When you have a significant sinus infection, the thing you reach for is Sudafed or Zyrtec D – job done! Well I can’t do that, at night anyway. If I take it in the day time it leaves me all discombobulated, but I can cope with that. However, at night it turns me into a tossing and turning mess, with excessive anxiety-laden dreams and when I wake up, I feel like I’ve been punched in the face!

The problem is, if you can’t sort out your sinus, you can’t sleep. If you can’t sleep, you can’t get better. So it’s a catch-22 that does my head in every time. When I feel a sinus infection coming on, I immediately turn into the biggest moaning, unhappy bitch on the planet, because I know there is NOTHING I can do about it. I just want it over – right now, this very minute and that is all.

Every time a sinus infection crops up, I scan the Island for possible options to help me out. I’ve tried every natural remedy available, and I’ve also tried the medicines that do not have pseudoephedrine included – the doctors always assure me they are exactly the same. BOLLOCKS. They are not the same. And when pseudoephedrine isn’t even breaking through the road block, the alternative options don’t stand a chance. Trust me, I know.

But then I consider what it was like in the days before we had so many drugs to choose from. Can you imagine having some of the illnesses we regularly encounter today even 100 years ago – with no central heating available (not that this is an issue in Singapore) – where you either got over it or the most simple of maladies quite simply killed you? I am glad to be alive today that’s for sure, even if it means suffering a pseudoephedrine hell-night occasionally… It could be much worse after all.

So I sit here teary-eyed and itchy-nosed, with little expectation of a good night tonight, and I have a silent hope the antibiotics  kick in quickly – because that’s the only way I can get rid of sinus infections – always reminding myself that life is pretty great, there’s nothing worth moaning about because I am a lucky gal, and perhaps slowing down a little bit for a couple of days won’t be a bad thing for me to do after all?

I just wish I wasn’t so bloody sensitive to today’s drugs and chemicals. Life would be a lot easier if I didn’t have so much to avoid.

With that, any suggestions to share minus pseudoephedrine?

Yours, without the bollocks

Andrea