why you should always give food a second try once you get slightly older. But instead of randomly liking a new food my body decided to add to the list of things it doesn't like. Honestly, if given the choice I think I would have voted to start eating more fish than being averse to ragweed.

Making my week-long allergy resurgence even more annoying is that while I am not totally sure what I am even allergic to, but I am pretty sure it is in my house. (I'm sure I could go and have a scratch test done to see what I am sensitive to, but at this point determining a cause is not nearly as important to me as finding a solution.) I mean, I get out during the day during various activities, but the fact that I go through the day relatively unscathed only to I wake up every morning with the same story leads me to believe it is something in my room. This has left me with a very bad choice because on the one hand I should probably open the windows, allowing fresh air to circulate in and simultaneously vent out the irritant. On the other, Massachusetts has apparently been relocated to near the equator for the month of July and opening the windows defeats the purpose of having air conditioning. Thus I am left to debate whether I would smarter to open the windows, sweat all night and sleep poorly or keep the windows closed and wake up every morning feeling like my head has been placed in some kind of vice grip. Frankly, neither option is very appealing and either way I will be less than chipper. That is why I hold out hope that my latest brainstorm works out slightly better.

Watching TV I saw an ad for a new kind of air filter for the home, one which is supposed to be much better at filtering out all kinds of things which irritate allergies.That was when it dawned on me that I couldn't tell you the last time I changed the filter for my A/C. They say you should swap them every 3 months and I can confidently say I am way beyond that (seeing as how I am not proud of this accomplishment maybe confidently is the wrong word). I believe I changed it at the end of last summer, meaning it has only been filtering for a few weeks since the recent warm spell, but the filter has been in place for around 9 months and they never tell you whether that 3 month expiration date is in general or just applies when the A/C is running. (It's a little like when doctors tell you to drink 8 glasses of water a day and then never tell you how big that glass needs to be. As a man who thrives on specifics, that crap is annoying.) The point is that for all I know that is what has been causing me all these problems and swapping it out could make a world of difference. So this afternoon I took the replacement (which I already had in the house, because of course I did. It just makes the fact I hadn't swapped these out before now all the more annoying) and pulled out the old one. The entire process took 30 seconds, but here is the real issue - I can't tell how bad the old filter is. 

Comparing it to the new filter it definitely looks sightly dirtier, but it is not the dramatic difference I was hoping for. Normally when you change out a filter in a car it looks heavily used, but this looked more like I could shake it out and stick it back in. While it would be disgusting, at least if the one I took out was almost black it would let me know that was where the problem was. I didn't even get a powerful change once the A/C kicked back on. Obviously, had things been really bad it probably would have made me think to change the filter earlier and I'm not saying I wanted it to be like "Total Recall" when the oxygen was turned back on and everyone sprang back to life but I would have appreciated something to let me know changing filters isn't one of those things like expiration dates on beer which are actually useless and just a ploy to get you to buy more beer. (Seriously, if your beer has remained cold you can drink it for months after the expiration date and it won't have skunked.) I guess I will have to settle for waiting a few days and seeing if my sinuses appreciate the change or if I wasted time and a perfectly good filter. In the mean time I will try a few new sinus medications, but I won't be going on any holistic websites because I don't care how much my internal workings may have changed in the last 3 years, I still think that fish tastes nasty.