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?

I don't want to hurt your feelings, but...

How does one tell a loved one "don't sit near me. Your perfume makes me sick?" That is the quandary I find myself in too much of the time lately. Having just returned from a visit to see my family, I spent most of my time explaining that I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but fragrances make me very ill.
Most people don't even know they have a fragrance on their body. They assume if they do not douse on a bit of cologne or perfume, they are completely fragrance-free. They forget the hairspray they used just before leaving home, the scented deodorant, the shaving cream, the scented soap, the lingering fragrance of detergent and fabric softener in their clothes.
"Well, what can I do," you might ask. "Everything we buy has fragrance in it."
We can read labels and learn what is in our products. We can ask our grocery store and our drug stores to have an aisle with Non-scented products. Yes, there are non-scented ones out there.
Those of us who suffer with respiratory illness due to chemical fragrances are not the only ones who are being harmed.
What about the baby brought home from the hospital to a nursery with an
"air freshner" plugged into the wall emitting damaging fumes for the child to breathe. What about the baby blanket washed and dried in chemically fragranced detergent and fabric softener? What about the chemicals his mother has ingested for the past nine months through her clothing, her cosmetics, her cleaning products? The baby has those chemicals in his body when he is born.

In Canada now we find some fragrance -free areas in hospitals because many of us are made sicker inside a hospital with the harsh chemical cleaners and the fragrances used there. Some churches are becoming fragrance-free. This is happening because we are becoming aware of the health issues.

At my house and my studio, I ask everyone to refrain from wearing fragrance. But at times, my ultra sensitive system reacts to something on them - their clothes, the perfume they wore yesterday, or even three days ago. I can't tell them what it is, but I know I must get away from them.

People who sing have long known that perfumes and other fragrances are bad for them. Choir members are told to never wear fragrance to choir practice or to church service.

We would never ask this of anyone if there was not a darn good reason. If these fragrances are making me sick, it won't be long before they are making others sick as well. I am one of the canaries in the coal mine. And there are about 30 million of us now.