As some of you may know, Mr. Hitch has had a damn tough year, coming up on 14 months, now. He's still here (hooray!).
About...4 months ago, he started having problems with his sinuses. Constantly stuffed up, then dry, then runny, then dry...just a major hassle. Now, he's had various types of hay fever/allergies as long as I've known him, and we thought it was that, when the olive trees down in the Valley bloom, as they do every year.
However, time passed, and the sinuses didn't clear up. Doc finally gives him an antibiotic, for "infected sinuses," even though I grumbled at the time that it OBVIOUSLY was not that. No result. It's so bad, that as it gets worse--which it keeps doing, mind you, as time passes--he literally can't sleep--he keeps getting up, too congested to breathe, and he has to sleep sitting up in a gigantic leather King chair we have in the living room. Poor bastard. I mean...
geeze.
More miserable months go by. We start getting pretty damn desperate, by yesterday, because he's just MISERABLE. Nose is running like Usain Bolt, his head is pounding, and so on. We start REALLY thinking--what could it be? I even look at a hair product I've been using, which is fundamentally
Argan oil, which is
distantly related to the Olive tree. We think of the cats (oh, please, no..I'd have to seriously think that one over...) and a bunch of other wild things.
Then I remember--I'd switched to
new sheets, some months back. I tend to change fabrics and weight, as the months go by...heavier cotton in the fall and spring, lightest-weight cotton or linen in the summer, flannels in the winter. I'd purchased some high-thread-count (500-600) sheets--two sets--during Peacock Alley's last big sale, last winter. BUT, because Mr. Wonderful's pillow was utterly disgusting, I'd also acquired some Cuddledown pillows,
all-down. No feathers, no foam; down.
So...last night, I change the sheets back to a cheapy (well, not really. Just..not quite as nice) set I had, and knew he'd slept on, a year back, and found older non-down pillows (or down from a completely different source, that we'd slept on before without the Geyser of Snot)...and today, he's just FINE.
FINE.
So, we have to figure out, is it the down pillows, or the Italian
cotton sheets? I mean, COTTON, for ****s sake!
S***sky. I mean, really. So, I've made poor old Mr. Hitch suffer--unnecessarily--for MONTHS. He's actually being really good about it--he's had problems finding out what thing(s) he had an allergic reaction to, since he was a child, and he had to undergo all these shot tests, for two YEARS (so bad were the allergies that the military wouldn't take him during VN), so he's pretty sanguine about the fact that his wife put him on nice, smooth, soft sheets that tried to give him anaphylactic shock...(j/k).
SIGH. Somebody at the donation place is going to be VERY DAMN HAPPY.
My paean to nice sheets:
Spoiler:
I confess, it's one place where I spend money, is on bedding. We do, after all, spend a chunk of our lives in bed, and as you get older...well, that comfort can be more necessary than luxury. I'll drive a car until it's ratty with age, and limping along, because I'm just CHEAP, but bedding? Nunh-uh. I want to sleep on very, very nice sheets and soft lovely pillows. I don't think it's too much to ask for, given that I'm not wild with money everywhere else. But now...now I have to worry that he'll have a reaction to ALL new sheets. I can see me now, buying polyester sheets. Yuck. In AZ, man, cotton or linen is the ONLY way to go. Even blowing the AC full-tilt boogie, it's 78-79F inside, at night...none of that lovely 68F that people always recommend. So, lightweight sheets, natural fibers, are a MUST. I'm really hoping it's my pillow. I could try something like...buckwheat, I guess? Or those artificial down pillows? Yick.
Hitch, Archduchess of the County of Allergy, Sea Island of Cotton (sob)