I really am at the end of my tether with this. My little boy (age 5) suffers every year with tree pollen hayfever, some years worse than others (and last year hardly affected at all), but this year it's been awful. It seems to have taken hold and isn't shifting, despite everything being thrown at it for weeks and weeks.
A few weeks ago, he got particularly bad with the coughing and the congestion in his nose and we did end up at urgent care twice where he was given mometasone steroid spray for the first time ever and within a few days it cleared up and I felt like it was a magic cure! Then my husband took him to a river fishing (against what I wanted for him but he said he needs to be able to live a life… Which he says every year and then our son gets worse 🙄…)  and a few days later the congestion in his nose started to get really bad again along with the cough because the congestion seems to trigger a cough. This seems to have taken hold and at one point the congestion coming out of his nose was light to dark green. We ended up at the Drs on Monday where she pressed around his eyes and said she thinks all the congestion is causing a sinus infection on one side so prescribed him antibiotics. The antibiotics HAS changed the colour of the congestion coming out of his nose (light yellow )and it's not as productive, but it's still there 5 days later and every morning he wakes up really congested and upset with constant coughing and sniffing as soon as he wakes up which takes ages to go away. The cough seems to be triggered by the sheer amount of congestion coming down from his nose.
Below is a list of things we've tried and we have been using every tree pollen season throughout spring/summer:
- Loratidine daily
- mometasone steroid soray daily
- brown steroid inhaler only during pollen season
- blue inhaler when coughing a lot
- blue air air purifiers in bedroom and main family room
- pollen balm
- hayfever wipes
- change clothes and shower when gets in from outside
- close windows
- saline spray
- keeping an eye on the pollen count
- wide brimmed hat
Obviously he goes to school and they're increasingly going outside during the day which doesn't help (they do put pollen balm on and wipe him after with hayfever wipes).
He's only 5 so he's at the limit of what he can take medication wise. We've tried cetirizine before instead of loratadine and it didn't help - it actually made him hyperactive!
I'm just so tired of it and I feel so sorry for him. Our family activities are now so limited and my husband seems to think we should be going around outside as normal when it's obviously making it worse 😡 so we argue about that. I'm literally constantly worrying about it and firefighting this 24/7 to make sure he doesn't get any worse . To top it off yesterday a news article came up on my phone about a young lad who'd had a sinus infection for a months, and died from it (abscess) in the uk last year.
Is this what it's like for you hayfever sufferers? When does it let up? Having never really suffered I find it so difficult to manage as a parent as all I want to do is help him ! The tree pollen here is meant to be medium to low now having been high for a number of weeks but he still seems to be badly affected?! He's been like this since April so tree pollen is definitely his trigger and is usually his trigger every year..
Should I head back to the doctors with him tomorrow? I'm so worried he has bacterial sinusitis and it's not getting better. Sorry for the long message.. I'm just exhausted by it now!