From April until August I can’t open the windows. I make my boyfriend shower before he gets in bed, smear Vaseline around my nostrils, eat local honey, and spend too much money on Allevia (fexofenadine), lubricating eye drops, super strength nasal sprays and prescription inhalers. Still, I can barely breathe, because the pollen has come – and if it were down to natural selection, I wouldn’t make it out of the ever-lengthening hay fever season alive.
This might all sound incredibly dramatic. But, as anyone who suffers from extreme allergies will know, it really is that debilitating. The morning after a high pollen count day, I often struggle to get out of bed as I battle through a so-called “hay fever hangover”, which depletes my energy, increases brain fog and, consequently, exacerbates my depression.
When social invitations come in, I second guess them. A picnic? In this state? Better to just stay home.
Hay fever has been getting steadily worse in the UK in recent years; 2025 was nothing short of a snot-filled apocalypse with a “pollen bomb” hitting London as early as April. This year, we’ve been granted even less mercy, with sneezing and scratchy throats starting thanks to “very high” tree pollen levels in (what should be) the winter month of February.
As such, allergists have warned that we’re in for a “bumper pollen season” ahead of us, recommending hay fever sufferers “start getting those antihistamine tablets from the pharmacy” stat. But I’m afraid (both in the apologetic and fearful sense of the term), that is simply not going to cut it. I need stronger drugs, a hazmat suit, or a banned third option.
Hay fever jabs were available on the NHS until 2018, when the health service discontinued them due to safety concerns and a lack of evidence supporting their long-term effectiveness.
Potential side effects of this Kenalog (triamcinolone acetonide) injection can include abdominal pain, loss of bone density, depression, blindness and even death. Yet still, the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) found that 45 per cent of pharmacies surveyed had received queries from patients about the jab to relieve allergy symptoms last spring.
“The NHS evaluated everything and decided that it wasn’t suitable,” says Dr Leyla Hannbeck, CEO of the Independent Pharmacies Association. “It can weaken your immune system and that opens you up to infections which can have a long term impact on people,” she explains. “It’s not licensed in the UK as a treatment for hay fever anymore. So, if clinics are offering it to people as an allergy therapy – they shouldn’t be.”
With a quick Google, you can find private health clinics (and even beauty salons) offering the steroid injection for between £75 and £90 – and, despite the troubling health risks, there are sufferers desperate enough to chance the precarious cure. “My life has been changed already,” my friend Nancy tells me two days after her annual Kenalog jab. “Within 48 hours there’s already a noticeable difference,” she says.
One of the many ways recipients of the Kenalog jab dismiss their concerns about the injection’s side effects is by pointing out that the steroid is safely used to treat other medical conditions, such as arthritis. “But remember, in that instance it will go into a joint. So, it’s going to stay in that joint,” points out allergist professor Adam Fox. “Whereas, with hay fever, you’re injecting it into your bum, which gets a wider circulation. The worry is it could have a potential impact on bone health, which increases the risk of fractures when you’re older.”
He concedes: “It would be disingenuous to suggest that it doesn’t work. There are a lot of people whose lives were absolutely blighted by horrendous hay fever and this was the only thing that did the job…but there are people that are going to be at particular risk.
“The worry is about bone health, so if you’re overweight, have a history of osteoporosis, or are a smoker, all of those things with an enormous whack of steroids is a bad combination,” Fox warns.
So, are our only options to suffer or take supreme risk? Well, actually, no. Despite me going to GP appointments every year, asking for help, and receiving none, Dr Fox tells me there is another alternative here: allergen immunotherapy (AIT) aka pollen desensitisation. The problem is, barely anybody knows about it – including those with medical degrees.
“Unfortunately, awareness amongst doctors in the UK is not good,” says Fox. “One of the main issues is that there’s very little taught about allergy on the medical school curriculum, so awareness is really poor. The likelihood that your doctor will even know that there’s something that goes above and beyond nasal sprays and antihistamines is low. They don’t even realise there’s something they could refer you for.”
Immunotherapy works by giving people a regular dose of the pollen allergen – either in an injection or pill – in order to reset their immune response over the course of three years. Desensitisation is highly effective, with NHS clinical trials showing the average improvement as 30 per cent in year one, 50 per cent in year two and 70 per cent in year three; But you have to start early. “If you wanted to be desensitised to tree pollen, where the season typically starts in around February, you should be starting treatment around October time,” explains Fox. “Whereas, if it’s for grass pollen, you need to start by the end of January.”
The treatment isn’t a total cure (you may still have to take antihistamines) but it does provide enough relief to live a normal life. “A good result would be that you’d change into somebody who, if they take their regular medication, can feel ok,” says Fox. “It doesn’t mean you’re going to throw away your antihistamines forever. Some people report feeling completely better, most people just noticed a marked improvement.”
Frankly, after decades of hay fever hell, I feel more than a little pissed to discover this option was invented in 1911. Yet, only last year, the National Institute of Clinical and Healthcare Excellence – who make recommendations to the NHS about whether treatments are worthwhile – found that it would be economically beneficial for the healthcare service to more widely prescribe immunotherapy to the right patients.
So far, the body has recommended a tree pollen tablet called Itulazax to the NHS – and are looking into grass pollen next. “We hope that because of that recommendation access to these treatments gets better,” says Fox. “But in reality, there are still very significant barriers.”
Aside from lack of GP knowledge, there are very few specialist allergy clinics that people can be referred to in the UK. “You’ll be in a queue behind people who’ve had anaphylaxis to nuts and all the other allergic issues,” says Fox. “We’re very limited compared to other countries and, as a consequence, waiting times are predictably long.
“If you look across Europe, for every person who gets desensitised to pollen in the UK, hundreds of people are desensitised in Germany. There’s just no comparison between other developed healthcare economies and the UK. We are really lagging in this particular area.”
If you take the leap and seek the treatment privately, costs are, unsurprisingly, high. For the same sublingual immunotherapy tablet that has the approval on the NHS, Fox says you’re looking at around £130 a month, which equates to around £4,200 for the full three years.
On Monday, 20 April, British allergy experts will come together to publish the first National Allergy Strategy, outlining to the government what the UK can do better in allergy services. “The key central point is that there are great treatments available, but people just aren’t getting access to them,” says Fox. “So, patients don’t know about them.”
Next hay fever season, I’ll be sure to ask my GP about (or possibly even educate them on) allergen immunotherapy. But, sadly, it’s too late for that for this year’s imminent pollen bomb that’s set to impact one in four of us in the UK in the coming, sneeze-inducing, weeks.
As I look down the barrel of another spring time spent exhausted and unable to breathe, I decide that the risks, for me, are worth it and book in for the Kenalog injection. Within 48 hours, I feel a miraculous difference. Yet still, anxiety lingers over going against the NHS’s advice. Hopefully soon, I won’t have to gamble my health to get the help I need.