I was on a date. A good one: spontaneous, romantic, the kind you see in the movies. The guy I fancied came back to mine after a gig we’d been at with mutual friends. I brewed mango tea in my favourite pot and showed him my life-drawing sketches. Conversation and Kate Bush albums intertwined as night turned into day. When birds began chirping, I suggested we go for a walk in the park to round off our time together. Big mistake.
Almost immediately, my nose began its rebellion – unleashing a flow of clear phlegm across the rest of my face. With no tissues, I had to reach for the nearest thing – a tree leaf. I asked my crush to turn around while I loudly blew my nose and got snot everywhere on my hand. I still remember the mucus stuck between my fingers.
Things are worse than ever for hay fever sufferers. It’s July, by which point the worst hay fever symptoms should be dying down, but research shows that warming temperatures and longer seasons due to the climate crisis, growing levels of air pollution, and reduced biodiversity within urban environments are all contributing to intensifying and prolonging symptoms and more adults experiencing allergies for the first time.
In these worsening conditions, hay fever horror stories are everywhere. On Reddit, users share cringeworthy tales of projectile strings of snot or console each other about the discomfort (“It feels like there’s a layer of cement between the skin of my face and my skull,” writes one poster). On TikTok, people share videos of their painfully swollen red eyes.
For many people, hay fever is truly disruptive, something that ruins joyful moments and sees victims locked away in their dark, heavy curtained rooms, bitterly watching others enjoy summer in bliss. I spoke to fellow sufferers about their lowest moments.
I could only use the Notes app to communicate
Alexa Hallum, a 23-year-old from Dallas, works in marketing. Her life has been shaped by seasonal allergies for as long as she can remember. “I remember in sixth grade I had to be sent home because I coughed so loud that I disturbed state testing on the other side of the school,” she says.
Later, the allergies got in the way of her social life. She’d get ready for a night out but immediately her makeup would “always get messed up because my nose would be runny”. A few years ago, Hallum developed chronic sinusitis – when the spaces inside your nose and head are swollen and inflamed for three months or longer. Hers tends to flare up during allergy seasons, and related symptoms like headaches, nausea and sore throats stopped Hallum from going out. She started losing her voice a lot too, which meant she would communicate through the Notes app on her phone. “It was very infuriating. People just wouldn’t hear me, and being a woman, men would talk over me. It was really depressing. I wasn’t able to participate much.” Hallum has since had surgery that has alleviated sinusitis symptoms but hasn’t stopped her seasonal allergies. “I feel like Dallas is one of the worst places for allergies in the whole world. We have a thing here called cedar fever, so every year, I know I’m going to be really sick all through the beginning of spring.”
We moved to Arizona and things only got worse
Mark Reese’s lifelong seasonal allergies are so bad, his family moved to a new state to help manage his symptoms. But somehow, things took a turn for the worse. “When I was little, we were in Ohio for a couple of years and my allergies took off really severely. I was in Boy Scouts constantly going outdoors and it was becoming debilitating,” the 54-year-old recounts.
“The wisdom back then was that if someone had severe allergies, they should move to Arizona, so that’s what my father did when he happened to get a contract there.” To Reese’s dismay, he found out he was allergic to pine and juniper, trees found everywhere in the state.
Today, he lives in Tennessee, and his symptoms are usually what he describes as “run of the mill”. But they can still get severe, causing fatigue and difficulty breathing. With the recent dips in air quality due to nearby forest fires and pollution, Reese has been unable to spend quality time with his wife and son: “My wife has to explain that Dad needs to stay inside.”
Across the Atlantic, Francisca’s work has also been suffocated by pollen. A geographer and an environmental consultant in London, she struggles to be outdoors for six months of the year. “I currently work at a nature reserve, and last year, I remember being at one of the practical conservation sessions that we run for students in the local area. I was only there for about 20 minutes, and my throat closed up, my nose was itchy, my eyes were so sore, and my head was spinning. I went home and didn’t wake up until the next day.” She’s able to manage some of her symptoms with stronger medication. “I just have to get on with it; it’s part of my job,” she says.
I was so snotty we had to postpone our wedding
For some, allergens wreak havoc on their love lives. Vicky from Leeds moved her entire wedding – which was meant to take place in June – after she realised that hay fever could ruin her special day. “I’m so snotty with it as well, it’s actually disgusting, and it makes you feel tired, like you don’t want to do anything,” the 27-year-old says, explaining that she had mental images of being photographed with red eyes from the itching and a runny nose ruining her make-up. Her now husband also suffers from hay fever, so it would have been an especially terrible backdrop to their once-in-a-lifetime event. Their wedding venue had an available spot at the end of the summer, and the couple could breathe a sigh of relief when they were able to postpone the day.
Not everyone is so lucky, though. Jo, a 27-year-old in the south of England, had a disastrous second date when she leaned into a kiss with a stuffy nose. “I was thinking: ‘Shit, my nose is going,’” the film-maker says. “Never mind fighting the snot ready to escape your nose – if [hay fever is already forcing you] to breathe through your mouth, and that gets taken away from you, you’re not left with much.” After that night, Jo never saw her date again.
Things are only going to get worse
“There are over 100 million Americans who are touched by some form of allergies – asthma, eczema, all these things are related, it’s an immune system response,” says Kenny Mendez, president and CEO of the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. “We’re feeling the direct health impacts of climate change, and unless we get control over that and try to reverse things, then people’s allergies are only going to get worse.”
Mendez is particularly worried about allergic-asthma sufferers, who may have asthma attacks triggered by seasonal allergies. These can be fatal if not managed properly. He points out that allergy- and asthma-related health issues are experienced differently along racial and class lines. “Over 3,500 people die from asthma each year, but certain populations are disproportionately impacted. Black Americans are three times more likely to die from asthma, five times more likely to be treated in the emergency room in the US and Black women have the highest mortality rate of any gender or racial group. If you have allergic asthma, and certain communities are living in urban areas that have disproportionate impacts from allergies, and they have allergic asthma, then it’s a double whammy,” Mendez says.
Seasonal allergies may sound like a joke to some, but sufferers like Alexa wish they were taken more seriously by wider society. “[My allergies were] definitely written off by teachers and my parents. They would often say things like: ‘Why are you so exhausted? Why are you being dramatic? No, you can’t stay at home, it’s just allergies.’ But I was really, really unwell.”
Attitudes do seem to be changing. Mendez believes that since the outbreak of Covid, many workplaces have become more flexible with employees working from home when showing cold-like symptoms. “Even if it’s just allergies, you go to work, and you say ‘I’ve got allergies’, and you’re sneezing, coughing and don’t want to be that person, sometimes you’ll just stay home now. I think that’s a little bit more accepted. Employers are saying: if you’re not feeling well, stay home.” Jo agrees, citing a colleague who last week was able to go home because of bad hay fever. “Maybe we’re moving in a better direction,” she says.
Yet until the world somehow musters the resolve to address the climate crisis and other factors heightening seasonal allergy symptoms, it seems hay fever sufferers like me will continue enduring the trials and tribulations of our snot-filled summers.
