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My Journey with MCS by Gail Smith Reactions can occur across a broad spectrum, - from clothing one wears, to foods one eats, to the chairs one sits on, or bed one sleeps on, to the home environment, and homes of others; to outside air (pollution, pesticides,etc.), and on and on it goes.
Re food reactions – organic food is recommended as it is grown without chemicals, and it is costly.
Re house environment-your home space needs to be free of scented products, chemical cleaners, cigarette smoke, and anything else that would compromise the system. (eg. Carpeting, gas or oil heat, synthetics for many)
Housing can be extremely difficult for the MCS person to find, as homes where others have lived have residue of products they have used. And ecological housing can be very expensive.
With regard to medical help – as most MCS folks react to medications, alternative therapies are used in many cases. (Chiropractic, acupuncture, naturopathy, and other alternative modalities that may be helpful) This too is very costly, as OHIP doesn’t cover most alternative therapies.
MCS began for me when I took a severe allergic reaction and following the antihistamines used to counteract the reaction I found my immune system greatly compromised.
My health plummeted, and with it came so much loss – the promotion that awaited me was gone; the apartment I loved I no longer tolerated, my car I’d dreamed of driving for years, sat quiet, as I was too ill to continue driving it, and the social life I had enjoyed was gone.
Too ill to live by myself, my parents took me in, and did all they knew to do to get me back to good health. I was taken from doctor to doctor, and put in one hospital after another, with no real diagnosis, and many trial medications that just made me sicker.
Finally, through my parent’s travels for help, we were directed to a doctor who found I reacted to many foods, and most chemicals. Life as I knew it was no more.
To make a long story short, I was sent to a home made “ecologically safe” for the wife and mother of a family that lived there. Following more food testing, I was then put in an apt. out of the city. It was scrubbed of chemical cleaners and anything else that might affect me and a covering was put around the door to the hall, in hopes that food and chemical cleaning odors wouldn’t come into my apt.
However, after two years there, I failed to regain any significant measure of health, no matter how hard the diligent doctor who diagnosed me, tried. So, on to better air – the North Country. I seemed to improve over a period of years, but through a series of more losses, I became very ill once again, and was hospitalized. Too sick to care for myself, my 85 year old Mom told the doctors to send me back to live with her.
Her home is in a lovely retirement village. Although I am back in city pollution, the Village is on the west mountain, where the pollution is the least. The house isn’t what one would call “ecological” but it is 12 years old, carpets and newness has gassed off; no chemical cleaners or scented products are used here and the source of heat is electric – told to be best for MCS folks.
A positive factor is that the condominium is part of a ground level row of condominiums with cement block walls separating each unit. Thus no odors get through to our unit.
Each unit has its own heating unit, and its own ventilation system.
I am not well here by any means, - I still battle difficult symptoms, but many factors in this home enable me to function to a certain level that helps me enjoy my days.
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