Aeroallergens

This morning as I let "the door" between memory care and assisted living go shut I was struck with a chill and my nose closed down. This has not happened so dramatically before here at Provision Living at Columbia, MO. I was cold.

The three people I eat breakfast with, the only ones in the dining hall at that early hour, were comfortable. The thermostat read a normal 74 degrees.

Our waitress mentioned having a very messy start for the day. The carpet between the kitchen support bench and the dining hall was soaked. A floor drying fan was on at full power.

I get this same immediate reaction in the basement gym at the Lenoir Woods residential care site. That and a year long waiting list stopped us from going there last year. Wet carpet is bad news.

Yesterday I had a milder experience when working in the second floor library learning to use the internet terminals. There was no problem this morning in the library writing my first post in three months.

While eating at noon I experienced lower abdominal cramps that are uniquily related to old carpet and old stale tobacco smoke (smoked motel rooms). This is bad news. It takes me back to the years when I used myself and family members as bio-indicators of air borne allergens. We were all calibrated by Dr. Carlton Lee, St. Joseph, MO, for several dozen things including rapid temperature change.

Cold drafts easily, and almost immediately, produce a sore throat for me. I survive in this building by wearing or carrying a vest with me. The building is about two blocks long. Each apartment has one to three heat exchangers, one below each window. The apartments are comfortable. The common rooms vary in temperature, as well as, areas within a common room. People using the assisted living dining hall can pick a temperature of their liking or dress to be comfortable. This requires resident assistant attention in the memory care activity area.

After a sewer gas problem early on, Air Scent, odorant dispensers, were installed in the common areas. They are designed, not to release an overpowering scent, but a level that is detectable for a few seconds, the time for your nose to adjust and dismiss the odor (for the general population).

It was only after asking why people were running about the building did I learn they were trying to find the source of a very bad odor. Something else in the building had already made my nose so  boggy that I had lost my sense of smell for the sewer gas.

I cannot work on this potential problem until I can stop taking Singular and have a bathroom handy for the consequences. In general air quality here is radically different from the clean-air houses we lived in the past 35 years with a central vacuum, no carpets, no odorant dispensers (often, falsely marketed as air-cleaners). Fortunately none of this seemingly bothers my wife and only a few other residents.

Addendum: A visit yesterday to Mill Creek, another residential care site, that just opened three months ago, produced a piercing pain in my right ear. Possible suspects were carpet cleaning, and/or new overstuffed furniture. The rooms seemed safe for me.

Addendum: And one day later I had the piercing pain in my right ear here in Provision Living!!! Normal room temperature with chilling. "Something going around." It seems that a delay of about one week is needed to get a good perspective on things.