Interestingly, frequent showers and baths made it worse for him until we put the pieces together and realized that his coconut allergy was causing him to react to all shampoos and soaps.
We tried every antihistimine there is before settling on the one he is on. He had behavioral side effects from C.laritin and Z.yrtec and A.llegra didn't help him at all. He does take a larger than normal dose of the X.yzal now, though, we may drop it back to normal now that the heat has been running long enough to get most of the initial dust out of heating systems.
As you alluded to, my takeaway from all of this is that medications are an art, not an exact science, and that frequent tweaking and careful observation is likely necessary for everyone.
This all started when he was an infant and I was taking a course in single subject research design. The professor and I actually talked about creating a program that would use single subject design principles to track allergic reactions. Now that smartphones are so prevalent, I think it would be a very popular app...
