Hayfever

[LemonFritz]

I posted in health but got no replies. Just picked DS up, he looks like he’s been punched in the face and has spent another day inside for every break time. Teacher said she noticed him doing work incorrectly, she thinks because he is struggling with his eyes. The original post:

My DS, age 6, has awful hayfever (grass pollen). His eyes are worst affected followed by nose. We have tried piriton, loratidine and cetirizine.

We started antihistamines in March. Currently he takes 10ml cetirizine per day and additional top up doses of piriton (overdose, but by GP advice). He is tortured into eye drops, once per day if we are lucky. He wears sunglasses outside, washes his face when he comes indoors and all laundry is dried inside. He stays inside at playtimes on bad days.

He is not sleeping, utterly miserable, irritable and hates all interventions. We are going to try Vaseline around eyes and nose tomorrow, hopefully he will accept it.

Any advice or ideas, please? He tolerates oral medication but is highly resistant to any other treatments.

bless him. you could try hay max?

We have fexofenadine tablets on prescription alongside beconase nose spray and eye drops. Sometimes we can get away with on or two but regularly need them all to stay one top of ds hayfever. Likes yours his eyes are badly affected alongside serious snot attacks. I'd go back to see what gp can suggest. The eye drops are the best for really helping the sore eyes we find.

Can he learn how to do eye drops himself ,even start by squeezing some on his finger and putting it on the inside of his eye? That's how my son learnt. It's such magic stuff for itchy eyes.

My post disappeared!

Beconase can be used if prescribed by a doctor,that's amazing stuff.

Hay Max is amazing.

Hay Max is expensive Vaseline,works the same way.

I'd also say go to GP for fexofenadine - it's good. My DD is ok with benadryl and eyedrops and we also have flixonase nasal spray. It is 18+ but it can be prescribed for kids by GP. I just get it over the counter an advice from GP friend of mine.

Could you give him these for school?

Thanks all. I’ll take him back to the GP again tomorrow. We go for the same advice annually, haha. Hopefully they can offer more now he’s 6. We will give all the tips a try.

He has been prescribed fexofenadine now he has reached the magic age of 6 :). Tablets are going to be interesting! Thank you for all the recommendations. We will give anything a try.

Give the tablet in some yoghurt on a spoon,much easier to take!

Mine suffered from hayfever from similar age. It was so bad that she was referred to Moorfields to manage allergic conjunctivitues and was seen regularly throughout the season from April to August for a few years.
Eventually we found the best way to manage it, which involves using mild steroid drops to stop conjunctivitied becoming more severe (otherwise she needs strong steroids which is not very good for long term eye health). Oral antihistamins proved completely useless. The severety of symtomps reduced slightly over the years and we learned to manage them much better, so it does not affect the lifestyle to much. The first few years were really bad though - lots of time spent indoors.
The last two years she also needed flixonase spray to help with blocked nose. Would really like to try immunotherapy, but the problem is that the tests we've done did not identify the allergen. Any recommendations for the clinic or doctor would be so very wellcome.

Hayfever is grim and he will be feeling really ill and unwell. Dry all his clothes and sheets and towels (and yours) inside or in the tumble dryer. Invest in a top quality air filter or ioniser, especially for his bedroom, and keep it turned on all day (and ideally overnight) with the doors and windows shut so he has a "sanctuary" pollen free space to which he can retreat, if you can extend this to other areas of the house do so. Shower and change his clothes as soon as he gets home to wash the pollen off. Get him wrap around sunglasses to protect his eyes. You could try acupuncture - it worked for me as an adult but not sure a child could tolerate it. Some people say eating local honey daily works - never worked for me. Otrivine antistin eyedrops are the best ones I found, but they sometimes sting so may not be ideal for a child. Your temperature often rises when you are being allergic, so try giving him damp cloths for his face and eyes to keep cool. Hope some of this helps.

Not drying bed clothes on the line makes a huge difference to my hayfever.

Good points by epwell, especially about having a shower as soon as at home and changing the clothes, but altimately, if that does not make a difference (and it is difficult to create pollen free environment at school where all the windows are always open, pe is outside, etc), it comes to appropriately selected medication.

Obviously ignore this if you’ve already tried it. You said about him not being keen on eye drops and my boy wasn’t either and then my friend showed me her way of doing it. She sat on the sofa and he laid next to her with his head in her lap and closed his eyes. She dropped the drops in the corner of his eyes and when he opened and blinked, they slithered into place across his eye.

I'm late to the party but would something like Murine eye spray help? I have hay fever that goes for my eyes, and I use that to keep them hydrated. Doesn't have any antihistamines but it stops the eyes from drying out and helps with the itchiness. Also you spray it on closed eyes so it's not as horrible as eye drops (even I can't bear the thought of them 😣)

Thanks all! Sadly things have continued to deteriorate. He is now on fexofenadine (since Friday) and has been amazing at taking them with yoghurt.

He has sodium cromocligate eye drops and non-medicated eye mist. He is now taking these regularly when bribed with toffee.

Last night his eyes were so bad (after going outside for PE) - the whites of his eyes became swollen. This morning he’s been put on corticosteroid nasal spray as well.

He is behaviour is awful. Roll on September 🙏

His behaviour*

Ds's behaviour got pretty sure when he took anti histamine,properly short tempered and ratty.

Poor boy, mine was the same when I was a child. Hope the nasal spray helps,it's great for me.

When I was first put on fexofenadine it took a little while to kick in I think.
Is he too young for the injection?
The combo of the injection, fexofenadine and eye drops are the only thing that have ever put a dent in my symptoms.

I am sorry to hear it is getting worse, it is extremely frustrating for the little ones to deal with it. Just to share my experience - my dd's symptoms were mostly swelling of the eyes, eyelids and conjunctiva, at some point it became so bad that we had to go to emergency eye clinic, and the doctors there wrote a letter to our gp to refer us to ophtalmology department in hospital. Once we had regular appointments there, the doctors there were able to prescribe drops which enabled to finally control the swelling effectively with minimum medication. Before that GP tried to get us to try sodium chromoglicate, piriton, cetirizine, etc, which were absolutely ineffective in her case.

would it be possible for you to request he stays inside for pe until they can give something to stop the swelling?

Sodium chromoglycate is only a mast-cell stabiliser and only prevents allergy type eye symptoms and only then if it's used regularly.

You need to ask you GP to prescribe an antihistamine eye drop which will actually treat the symptoms. The best one is olopatadine (brand name Patanol) which has both an antihistamine and mast cell stabiliser. It's safe for use from 3 years.

Dd is using opatanol (brand of olopatadine), and two-three week course of fluorometholone (FML) when the symptoms are at their worst. In combination these work very well.