Adventures of an Allergist Mommy

The other night, we piled the kids in the car to go out for dinner. Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger" was playing on the radio, and our 7 year old was singing along to the chorus. "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger..." At the end of the song, my husband surprised me by asking our son to relate the lesson in that phrase. (Apparently, they had discussed it during a previous car ride. At #1 for quite a few weeks, the song has gotten a lot of radio play.) I was so pleased to hear the kiddo reply, "It means that you shouldn't be too upset if something bad happens or if you don't get something right or if you don't win, because you will learn for the next time." (run on sentence is his own) Well played, boys. Well played.

Illinois experienced an unusually mild winter. I'm pretty sure I saw buds on the trees in my office parking lot a full month ago. I had been preparing myself for a gangbuster of a tree season this spring, and Mother Nature has not disappointed me. My boys and I suffer from tree pollen allergies. More than birds chirping or flowers blooming, I have come to associate boogery sleeves and sneezing with the onset of spring. But these are the typical symptoms, which are easily recognizable as allergy-induced. What I'd like to address in this post are some lesser known symptoms of seasonal allergies, which may also be rearing their ugly heads this spring. Red eyes and runny noses aside, there are plenty of other ways that allergies can make us miserable. Especially in children, who already have a hard time translating physical symptoms into words, some of these symptoms are easily overlooked. So, dear reader, I present to you a few somewhat obscure allergy symptoms to be on the l