Fumes have been reduced

Well, the last day or two has been much better. I don't know if my own actions solved the problem, or if the problem solved itself due to factors beyond my control.

I decided to clean some areas of the bathroom, assuming that bleach and ammonia might have mixed with each other. It really did seem like the fumes started right after I sprayed the Windex.

I sprayed off the shower curtain with water. At some time in the past, I had probably sprayed the shower curtain with a bleach-containing cleaner because it was moldy. It might not have all been rinsed off. Then, just recently, I sprayed NEAR the shower curtain with a type of Windex cleaner, which might have contained ammonia. According to that theory, I would have to just wash off those locations thoroughly with water. So I did the best I could to spray them off, and I got hot water and wiped off parts of the floor around there also.

The fumes are much less today.

The other thing is not really resolved. The hot water heater area really does have something strange in the air. I just closed the closet door to the water heater without understanding what could be in the air or what I could do about it. It isn't carbon monoxide. I have a couple of theories about it, but right now, it seems to be reduced, not as bad as before. I can't tell if maybe it's just the bleach-ammonia collecting there because it's a small closed area without a breeze.

I am also wondering if this happens in the winter because of something freezing somewhere in the bitter cold. Or something electrical, overheating because of running the heat so much in the house. (It seemed to be happening when I had my space heater plugged in over on that wall.) But again, no real explanation. I only know that it's better today and that I can tolerate being in here. My throat burns less and less, and my heart isn't pounding like it was, and I'm nowhere near the about-to-pass-out feeling. I've been able to sleep in here.

So I have four days off this week. The first two days, I was still deathly sick and groggy and unable to think when I was in the house. I was trying to clean up the source of the fumes, while still being affected by the fumes. So I was very slow and confused and ineffective at first. But after doing the couple of things I did (or, after the mysterious unknown factors caused the problem to fade away on its own), it's getting better enough that I am starting to be able to think clearly again and function. I am not quite so miserable and exhausted.

I requested the three-day work week, which I had wanted for a while, but actually, I wasn't ready for it. I had wanted to get a second job first, and make the two jobs fit together on those three days. But I had to cut hours immediately because of how severe this problem was. I had been having severe fatigue for several weeks, maybe even months, getting worse without explanation, and it was affecting my ability to work.

So I got a couple of three-day weeks scheduled. And then, suddenly, I got a one-day week. So I looked and they hired somebody new in my department and cut my hours further, much more than I had asked them to.

My feeling about this? Hurt, unappreciated? Yes, kind of... But also, I am looking on the bright side. My life is a disaster, I am struggling just to barely get by, I have been so sick that I could hardly bring myself to work every day, so I'm not really complaining about a one-day week. I am asking myself, 'What am I going to do with all that free time?' I have specific answers to that question; I am going to do things to try to get better.

I think that if I get well enough to work again I will be able to get some hours back or maybe work in a different department. They have been cutting hours a lot anyway and I'm not the only person who had something like this happen.

I hate asking for money from my parents. I wish that they could understand how sick I am, how it's actually real that I have chemical sensitivity and chronic fatigue, and that I seem to get sick more often and worse than other people. I don't WANT to keep asking my parents to help me pay my bills, for the rest of my life! My self-respect is lower when I do that. I want to be self-reliant.

I observed that my life is a series of disasters and job losses, over and over, through this whole past decade. Various things happen again and again; there's not much stability; some of it has been caused by economic bubbles, loss of temp jobs, etc. Some of it has been caused by things that I didn't understand until later. Some of it has been caused by health problems and chemical sensitivity. There are lots of reasons.

The disasters piled up one after another and I decided I wasn't able to recover from them by myself anymore. They were piling up too quickly, and another disaster would occur before I had even finished recovering from the previous problems. So the focus this year has been on meeting people and making friends so that I have more options when I need to ask for help. This isn't a miracle happening all at once, but rather, it's been just more of a choice of saying 'yes' more often instead of 'no' whenever people are trying to be friends with me.

So, this week's goal is to get rid of the worst of the unexplained fumes, and HOPE that I really understand what caused them to happen. If I don't understand what caused them, they could happen again.

And I really did throw a huge number of old bottles of household cleaning chemicals away. I will have a very small, limited selection of things from now on, like dish soap, vinegar, some baking soda that somebody gave me ages ago to put in my refrigerator when something in there spoiled and smelled awful, and laundry soap. That's all I can think of right now. I've decided that I can't stand bleach, and even if it doesn't mix with anything, my experiences with bleach have almost always been terrible. I just want nothing to do with it. So I will probably just do without any bleach.

If I ever buy a bottle of something like that, it will be a very tiny bottle that will get used up quickly so it doesn't sit around in the house very long. No large bottles bought because you 'save money' buying in large bulk with a lower dollars-per-gallon type of thing. I know if you look at the different sizes, they have a lower price per gallon, or per unit, or per pound, if you buy a larger container of something. But I am going to buy small bottles anyway even if it's a higher price-per-gallon or whatever.

I don't feel sure if I really understand what caused the fumes or not. And I'm still not happy that I can kind of sense bad air in the closet of the water heater, but that it somehow just isn't as bad as it was a few days ago. I'm not sure this problem is solved yet, or that my actions had anything to do with the fact that the fumes got better. I guess I am just keeping my fingers crossed. It seems to be better.