We lived in Georgia when I was eight years old. Had a cool creek that ran through the backyard that my friends and I spent lots of time in, catching crawdads and throwing lily pads at each other. The first week of May I got horribly sick with what the docs guessed was an allergy. I couldn't breathe, even though I've never had asthma. My face turned very red and swelled to the point that I couldn't see. My hands swelled so much that they actually cracked and clear liquid ran from the cracks. It lasted for several days and then disappeared as suddenly as it came on. The following year it was back -- again in the first part of May. It was worse the second time and I ended up in the hospital, on oxygen and being pumped full of antihistamines. After asking tons of questions about anything new in my environment, the doctor finally told my mother that he believed I was deathly allergic to something that only bloomed during that time of year. His suggestion, besides documenting everything that I'd recently come into contact with, was to be GONE from the area well before the following May. Needless to say, we moved up North, and there were no more episodes until I went to an Easter Sunday service where the church was filled with blooming LILIES. The uncontrollable coughing started before we were even seated. Within five minutes I was having trouble breathing and freaking out. Mystery solved. I got out of there like my pants were on fire and my butt was catching! Nowadays I don't go to Easter services, or weddings, or funerals. I steer clear of the floral department in garden centers and grocery stores. No more lilies for me. For the record, I don't think I'm allergic to ALL types of lilies, but I have no plans to test that theory.

Keeping carpet clean is tough. I have found guests subtly protest against taking their shoes off.. New guests or clients are happy to take their shoes off (I'm a photographer so clients come to my home for meetings) but friends can be rude 'oh what? are you serious? you want my shoes off?' that annoys me I have 2 cats. Ugh! Pet stains = Ugh! I am a germofobe.. Well I'll kiss my kitties.. otherwise if I was THAT much a germafobe I wouldn't have cats.. but one of them has a thyroid disorder and sometimes the poor little guy vomits. My mistake has been spending a lot of money testing different carpet cleaning products, and a lot of the time sponging the carpet clean with such products would create a bigger mess or spread the stain! Ikea sell $15 metre square colorful rugs. I bought 6.. black, red, pink, yellow, green, blue when they are laid next to eachother it looks like one big rug, and this has helped a lot. Its so easy to wash one rug when a cat pukes, than it is to wash the actual carpet I have discovered that Vinegar is a bit of a miracle washer! If I clean the cat vomit with vinegar I get better results than ANY product from the shelves. I recently didn't realise that a lemon fell from my shopping bag behind a polyester ikea crate full of clothes, and the lemon had developed that dusty black mould and the mould dropped to the carpet It vaccumed up easily but I washed that part of the carpet by hand with cloudy ammonia. I read online that ammonia kills germs like mould. I seem to have made a big water stain though which I'm annoyed about I paid a local carpet cleaner guy $100 which was a bargain for a 2 room clean of a 1 bedroom apartment. The people I hired last year charged me $140 as they wanted extra money to come up one flight of stairs. This man was lovely. Even though I vac twice a week and mop almost daily, his industrial machine got up 2 large handfuls of cat hair!!! He said the minute I told him I had pets over the phone, he brought his special equipment. Unfortunately I messed up the carpet where I used the cloudy ammonia. There's just some darker markings like water staining, so I'm trying the watered down laundry soap routine this time

The only symptom she has is a high ammonia smell in the litter box. Her urine never smelled so potent before. She hasn't been tinkling in the house or exhibited any unusual behaviors. But then I noticed she was going outside (in her pen) so just wanted peace of mind that she was healthy and not peeing too frequently. Other than that, the Health Meter cat litter turned green, too (should stay yellow). The package doesn't say what green means... I can't believe the first vet gave me all of that incorrect information and was trying to put my cat through dietary changes that weren't in her best interest. I don't believe her second opinion vet thinks she's going to have problems. The only thing that stood out for him was the USG levels. He said that there was an at-home treatment for hydrating a cat but didn't even feel it was necessary at this point. He said she was okay to stay on the Prairie food (I don't really have any easy options) but canned would get more fluids in her system. That is all that we are doing right now. I was going to fill up her pool this weekend to see if she'll play in it and drink some extra water, too. I would like to do some more research on food and see if she can eat something even better than the Prairie. The foods cause immediate diarrhea so I need to wait on that. Right now she appears to be battling the darn herpes virus again from the stress of going to the vets. So, I'm really trying to get as much canned in her as possible because that's how I can get the Lysine into her. It took me months to get her respiratory problems resolved, I thought she was home free.

Interesting thread- how did I miss this a year ago? My mother and I were talking a few months back about the materials used in new housing construction- after she went to visit my brother in his huge, new house that is all cheapo materials. She complained that everything from doors to counters was plastic. I've been very interested in some of the stuff that's out there lately about various components of plastic being hazardous to the immune system. I got rid of my chronic hayfever about 10 years ago by putting myself on a regimen of vitamins and supplements for a couple of months- said goodbye to a lifetime of hayfever so am convinced that the immune system may play a bigger role than it's given credit for. Who knows how or if all those plastics play into that type of thing. Some of it can also be the landscaping done in new construction areas. Back in the good old days, whatever grew was what grew (think of the farm), now so much of what is planted is well cultivated and is often a male tree that looks prettier than a female tree, or may be less messy, but spends a great deal of time spurting pollen hither and yon. Humidifying is great not just for the linings of the nasal passaged, but also because dust mites don't do well with higher humidity. Rinsing the sinuses with salt water like someone else suggested is also a great thing to learn- I learned to do it with a shot glass and have cleared sinus infections very rapidly that way.