zeptember

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.