zeptember

That’s what the reality of the story was - not food allergies but viruses. I went from being bedridden the last week of January/first week of February, and on February 5 while walking to dinner, I had declared how wonderful it was to be alive and walking with my husband again. And BAM within an hour I was sick with what the doctor later said was enterovirus.

The enterovirus took me down hard. I never had so much diarrhea in my life - and within a span of 3 days. I could not eat anything more than soup, tea and banana mush for a week straight. I found out that the Cream of Rice was making my fingers split open, so I cursed it and stopped using it. I don’t care if it says Gluten Free on the package - I call cross-contamination and won’t use B&G brand ever again.

My fingers cleared up within 48 hours of no longer eating Cream of Rice.

By Friday, February 12, I once again declared I was feeling better. I had gone back to work and worked Feb 10, 11, 12.
By Friday night however, I had a lot of sinus drainage and was sneezing a lot.

By Saturday, February 13, a full on respiratory tract infection was now at play. My head felt full of rubber cement, yet my right nostril had a continuous thick leak of goo. Despite that, I rode my bicycle to run some errands, and went out into the cold night air for a local zombie-themed pub crawl. I endured cigarette smoke at the bars (ppl smoking in the doorways and smoke coming inside), which of course did not help. I blew my nose all night.
Saturday or Sunday I’d called the doctor’s office, and the on-call doctor called me back. He said that I likely caught a secondary virus, that it wouldn’t be a continuation of the enterovirus. He said there was nothing to be done except pain meds, neti pot, salt soaks, and a heating pad to my face. We had talked about over the counter (OTC) remedies - I can’t take most of them because of various side effects. The doctor told me the sinus infection was likely not bacterial and to just keep doing what I was doing.

On Sunday I was bedridden all day. I thought I was getting strep throat, my throat was so sore. I had a pounding sinus headache. Both ears plugged up; I had really bad left ear pain, and droning engine noise in head. I did the neti pot, huffed salt water, drank lots of tea and soup and water all day. Other than that, I didn’t eat much. Running fever up to 100°F - it was up and down all day.

On Monday, February 16, I was bedridden half the day. I had another pounding sinus headache. Both ears plugged up and I had really bad left ear pain. Mucus strained with blood when I cleaned out my nose with the neti pot. I also huffed salt water, drank lots of tea and soup and water all day. I had spicy Thai chicken dish for late lunch and again for late dinner (leftovers). I took one tylenol 3 and felt better for awhile, then congestion returned and both nostrils plugged up again. Running fever up to 100°F - it was up and down all day.

On Tuesday, I went to the doctor. Still getting blood spatter in the nose goo. Doctor confirmed I still had a fever - it was 99.4°F I think - and the doctor said yeah, I have a sinus infection alright. She heard out my medical history (had chronic sinus infections all through childhood thanks to living with a pack-a-day smoker in an industrial part of town), and decided to put me on antibiotics.

I was back in the doctor’s office again on Wednesday, February 17, because I’d tried to go back to work that morning. The chilly morning air and the thick fog made my lungs ache badly and it became hard for me to breathe. I looked pasty white. I barely fixed my hair to go to work, I was so sick. I turned right around and came back home because my lungs hurt so bad and I was having trouble breathing. I was able to get into the doctor’s office at noon that day, and saw a different doctor. She listened to my heart and lungs. She said I have ‘junk’ in my lungs, and that I was wheezing. She gave me my first ever albuterol treatment (nebulizer delivery).
Although it cleared my lungs and made for velvety smooth breathing for the next six and a half hours, the ingredients in the albuterol treatment also made me very light headed, gave me tremors, and removed my ability to concentrate. I darted my eyes and head around and had anxiety all day long. I told the doctor I can’t work in that state, and that the treatment is no better than the illness itself. I opted to stay home another day.

When I got back home, I found Alameda County Industries vehicles all over the intersection near my home. They were shoveling a sand like material onto a spill of some sort, which was all up and down two streets and filled the intersection. I saw a garbage or recycle truck with its hazard lights on. I went over to the working men and asked if it was hydraulic fluid that had spilled. They said it was. They assured me that the sand they were putting down was harmless, and was like ‘kitty litter’.

Please google hydraulic fluid toxicity to learn more, and also check out a news story about a woman who died after a similar accident.

I have also uploaded photos here. My lips were stinging when I got back into the house last night after taking pictures. I should have worn a mask of course. Of course.

I shed all my clothes in the kitchen and put them in a garbage bag. I took a shower immediately.

Last night I filed complaint with the Alameda Department of Public Works and the City Clerk’s office for Boards and Commissions. This morning, following Susie Collins’ advice, I phoned up the police department to make sure they’d been notified. They said they had, and seemed indifferent to me. They routed me over to the fire department, where I was told I’d get a call back. I got a voicemail saying they’d send someone over to check out the street, but I didn’t see anyone come by in a Fire Department uniform or vehicle.

At 3pm today, I received the following email:

Good afternoon,

Guy Martinez Safety Manger

I sent an email back to Mr. Martinez, asking for specifics on the hydraulic fluid; “Thank you for your response. Can you tell me what type of hydraulic fluid had spilled, aside from it being ‘premium’? Was it mineral oil, organophosphate ester, or polyalphaolefin?”

And now I wait.

That brings us up to Thursday - today. I’m home, still on antibiotics, still getting painful ears plugging up, still filling the waste basket with snotty tissues…and avoiding going outside to save my life.

Edit:

Today I got another answer from the ACI guy regarding the hydraulic fluid spill:

Good morning it is a petroleum-based mineral oil, have a good day guy.

Well, since I didn’t get a brand name or anything, I turned to google and found a MSDS for a petroleum-based mineral oil hydraulic fluid by Graco (get the PDF here).
The usual applies - respiratory, CNS and skin damage can occur with the use or misuse of hydraulic fluid. I just have to watch my health over the next few months to see if anything manifests out of this. I’d already developed an upper respiratory infection which turned into either bronchitis or RSV before the spill happened.

Remember yesterday when I was upset that I’d become sensitive to the yellow label Clorox wipes?

It’s not that at all. One of our staff put bleach into the Clorox wipes container.

The problem with that is that Clorox wipes do not contain bleach. They contain AMMONIA.

Today I asked her why the hell the wipes reeked so badly of bleach, thinking my chemical sensitivity was getting worse again. She replied that she was cleaning the bathroom and wanted it extra clean, but then got the great idea to use the altered wipes on the children’s lunch tables, too.

She left the tables wet, right before lunchtime began. I went through and wiped all the tables dry, and lectured her.

She thinks I’m joking - I told her the fumes can KILL her/us. She warned me not to tell the management on her, and then after I left her line of sight, she whispered to another co-worker that she’ll just keep mixing up the wipes and bleach and store it somewhere where SHE can access it.

Ten bucks says she’ll put it in the janitor’s closet, a.k.a. the furnace room.

…gah… I just called the school - she’s still on duty, thankfully. I asked her about the wipes, and told her again what damage it can do. She said she used them all up today, and promised not to make any more.

This is the same person who last week tried to store a 3″ sharp knife in our outdoor classroom cabinet, in order to access it during lunchtime to cut her fruit. I had to also lecture her on that, telling her that we can be shut down if licensing makes a surprise visit, searches the place and finds the knife. Even then she’d given me the “oh that wouldn’t happen” look. I had to tell her in a stern tone with raised eyebrows, “I am serious. We are not even allowed to keep adult-sized scissors out here. Put the knife away.”

Three strikes and she’s out - I will in fact go to the management.

November 18, 2009 Edit:
Her third strike was on November 17th.

Many children have sweets packed in with their lunches. It is a policy that the children eat their protein, first. Of course, like most children, they go straight for the sweets. We remind them every day. Some children throw fits, others begrudgingly eat their protein. It’s a daily thing, no big deal, part of what goes with children.

This same woman I’ve been having a problem with - she saw a child (we’ll call him “M”) going for sweets/snacks and ordered him to eat his protein.

M protested, and she got angry with him. I had to go deal with other children who were trying to have a food fight. There were a couple other assistant teachers on lunch duty, also tending to other children (about 4 adults vs. about 34 children, yes we’re short-staffed this week).

When I was finished putting out the food fight fire, I looked over and saw that M was bawling his eyes out, and the woman was not near him. I went to him and he told me through choked sobs, “She told me my lunch is trash and it’s not!” I looked at his open lunch box - the snacks he wanted were now bundled up in a paper towel.

I found the woman at the next classroom’s lunch table. I went over to her and asked what she’d told M. She gave a smirk and told me proudly that she’d told M that if he didn’t listen to her and eat his protein, that she’d throw his snacks in the garbage.

I told her she has now upset M to the point that he didn’t want to eat ANY food. I told her that we are supposed to encourage, not force children to eat their protein. I told her not to do this again to a child. She looked at me like I was overstepping my bounds with her. She’s used to bossing people around (I thought she was a supervisor when I first started working there).

I resumed monitoring the children, and saw the woman go to M and talk a little more calmly. She was able to convince him to eat some of his protein. She unwrapped his snacks from the paper towel. I came back around to check on him a couple of times. He recovered and was soon smiling and being his usual boisterous self again.

When I went on my lunch break, I reported the woman to her supervisor.
Surprise, surprise, supervisor said she’s been hearing from other co-workers that this woman is harsh towards the children, but she didn’t know about the bleach/ammonia or the knife incident. She said she would talk to the director.

Now I get to walk on egg shells, wondering if this woman will be talked to, and wondering if I get to bear the brunt of retaliation if she’s talked to.

I seem to have every symptom for flu except for fever at the moment. It started yesterday with a mild sore throat that persisted into today. Then, around 3pm today, everything else hit:

All types of flu can cause:

* Fever
* Coughing and/or sore throat
* Runny or stuffy nose
* Headaches and/or body aches
* Chills
* Fatigue
-courtesy flu.gov

In addition to the above, webmd.com lists “ill appearance with warm, flushed skin and red, watery eyes” as a common flu symptom. Well, I have that, too.

It all started yesterday, when I developed a mild sore throat sometime in the afternoon. I’d worked ‘holiday daycare’, which means I spent much of the day inside, rather than outside, in close quarters with preschoolers. Several of the little buggers have wet coughs and runny noses. Some have clear snot, some have yellow or green snot.

The day before that, on Tuesday, I’d opened a door to a teacher’s classroom, gone inside and asked her if she had any eyedroppers and bottles that my co-teacher and I could use for our seed propagation project. She’d said she did not have any. This conversation is relevant later.

By the time I got home from work yesterday afternoon, I was feeling run-down. I’d had a crappy dinner, and asked for Tuckers ice cream (thus violating my sugar ban on the fourth day). Tuckers uses cow’s milk, like every other ice creamery does. I’m not supposed to have cow’s milk. Hello cravings! Within a few minutes of beginning to eat the ice cream, my stomach began to gurgle wildly. Hello lactose intolerance!

An hour of eating the ice cream, I got sharp stabbing uterine pains. This is reproducible 100% of the time, and yet I keep going back to eating dairy foods. The reason I get the pain is that dairy, especially cow’s milk, contains inflammatory prostalandins. For more info on that, read here, here and here. This may be relevant later.

This morning, my joints were aching. My knees and lower back were bugging me, so I decided not to bicycle to work, and to drive, instead. It’s the first time since November 2nd that I drove my car instead of biking to work, so I felt like the break from biking was okay. Plus, there was a chance of rain today, and I didn’t want to get caught in it like I was last week.

The uterine pain continued intermittently throughout today. After the children went inside from lunch recess, I began sweeping up the yard. My co-worker brought out lemon-scented Clorox wipes and began wiping down the tables. I gagged, the bleach scent was so strong. I looked over to double-check the type of wipes she was using and it was indeed the yellow label - the only label I thought I was still okay with. Dammit. Stupid chemical sensitivities.

As I continued to sweep the yard, my eyes began to water with thick gooey fluid. That’s when I knew for sure that my recent bout of eye allergies are triggered by the workplace. This may be relevant later.

I was on my lunch break when I sat upright on the couch in the lounge and nearly yelped from the pelvic pain. It felt like my uterus had been locked in one place and I was moving against it. So having consumed ice cream still had its effects on me. This too may be relevant later.

Around 3pm, as I was closing up my classroom for the day, I went to the open children’s bathroom and emptied out a container of dirty water into a sink. The noise of the water emptying from the container made me nauseous. My mind flooded with images of me puking water non-stop. This imagery made me want to vomit of course. The last time I was this ill from hearing water or other fluids pouring was when I was on a mushroom trip. Immediately following this imagery, I wondered if I would be getting that sick in the near future, and this was my body’s way of giving me a head’s up.

I went back outside to my classroom and wrapped up the data for our daily record book. While doing that, I was seized with severe fatigue, low and mid back pain so strong I wanted to cry, and a general blurry feeling all over. It’s hard to explain, but it’s similar to how I feel when I’m in a lot of pain from endometriosis. The world around me looks different - not so bright, and kind of blurry - and my head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton.

By the time I got home from work, around 3:45pm, I had severe chills.
I turned on the heater fan, the house furnace and put a heating pad under the covers. I changed into pajamas and went to bed and napped for a bit. I was freezing under two blankets, with the heating pad set to medium, with the heater fan going, and the furnace set to 70°F.

The thing is, with all that I’ve listed, most of it fits the bill for the premenstrual pain and suffering that I routinely experience, up to two weeks before george.

However, I remembered the scene from early this morning when I got in to work - the office was scrambling to avoid having a teacher come in to work. She’d called to say she has the flu, but that she couldn’t afford for hers and her students’ sake to miss any class time, so she’d be coming in only for a little while. The office was trying to decide whether or not to go to her house to prevent her from leaving, or to meet her at the front door and shoo her away. As it was, I heard later, that teacher DID show up to work to deliver some classroom materials, and the office staff shooed her away.

This is the same teacher - I’d opened the door to her classroom and I spoke to her on Tuesday.

Could be that she’s the infection point. Could be the children with their wet coughs and runny noses every day. Hell, we’d had a case of swine flu a couple weeks ago, and the staff decided to suppress the news, saying the mother said the child developed symptoms at home, not at school, and she kept him home for days. I found out because his teacher spilled the beans to me. Good times, eh? Covering up swine flu, a teacher coming in despite knowing full well she has the flu. No wonder the world still gets epidemics and pandemics. Stupid people.

…When I woke from my nap this afternoon, I checked out flu symptoms at flu.gov and then called my doctor’s office. It was 20 minutes to closing time, but I asked if I could be seen. They’d just stopped taking patients 10 minutes before I called, but asked me what was going on, and then did a run-down of symptoms checking with me. I was told I’d get a call back.

The on-call nurse called me back, we went over the symptoms again, and she told me she was pretty sure I have the flu, and that the doctor herself would call me back. She asked if I have had the flu shot. I told her I’d refused it because I have egg allergy (many vaccines, including the flu shot, are made with egg protein). She replied, “Oh! No you can’t get the shot, then.” Glad she didn’t fight me on the decision.

A little while later, the doctor called, and we went through the symptoms one more time. By this time, I had facial flushing, headache growing worse, sensitivity to light getting worse (all the lights in the house were off). As I ticked off my symptoms, I mentioned the back pain which came on suddenly and so severe that I wanted to cry.

The doctor interrupted me and said, “yeah, ya know, I’m sorry, but you have the flu, and tomorrow you WILL have a fever. You can NOT go to work. I’m sorry.”

She faxed in a doctor’s note to cover me for tomorrow, and told me to call back if I need an extension for next week.

We discussed over-the-counter remedies to help me through the flu (Tylenol, Advil, Pseudoephedrine), and she mentioned Tamiflu. I told her I would not feel comfortable pursuing Tamiflu based upon the side effects I’d read about, the fact that I’m super sensitive to all medications (I’ve hallucinated on prescribed minimum dosages of Tagamet, for example) and well, the news reports in general over the years. The doctor did not argue with me - in fact she said that taking Tamiflu only reduces symptoms by 1-2 days, and there’s only a select group of people she’d be willing to press to take Tamiflu.

When I got off the phone with the doctor, I broke the news to my husband, and added “I don’t want to be sick. I want to think she’s got it wrong. Maybe it’s just early george symptoms.”

Maybe it’s allergies. Maybe it’s because of the cow’s milk. Maybe it’s all of the above, but still not the flu.

It’s taken me a couple of hours to chronicle everything. In that time, it’s gotten very dark outside and I’ve turned on the overhead light. The light in the room, as well as the monitor brightness (which I keep reducing) has not helped with the stinging eye pain. I’m sore behind the eyes as well as experiencing the stinging in the eyes.
Meh.

So there is my über detailed influenza report, should I need it for the doctor, and non-influenza report, should I need to refer back to it again in case of ingestion of cow’s milk.

Stupid cows.

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.

On Saturday I got in to see the doctor to find out if I still had pink eye. I had woken up with crusties in my eyes that morning, and I was still experiencing light sensitivity and itchy eyes, but they never got that stereotypical red gross infected look the entire time I’ve had pink eye. My eyes looked bloodshot at times but even that was fleeting.

Before going to the doctor’s office, another canker sore popped out.
The doctor I saw was not the same doctor I saw last time (it’s always whoever is on duty). She told me that my lymph nodes were swollen again, and that a canker sore MIGHT cause the lymph nodes to be swollen. More than that, she said that a virus MIGHT ALSO cause a canker sore. The previous doctor had said a canker sore would NOT cause swollen lymph nodes, and had said that canker sores are NOT caused by viruses.

The doctor examined my eyes and said I was over the worst of it, and cleared me to go out in public without running the risk of infecting people. She said point blank that I was no longer contagious but that I should continue to practice frequent hand washing until the virus has run its course.

I showed her the canker sore and she said any stress, mentally or physically on the body, could cause canker sores. She said having a virus is a stress on the body.

I told her about the eye drops feeling like they were making my eyes worse, and how I got diarrhea and sore throat - I told her I suspect those are side effects to the eye drops because I discontinued the drops for over 24 hours and the diarrhea and sore throat cleared. I began using the eye drops again and got the same side effect the next morning - that morning of the doctor appointment.
The doctor examined my throat and found that it was indeed inflamed. She told me it was okay to discontinue the eye drops and that no replacement antibiotic drops were necessary, and she said her staff would dispose of the drops (I had brought them with me).

At the close of the visit, we went over my blood test results - the thyroid and the liver blood panels came back perfect. I asked the doctor if I was in the high end of normal or the low end of normal for the thyroid panel - she said I was smack in the middle of normal. Hooray! But boo! I was kinda hoping that I could explain some of the pelvic pain away with a thyroid issue, but I guess my thyroid is fine. Which means the endometriosis is still rife within me. Simply taking a thyroid medicine won’t help rid me of the pain. I need to get another surgery to carve out the endometriosis, if it is even able to be carved out.
Ugh. Surgery. Ugh, being cut open. Ugh, $1,500 or more out of pocket co-pay. Ugh, two solid weeks off work again. Ugh, recovery is a bitch. You see why I’d rather it have been a thyroid issue which I could just take a pill for?
I’m not giving up on the thyroid issue, dammit. My ‘normal’ body temperature is around 97.5°F. THAT screams hypothyroidism.

I got home from the doctor’s office and told my husband the good news - I could accompany him to his 20-year high school reunion, because the doctor said I was no longer highly contagious.

However, as the day progressed, the canker sore got bigger, and bigger and for the first time since I began getting the canker sores, this one actually hurt.

We went out that night and I fell off the wagon. I drank about a bottle to a bottle and a half worth of red wine. I am told I did not make an ass out of myself and that although visibly drunk I was on par with everyone else - and fine in that regard - all night. I blacked out toward the end of the night though. I don’t remember anything. Next memory I have is of me puking in the bathroom sink.
I got drunk because I was experiencing social phobia, and I was triggered by being in the same room with some of the people who tormented my husband in high school. This triggered me because my 20-year high school reunion was last month and I did not go to it because I still harbour resentment towards many of my class mates for how much they picked on me. That and I just couldn’t afford to fly out there.

The thing is, this morning from the time I woke up, I have not been this sick since I overdosed on LIQUOR.
But all I drank all night was wine.
Today I have been severely nauseated and have had the spins for the entire day. It was so bad that I remained bedridden all day. I barely ate anything. Even drinking water was difficult because of how nauseous I’ve been.
My husband took a shower and when he got out and returned to the bedroom to get dressed, I was overwhelmed with fragrance emanating from him. It was just his shampoo. It wasn’t even the horrid hair product which has keeled me over in the past. Just the fragrance in his shampoo set me off today and I staggered out of the bedroom choking for air and went and laid on the couch after setting up a fan to blow cool air in from outside.

This is really disconcerting for me. If I suddenly can no longer handle the fragrance in shampoo, it really is time to switch to a scent-free household. Last week it was the hand lotion a teacher gifted me with, which just the week before had been fine. Now suddenly the scent made me gag and gave me headaches. Yesterday we went to Sephora so I could buy new makeup (because when you get pink eye, you have to throw away your makeup), and being in that store gave me a headache and it was difficult to breathe. I did not have that problem the last time I was in that store, which was a couple of months ago.

What triggers multiple chemical sensitivity like that? Is it because I caught a virus? Will I go back to being able to handle the scent in my husband’s shampoo or is it a permanent new sensitivity?

I was able to calm my tummy for a bit with some lemongrass/chamomile tea, and by dinnertime I was actually hungry. My husband got us some thai food - I ate a little bit of vegetable pad thai and drank some thai coconut soup, and then my stomach became all unsettled again. I took some ginger tea that my husband brought home, and that helped.

But seriously? This sick off of wine?
Either I really have lost any sense of booze tolerance or someone put something in my drink last night. I don’t dare try to find out which it was. I just don’t want to drink booze of any sort. I want this feeling of avoidance to stay with me.

The canker sore popped sometime between last night and this morning. It left a crater, which is still painful and irritated.

Nice going on the one sick to another, there.

And I was hoping to have a few weeks with good health before the pelvic pain returned. Instead, I’ve been wrestling with a virus caught from work and social alcoholism. Way to go.

Just…don’t do that again.

I have no idea if I’ll be well enough to return to work tomorrow, which stresses me out.