William's Story

My house dust mite symptoms are coughing, spluttering, sneezing, runny eyes, etc. They are at their worst when I go to bed. I’m coughing, spluttering, coughing, spluttering, all the time and then, when I try and go to sleep, I’m still coughing, spluttering, coughing, spluttering. Then I wake up at night. I physically cannot sleep, it’s just that bad. The next morning my eyes feel like they’re glued together. When I pull them up it doesn’t do anything, it’s a big movement, like I just pushed a gigantic boulder. It’s very hard to manage sometimes.

It’s quite a bad cough, it’s a hard cough. It’s a cough you get over with a few seconds, but when you do it, it makes you stop. Like, if you were doing something, you would stop immediately after doing it.  Living with a house dust mite allergy means that some days I don’t know what I’m going to feel like. Am I going to feel absolutely fine? Am I going to be coughing, spluttering, sneezing and runny nose, runny eyes? Or am I just going to cough and splutter a few times?

My house dust mite symptoms are at their worst when I go to bed… I physically cannot sleep… it’s just that bad.

Sometimes, my allergies stop me from doing things. When my dust allergy gets really bad, getting downstairs is a struggle. Sometimes when I get up, it’s confusing because I don’t know why it’s happening. But then I realise it’s my allergy and sometimes I get frustrated about that.

The treatment I receive is a cetrazole tablet and metadenethazine nasal spray. They really help, they’re amazing with how they help. Sometimes, when I wake up, I’m coughing and slurring, and then 15 minutes after I take my tablet and nasal spray, I feel absolutely fine, like nothing ever happened. It just makes it easier to manage. Also, I’m going on a SLIT therapy (Sublingual Immunotherapy), which in three years’ time will hopefully get rid of all my allergies.

My SLIT therapy is when I spray a liquid under my tongue, hold it for two minutes then swallow. I can’t eat food ten minutes before and ten minutes after, and I can’t brush my teeth half an hour before or [until] half an hour later. So, it’s just a little bit of a change to my daily life.

Living with a house dust mite allergy means that some days I don’t know what I’m going to feel like. Am I going to feel absolutely fine? Am I going to be coughing, spluttering, sneezing and have runny eyes?