Coping with Environmental Illness

Most of my friends and my readers know that I have to cope each day with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity   This is also called Environmental Illness, or other names, but the one most used now is MCS. Like fibromyalgia for many, many years, MCS is not recognized yet by most of the mainstream doctors. I suppose the drug companies have to come out with a prescription drug labeled for MCS before most doctors of western medicine will actually own up to telling a patient what is wrong with her. 

While there are hospitals in Canada especially for patients who suffer environmental illnesses, I know of only one place in the United States which tries to treat MCS. That is in Texas. 

If you think the MCS sufferer simply doesn't like your perfume, or can take an allergy pill, that is not true. The fact is the perfume makes her sick. I loved my husband's aftershave which he wore the first ten years we were married. But when I became sensitive to artificial fragrances and became ill from being around them, he was most agreeable to leaving it off. He watched me suffer with asthma like attacks, excruciating headaches, extreme fatigue and depression after being exposed to chemicals we use in our daily lives, petroleum based fragrances which simulate the odor of flowers, and other created fragrances used in almost everything we buy today.

 He became my biggest advocate, especially when he was in the hospital, and the staff came into his room wearing fragrance, or when they tried to clean his room with toxic cleaners. 

We put a sign on his door asking that no one come in the room wearing fragrance. This was at Emory Hospital where people are supposed to know how to care for sick people. The nurses did not wear fragrance, but the others on the staff did not understand and did not seem to care that I had to wear a mask in the hallway or why we insisted on clean air in the room. I was the canary in the coal mine. If the toxic scents closed up my breathing tubes, it was also damaging to my husband whose immune system had been destroyed by chemo and all the other things his body had ingested over the month he was there.

More and more people are speaking out and trying to make this problem known. I hope you will help by sending this blog post to others, by sharing it on social media and talking about it to your friends.

You can read a post by a blogger who tells her story of coping with MCS. 

http://cookingforthechemicallysensitive.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/accepting-life-with-multiple-chemical-sensitivity-mcs/ 

Do you know of anyone who deals with this illness? How do you and others try to help?

Cancer floor at Emory Hospital

Tonight I'm just pouring out a stream of conscious writing as I can't get focused on anything but the swirling of decisions, choices, fears of mistakes, that have overwhelmed my world since last Tuesday when my dear love and I were admitted to the hospital. I say I was admitted because even though he has the malignant leg, he and I have taken every single step of this journey together and we will until the end. We had a scan, we are on a pain pump, we have great nurses, we don't like arrogant doctors, and we will deal with all of this as one.
When you have been with someone for 45 years, you cannot imagine being separated from each other. I have spent each day and each night beside his bed, waking when the inevitable medical person slams through the door to his room at midnight just as his breathing has settled into a sweet rhythm that tells me he is in a good deep sleep.
My anger at that kind person who only wants to check his BP and make sure he is doing well, seeths awhile after she leaves, stealing my badly needed sleep.
The TV high on the wall runs constantly around the clock. No sound emits from the mouths of the faces there. Today an old Bonanza brought smiles as Little Joe and Hoss turned jokesters on Pa. The young nurse from Tennessee had never heard of nor had any interest in the Cartwrights. She tends to seriously sick people who come and go and come again to the rooms on E floor.
Each night I see the woman in the red striped pajamas pushing her chemo contraption as she gets in her twenty laps before bedtime. Last night she told me her story. In a couple of weeks she would begin the chemo treatment that would destroy her immune system, killing her cancer cells but also her good cells and prepare her for the stem cell bone marrow transplant that would save her life. She fully expects this procedure to give her time to see the babies of her lovely daughter who walks with her on her nightly rounds.
Although we'd never met before, the five minutes we talked sealed a bond between us. She, pale and bald, her blue eyes naked of brows and lashes, hugged me, encouraged me, and promised we were at the best place in the world to cure us from this cancer. She was convinced she would survive and wear pink at the Relay for Life races every year with her granchildren. I wished I felt as sure - not just for us, but for her - for that lovely daughter who supported her mother all the way.
If there is one thing I've learned over the years of caring for loved ones, there is no sure bet when it comes to medicine. The elderly woman who was at death's door waves from her wheelchair as she leaves with her son. The nine year old who was laughing yesterday, lies in a pool of sweat tonight with robotic electronics blinking and beeping around her bed.
The woman's family had been called in. Doctors shook their heads and said there was no more they could do.
"It's a miracle," exclaimed a young resident as the wheelchair disappeared in the elevator. "No," said Dr. Smith. "It's God's way of showing us we don't know S--t."