zeptember

On Saturday, October 24, 2009, I hurried to our storage unit in the backyard around 7am to grab some luggage for a weekend trip.

As soon as I opened the door, I saw a puddle of water in the center of the floor!

Just four days earlier, a storm had spent two days attacking my classroom. It hadn’t occurred to me to check the storage unit when I got home from work earlier in the week, because it had never taken damage before.

But there I stood on Saturday, staring down at a wet floor. I looked around for signs of leakage but did not find any. I guessed that perhaps the water had come from between the wall or had leaked somehow from the light fixture. I felt the boxes and luggage and other things near the puddle - they did not appear to be soaked.

But the problem here was that I did not have any time to begin cleanup of the storage unit; I was late for class.

I left a note for my husband, telling him what had happened. He had the day off work, so I figured he could spend some time assessing the damage.

That’s the second problem - I assumed he’d even give a damn about stuff in our storage unit getting water damaged.

It was more important to him to sleep in, take his time puttering about the house, and go to band practice, than to be arsed to start the cleanup process. I still don’t know how he accounted for all the hours in the day on Saturday. I was in class from 8am - 4:45pm that day. When I got home, I expected the bags to be in the car and for us to zoom off to Mendocino.

The bags were in the car but again, what the hell did he do all day? This made me so mad. I told him I am severely allergic to mold. I told him I assumed he would begin cleanup, that a flooding out of our storage unit is a bad thing.

He seriously thought I was overreacting.

I explained to him again, as I have numerous times in the past, that I grew up in a mold-ridden house and had bronchitis and sinus infections every year of my life until moving to California. I told him that I am seriously allergic to mold in any form - that washing out a moldy coffee pot one time, some of the water splashed onto my forearm and immediately I broke out in hives. Same thing if I get penicillin - full body hives. MOLD == BAD FOR THE ZEPT.
And while we’re on the topic, last winter, my husband’s car flooded out, because the moon roof leaked. He got the roof fixed and the car vacuumed and cleaned, but did so MONTHS after the damage.

The car still reeks of mold damage, and of course is the best working vehicle that we have, in which to drive long distances with. I expressed my disapproval at having to spend 3+ hours in a moldy, stinky car on top of having to come back and deal with a moldy storage unit.

My husband reacted by getting defensive. He’s SORRY, OKAY?

I dropped the subject so we could enjoy our first year wedding anniversary trip to Mendocino.

The very next day, an unexpected arrival of endometriosis pain pretty much ruined the trip for me, anyway, and I had a nightmarish, harrowing ride home Sunday night because of the pain and the pain meds.

I’ve been bedridden since yesterday, with no sign of the endometriosis pain and bleeding letting up in the next 24 hours.

We’d had a lengthy discussion last night about how overwhelmed we both feel about everything this year. He feels like he has to take on all of the housework, because I’m always so tired after work, or sick, or both. As a result, he lets the housework just sit there and accumulate. Then we both get depressed because the dishes, laundry and catbox are not taking care of themselves. The house looks like a sty.

It’s been since April - since I started the teaching job - that everything has fallen apart. We talked a lot about how we got to where we are emotionally and physically. I rehashed the MCS complications on top of the endo issues, and how I’m still struggling to accept this new problem, which has steadily gotten worse since September.

But neither of us had a solution.

I told him we BOTH have to step up to the plate and start ACCEPTING the reality of how sick I am with MCS and endometriosis.

I told him he has to start accepting his own severe allergy diagnoses and man up about housework to keep us BOTH healthy.

To this day, his nose will suddenly start pouring and he’ll sneeze so much I fear he’ll pass out, and when I ask what brought it on, he slumps his shoulders in resignation and says he’ll never know. And I look around the house and see acres of dust on shelves and ask if perhaps his severe dust mite allergy had just been stirred. He responds that there’s no way of knowing, that his nose just does that every now and then for no reason. Any factual logic I apply to the conversation is met with resistance and “but how do you know for sure.”

So last night I pointed to the three-year-old list of house rules that I had posted when we first moved in. I told him I had grown tired of being the only one to adhere to the strict housecleaning rules, so I had gone lax, too. I told him this was a mistake, and said we BOTH have to adhere from this point on. He was NOT happy about it.
The list of housecleaning rules comes from a pamphlet my doctor gave my mother when I was about six years old. It instructs one on how to clean a room top to bottom thoroughly for the person with severe dust allergy. My mother scrubbed my bedroom from ceiling to floor every week when I was a young child, because of how sick I always was. She became a housekeeper to learn how to do the job properly. Of course, since she had no husband to help her, and my brother and I were just tots, by the time we became adolescents she had all but abandoned the cleaning practice. Her grave mistake is that she did not teach us from an early age to do for ourselves. She figured we needed to be children and play, not work. Well the work is for our home, it is not child labour in the mines for cryin out loud. But I digress. I need to learn from my mother’s early perseverance. I have her strength in fits and starts. I need to not be disillusioned and bitter like she ended up. I need to constantly channel my disillusionment with my illness, and my bitterness of lack of help - channel it for more positive ends - and that means more time for creating and maintaining an allergen-resistant home, and less time for social outings and farting around on the Internet.

I have up to four days a month bedridden to do my farting around on the Internet.

As of this morning, my husband still had not called the landlord to inspect the damage to the storage unit, so I called her. As soon as I told the landlady about the discovery, she replied that she’s going on vacation, didn’t I get her email?

Nice way to shirk your duties as landlady!

I told her no, I hadn’t gotten her email. The landlady then proceeded to tell me that it was very strange that our storage unit flooded out, because none of the other units did, and hers at home didn’t.

How the hell is that even relevant to OUR unit?

She said she’d stop by to check out the storage unit.

After I hung up the phone, I checked my email. She had sent the email at 8am today, while I was still sleeping, and just an hour before my call to her. What a little shit.

She came by and checked out the unit, and proclaimed she could find no water damage to our belongings, and no drips or brown marks on the walls or ceiling, so the water must have blown in under the door.
She then asked if we have renter’s insurance. I said yes, of course. She smiled and bid me good day.

Well then! Written off! Take it elsewhere! Good day!

I got on Internet chat and told my husband what happened, and urged him to begin the cleaning process on the storage unit ASAP.

He can’t - he has band practice tonight - gotta practice cuz he has a show on Friday.

So I asked, “What about tomorrow?”

He replied, “[a friend] might be coming over tomorrow though”

This is where I put my foot down.

Me: “Dude. Mold. Mold trumps friends. My health trumps friends. Do you even CARE what is in the storage unit?”

Him: “Of course. I’ll reschedule.”

Me: “Thank you”.

Me: “or better yet, ask if he wants to come help. :p ”

Him: “There’s an idea. ”

To summarise my long-winded rant: My husband and I are a couple of princesses who have refused to accept that our housework will NOT get cleaned by itself. We have steadily refused to give up our playtime for creating and maintaining an allergen-resistant household, because it is a lot of work. We would rather spend hours on the Internet, watching TV, playing video games, doing homework, doing side projects, working full time jobs and socialising with friends than to take on the hard work of keeping our home healthy and safe. We have consistently chosen ill health over good health because we are lazy, selfish and hedonistic.

We are 38 years old but we act like we are 19 and living in a dormitory.

Even with me having laid it all out in a public forum, I wonder honestly whether I can change my ways, and I know for a fact that I will not be the one changing my husband’s ways - he has to do it himself, and that’s something else I have to learn to accept.

Friday was a HORRIBLE day for me.

A co-worker wore perfume to work on Friday. She walked out of the school building and into the backyard, where my outdoor classroom is, and began setting up for the lunch rush, around 11am. This was the same time I was closing my classroom to help set up for the lunch rush. Closing my classroom includes moving some light child-sized furniture aside and drawing a partition wall on wheels to segregate the classroom from the nearby outdoor lunch tables. As I was doing this, the scent from the co-worker’s perfume wafted into my work space, and I immediately began choking and gasping for air. A headache set in right away. The act of coughing and choking made my throat raw.

I fled the area and ran indoors. I fled the indoors when the co-worker approached in my direction, still going about her duties. I ran back outside and could still smell the perfume hanging heavy in the air, so I continued running until I was out on the playground, gulping for fresh air.

This act of fleeing and gulping for air and trying to breathe without my throat closing up on me made me highly emotional and near panic attack. I almost began crying - I was to the point of whimpering.
I told my co-teacher what was going on, and I addressed the co-worker who was wearing the perfume. I was very apologetic and emotional and asked her as nicely as I could. She felt really bad and said she would never wear the perfume again.

But I was stuck with her for the rest of the day. She took off her jean jacket but the smell was still on her. She looked so sad to be the cause of my ill health, but I had to stay the hell away from her. Within 20 minutes I developed the ‘brain fog’ I’ve been hearing so much about with MCS - where you cannot concentrate or remember what you were supposed to be doing, and actually you sit there in a stupor and have to keep snapping yourself out of it.

During the time the brain fog set in, I realised it was Friday and that we had to disinfect our classroom materials. I put on a nitrile glove and grabbed a Clorox wipe and began wiping down the materials, but within 15 seconds of doing so, I began to gag and choke and get nauseous from the scent of the Clorox wipe. I don’t normally have a problem with Clorox wipes, but since I was already in full on reaction from the perfume, any scent for the rest of the day, no matter how mild, killed me. I went inside to wash my hands with my own “approved” soap which doesn’t cause my hands to break out. The soap is Dr. Bronners and has a mild lavender scent.

Wouldn’t you guess it - I began gagging on the scent of my own approved soap!

During the lunch hour, I tried to stay at opposite ends of the lunch tables from her, but the scent would still waft.
During recess, I tried to stay on opposite sides of the playground from her, but we still had to walk around and sometimes run to the aid of children. This meant I was often enough walking or running into air space in the playground that had recently been occupied by my co-worker, and the perfume just hung there like a thick fog.

By the time I took my lunch break 2 hours and 15 minutes later, I had light sensitivity, a bad headache, a sore throat, brain fog and heavy fatigue.

I am stubborn and so I finished out my work day and came home to get some homework done before going out to a surprise birthday event for a friend.

We joined our friend at a haunted house in a wide open outdoor space on Friday night. I was standing in line to enter the event when the first of my choking began - someone near me was smoking a cigarette. My body went through the whole gagging and panic thing again, and I stepped out of line and fished for fresh air. It seemed everywhere I ran to, someone was smoking. I went back to where my husband was standing in line and heard a person behind me remark sarcastically about my gagging. I turned and glared, trying to find the person who was being so rude. Whoever it was shut the hell up. I began to sputter and cough.

The next gagging began after we entered the event and stood in line for the first haunted attraction. Someone or some people were over-perfumed. It seemed that wherever we went, the women who were over perfumed seemed to also be nearby or coincidentally choosing the same attractions we were standing in line for. By the second attraction, I began sniffing the people in our group. By the third attraction, I was convinced that strange women were not following us - that it really was someone in our group - so I began sniffing them again and inquiring. A woman in our group, whom I’d already sniffed at, suddenly grew wide-eyed and asked if it was perhaps the scented oil she was wearing on her wrists. She rolled up her coat sleeves and stuck her wrist out at me. I took one whiff and fell backwards choking and gagging, and the whole thing all over again with the near panic attack.

Again I was met with someone so very sorry for what they had done to me, and I could not go near them to comfort them for feeling so guilty.

She said she could not even smell it. She said she only had put on a single dab and rubbed both wrists together. She said it was very mild. She was truly baffled that I could be having such severe problems as I was. I told her about my co-worker earlier in the day and the perfume she had on. My friend said, “But I’m wearing oil, not perfume!”

People who don’t have chemical sensitivity say things like this and defend themselves in this manner - it’s because they have no comprehension on what it’s like to be so oversensitive to scent. Hell, I’m still trying to wrap my head around how sensitive I’ve become to scents in the past month.

Two days after the toxic perfume exposures, my eyes began weeping sticky goo again, and this morning, three days after exposure, I woke up with a canker sore. It is my first canker sore in 9 days.

I shudder to think how I’ll even cope when I visit Michigan in December. They still have “smoking vs. non-smoking” sections in restaurants which is completely useless, and they do not employ smoking bans in bars, concert venues, night clubs, etc.

There is a bright side to this - I finally found unscented Dr. Bronners soap for cheap when my husband and I traveled to Mendocino this weekend to celebrate our anniversary. I bought the biggest bottle available, and a sampler bottle to keep at work.

Susie from The Canary Report also pointed me to a link on her site which has a ton of useful information for me to set up something in the workplace to be taken seriously about my chemical sensitivities.

I keep forgetting to also mention whenever I get simulated hypoglycemia as a result of food allergies.

Last weekend I had a terrible hangover, and so I’ve been drinking CVS brand pediatric electrolyte drink. I choose the pediatric formula because it does not contain corn syrup, which gives me a simulated hypoglycemic attack.

Well, apparently it doesn’t matter whether there’s corn syrup or not, because the brand name Pedialyte as well as the CVS knockoff brand also both give me a hypoglycemic-like reaction. It happens whether I drink the stuff on a full or empty stomach.

Ingredients in CVS brand pediatric electrolyte drink: Water, Dextrose, Fructose, Citric Acid, Potassium Citrate, Sodium Chloride, Artificial Apple Flavor, Sodium Citrate, Benzoic Acid, Sucralose, Acesulfame Potassium, Caramel color.

Ingredients in Pedialyte drinks: water, dextrose, potassium citrate, sodium chloride and sodium citrate. Nonmedicinal ingredients: FD&C Blue #1 and Red #40 (grape flavor) and FD&C Red #40 (bubblegum flavor).

Ingredients in Pedialyte Freezer Pops: water, dextrose, citric acid, sodium chloride, potassium citrate, sodium carboxymethylcellulose and aspartame. Nonmedicinal ingredients: FD&C Blue #1 (blue raspberry flavor), FD&C Red #40 (cherry flavor), FD&C Red #40 and Blue #1 (grape flavor), FD&C Yellow #6 and Red #40 (orange flavor).

Ingredients in Walgreen’s pediatric electrolyte drink: Water , Dextrose , Fructose , Citric Acid , Potassium Citrate , Sodium Chloride , Natural & Artificial Mango Flavor , Sodium Citrate , Sucralose , Acesulfame Potassium , FD&C Yellow 6

Ingredients in Walgreens Pediatric Electrolyte Strips: Water , Pectin , Sodium Chloride , Potassium Choloride , Natural & Artificial Flavors , Glycerine , Triglycerides , Lecithin (- Soy) , Citric Acid , Cellulose , Sucralose , Acesulfame Potassium , FD&C Red 40 , FD&C Blue 1

Well shit, the CVS and Walgreen’s stuff has fructose in it. I overlooked it. Goddammit.
But the Pedialyte brand also still gives me hypoglycemia. Is it the dextrose? Let’s research it…

WELL SHIT.

“Glucose (Glc), a monosaccharide (or simple sugar) also known as - grape sugar, blood sugar, or corn sugar…
Glucose is produced commercially via the enzymatic hydrolysis of starch. Many crops can be used as the source of starch. Maize, rice, wheat, cassava, corn husk and sago are all used in various parts of the world.” - wikipedia

“Dextrose is a corn derivative, as is dextrin and maltodextrin…Here is a list of ingredients to watch for:

Corn (fresh, canned, creamed, frozen, oil, popped, carmeled, etc.)
Baking powder
Caramel color (can be made from corn syrup)
Confectioners’ sugar
Cornmeal, cornstarch (may also be called food starch), corn syrup
Dextrin, Dextrose, Fructose
Maize
Maltodextrins, Sorbitol, Mannitol
Vanilla extract (can be made with corn syrup)” - AllergicChild.com

This tells me two things:

1. I have to do a better job of remembering what all the hidden names are for corn sweeteners
2. This means I’m allergic to CORN ITSELF and have to start paying better attention - i.e. get out of denial over the corn thing

OKAY ZEPT, LET’S REVIEW:

“On October 7 I ate corn tortilla chips with guacamole, lettuce, jalapenos, extra cheese, pico de gallo, and red chip sauce. I had orange juice to drink.
Within the hour, I had diarrhea twice, and felt really wiped out. I went to bed.
Upon waking the next morning, I had loose stool but not quite diarrhea.” -http://www.zeptember.com/journal/2009/10/14/backlog-of-autoimmune-issues/

And I seriously thought perhaps the guacamole or the lard/oil used to make the corn chips could be the culprit - “maybe it was bad” - i.e. food poisoning.

REALLY.

BUT LET’S HAVE A LOOK AT YOUR FIRST ALLERGY REPORT FROM ABOUT THE AGE OF SIX:

Yes, that’s right - my first ever allergy test, done around 1977. It shows I have the following allergies:
Feathers = 3
Cotton lint = 2
House dust = 3
Tomato = 2
Orange = 2
Corn = 2
Egg = 2
Grasses = 2
Trees = 2
Mold = 2

To make sense of it all, I searched the web for skin prick allergy test results and found this page on the web, which someone shared what RAST results mean (I bolded where my test results fall):

<0.35 KU/L : ALLERGEN LEVEL 0 - ABSENT OR UNDETECTABLE ALLERGEN SPECIFIC IgE

0.35 - 0.69 : ALLERGEN LEVEL 1 - LOW OF ALLERGEN SPECIFIC IgE

0.70 - 3.49 : ALLERGEN LEVEL 2 - MODERATE LEVEL OF ALLERGEN SPECIFIC IgE

3.50 - 17.49 : ALLERGEN LEVEL 3 - HIGH LEVEL OF ALLERGEN SPECIFIC IgE

17.50 - 49.99 : ALLERGEN LEVEL 4 - VERY HIGH LEVEL OF ALLERGEN SPECIFIC IgE

50.0 - 100.00 : ALLERGEN LEVEL 5 - VERY HIGH LEVEL OF ALLERGEN SPECIFIC IgE

> 100.00 : ALLERGEN LEVEL 6 - EXTREMELY HIGH LEVEL OF ALLERGEN SPECIFIC IgE

The result sheet also had the following statement:

IN FOOD ALLERGY, CIRCULATING IgE ANTIBODIES MAY REMAIN UNDETECTABLE BECAUSE THE ANTIBODY MAY BE DIRECTED TO ALLERGENS THAT ARE REVEALED OR ALTERED DURING INDUSTRIAL PROCESSING, COOKING OR DIGESTION AND DO NOT EXIST IN THE ORIGINAL FOOD.

A NEGATIVE OR EQUIVOCAL TEST RESULT SHOULD NOT BE INTERPRETED TO MEAN THAT THE PATIENT IS NOT OR NO LONGER SENSITIVE TO THE ALLERGEN TESTED. HYPERSENSITIVITY REACTIONS MAY STILL OCCUR. RESULTS SHOULD BE INTERPRETED WITH CAUTION.

So again, let’s review:

• You get simulated hypoglycemia whenever you have corn syrup (or any of its myriad other names)
• You are now getting diarrhea and/or are not feeling well after you eat corn chips
• Your first allergy test in life showed a moderate level of allergy to corn

YOU HAVE A CORN ALLERGY. STOP EATING CORN.

Thank you.

Multiple Chemical Sensitivity

Affected: respiratory
• Cigarette smoke (always)
• Dust (always)
• Certain types of incense
• Perfume/Parfum (since the mid 1990s)
• Rave hairspray 7/28/09
• Desert Essence Organics Pumpkin Hand Repair Cream (Oct, 2009)
• Ever Clean cat litter which i’ve bought for years (Oct, 2009)
• Palmer’s Cocoa Butter Formula w/ Vitamin E (Oct, 2009) - I originally wanted to get rid of it cuz it has parabens in it, but found it a couple months later, in October, and put some on. Gag! Migraine! Ugh!
• Dial Clean & Refresh antibacterial body wash - Mountain Fresh scent (Oct, 2009) [husband's soap]
• L’Oreal Vive Pro for men - daily thickening shampoo (Oct, 2009) [husband's shampoo]
• Rogaine [husband's hair product] (Oct, 2009)
• TRESemme hair gel [husband's hair product] (Oct, 2009)

Affected: skin (atopic dermatitis)
• Powder in latex and non-latex gloves (june 2009)
• Gluten (since 2006 after eliminating/re-adding. Just touching it is enough)
• Ecolab hand sanitiser from hospital - fingers split open immediately, feels like acid on hands as soon as applied. Active ingredient: ethyl alcohol 6.25%. Inactive ingredients: isobutane, glycerin, cetaryl alcohol, hydrofluorocarbin 152A, propane, polysorbate-60, sodium lauroyl lactylate, steareth-20, sodium benzoate.
• Wet Ones - fragrance free, alcohol free, sensitive skin, extra gentle brand. My fingers split open within hours and bleed. Ingredients: water, hamamelis virginiana (witch hazel), water, chamomilla recutita (matricaria) flower extract, glycerin, tocopheryl acetate (vitamin e acetate), panthenol (pro-vitamin B5), guar sativus (cucumber) fruit extract, potassium sorbate, disodium cocoamphodiacetate, proplyene glycol, disodium EDTA, cetearyl glyceryl stearate, ceteareth-12, cetyl palmitate, citric acid, butylene glycol, sodium hydroxymethlglycinate.
• Clorox Disinfecting Wipes - My fingers split open within hours and bleed. Active Ingredients: n-Alkyl (C14, 60%, C16, 30%, C12, 5%, C18, 5%), dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride 0.145%, n-alkyl (c12, 68%, c14, 32%), dimethyl ethylbenzyl ammonium chloride 0.145%, OTHER INGREDIENTS: 99.710% (not listed).
• Cutex nail polish remover
• Sav-on lemon nail polish remover - Ingredients: acetone, water, propylene carbonate, dimethyl glutarate, dimethyl succinate, dimethyl adipate, glycerin, gelatin, fragrance, denatonium benzoate, d&c yellow no. 11.
• Burt’s Bees Raspberry & Brazil nut shampoo - Ingredients: water, decyl glucoside, lauryl glucoside, coco-glucoside, glyceryl oleate, glycine soja (soybean) protein, coco-betaine, betaine, glycerin, honey, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, triticum vulgare (wheat) protein [I didn't even think to check the label and falsely trusted Burt's Bees!] , glucose, sucrose laurate, bertholletia excelsa (brazil nut) oil, rubus idaeus (raspberry) fruit extract, citrus aurantium bergamia (bergamot) fruit oil, citrus aurantium dulcis (orange) peel oil, eucalyptus globulus (eucalyptus) leaf oil, foeniculum vulgare (fennel) oil, fragaria vesca (strawberry) fruit extract, citrus reticulata (tangerine/petitgrain) leaf oil, litsea cubeba fruit oil, vanillin, artemisia pallens (davana) oil, xanthan gum, fragrance, glucose oxidase, lactoperoxidase

Starting in mid-September 2009, I suddenly had a spike in multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS). My body just stopped handling scents I was fine with just a week before. Every week it was something new causing me grief.
New scents entering the house, such as hair product, made me choke for air and begin to panic. That’s not all - I began getting a canker sore every other day, in the same spot in my mouth. The first one would heal overnight, then another grew in its place a day later. My hands began cracking open and bleeding if I touched tempera paint, water color paint, or play-doh at work (I’m a preschool teacher).

I began working in an outdoor classroom on August 31st.

The week of September 14, a child at school developed hand, foot and mouth disease, and within that same week is when all of my above issues really spiked. So for awhile, I thought it was because I’d caught the virus that caused hand, foot and mouth in the child at school.

On October 12, I began sneezing a lot at work, and on October 13, I came down with pink eye…or was it? I still don’t know. My doctor said it was pink eye but they’d only diagnosed me over the phone. I went in to the doctor’s office a few days later and they said maybe it wasn’t pink eye, after all.

I’d discovered that the same virus that causes hand, foot and mouth disease can also cause pink eye. So, I reasoned, perhaps I contracted the virus and it triggered my immune system, and I became even more sensitive to chemicals than I was before?

Then on Tuesday of this week it dawned on me - I could have caused the spike in MCS myself by consenting to have my house sprayed down with Deltamethrin to rid us of the severe ant problem we had over the summer.

The ant spraying happened in late August, but I struggle to remember the exact date. Perhaps August 28th.

After all the bitching I did about having autoimmune issues and not wanting the spray, I caved in and allowed it, because my husband was convinced I’d go mad trying to fight a losing battle with the ants using cinnamon oil and the like. I’d been waging war against the ants for well over a month, and it had gotten to the point that I’d have a nervous breakdown with each new invasion. These ants pour through the walls, the outlets, the foundation, under the carpets. It really is maddening.

My husband was also convinced that I was fabricating a lot of my worry over the safety of Deltamethrin. I had showed him the MSDS on it and still he was not convinced it could do us any harm.

But wait, it gets worse. Not only did I cave in and consent to the spraying, I actually WALKED IN DURING THE SPRAYING because I forgot something petty before leaving the house. I had my nose and mouth fully covered by two shirts when I walked in, but still… WHAT WAS I THINKING.

If the initial exposure during the spraying didn’t do it, then perhaps coming back into the house several hours after the spraying, and spending the night in the freshly sprayed house did it and I’m just that sensitive, like I had feared.

We should have stayed out of the house with the cats overnight, but we were assured it was safe to return after a few hours. I pushed it to five hours but obviously it was not enough.

I saw my eye doctor today and he said I have allergy eyes. He found redness, watery eyes, and irritation but said it’s due to allergies, and that it is likely I had pink eye but not the viral or bacterial kind. So that rules out my hypothesis that I contracted a virus which in turn triggered an immune response which somehow affected my sensitivity to chemicals. I’ve never had severe allergy eyes like this before.

Then I had another flash - just this morning while talking with my co-teacher in the outdoor classroom where we work, my eyes suddenly began burning and watering, and I had to run to the bathroom and flush my eyes with water and with eye drops.
So I began to wonder if perhaps the outdoor classroom caused the pink eye and the eye allergies. Would said allergies also cause a spike in MCS?

The possible culprits now stand between mold/pollen/other exposure via the outdoor classroom, and the Deltamethrin spray.

I’m really beating myself up over this. To have possibly brought it upon myself like this - I’m caught between the nervous breakdowns with the continued ant invasions, dealing with MCS after the exterminator sprayed our house, and possibly being unable to continue working in the outdoor classroom.

What if it’s EVERYTHING and my body just crumpled as it were from too much?

Is MCS reversible? Can the spike be lessened back to manageable levels?