10:53 AM 2/11/11
I have had a bad month and I think I know why now. I have been tired the past few weeks and have been using TONS of caffeine.
The landlady distibutes a monthly newsletter telling us about things that are going to happen and about other things that she thinks are worth knowing about. She mentioned in this month's newsletter that there would be a pest control treatment February 10th. So I knew that on February 10th I would probably have a fatigue attack. I am, actually, extremely tired today, but I don't know if it's just a coincidence. If it goes on and on and on for days, I will know. I don't know WHERE they do the pest control or what kind of pest control they are doing. I know that I have always gotten sick when pesticides were sprayed in my apartment in the past, but I don't know if they are actually entering the apartments - I had the impression that they only sprayed outside somewhere. She didn't say anything about getting the apartments ready for people to come inside.
Anyway I happened to pick up last month's newsletter and saw that there was another pest control treatment on January 13th, which I had not known about. That would explain why I have been using so much caffeine and have been so totally exhausted the last few weeks. Pesticides have ruined my attempts to quit caffeine several times in the past.
What kind of pest control could they possibly do in the middle of winter? There are no bugs, nothing at all.
It doesn't matter. I have no control over this. I was lucky with my previous landlord - he agreed not to spray anything inside my apartment, but he still had to spray around the outside of the house and in other people's apartments. The only way I can control this is by buying my own trailer or house, or moving someplace where they explicitly agree never to spray pesticides. I also need to make sure that I am not next to a farm that sprays pesticides or other chemicals on the fields. I also need to think about neighbors who might spray herbicides on their lawns. I need to find a safe place to live before I get married and start having children.
I am looking for friends right now. I need moral support, people who believe me. Being believed by someone is something I need very badly. I want to be able to tell someone why I do things, tell them about the problems I have, and be believed. I want them to enter my world without getting trapped there - this means, I want them to see the way I see the world, but not feel as hopeless, helpless, overwhelmed, and miserable as I feel about it. They can turn off the movie and go home to their own life.
I have a few 'interest clusters' and I need to find people who share those interests or at least respect them and believe them.
self-reliance, survival, living off the grid
nutrition
raising a family
chemical sensitivity, chemical dangers
an anti-government attitude
electronic harassment and electromagnetic pollution
intentional communities
I'm sure I could think of a few more things but I am getting ready to go to work and I don't have a lot of time.
I mentioned 'nudism' a few weeks ago and got a comment from someone who had a link to a good site about naturism. I read it and it made me believe even more strongly something that I already believed halfheartedly. Now I believe in it wholeheartedly. So I'm grateful for that. That's included in my 'intentional communities' interest, because many intentional communities want to live in a place that allows nudism. I've gotten the impression that tolerance for nudity is actually much more common than I used to imagine. Poll results show that people are more offended by the violence on television than they are by the nudity, but violence is allowed and nudity is forbidden on TV.
Anyway... not much time today.
I have been so exhausted and miserable that I haven't even been able to bring myself to write on the forum. There are these unfinished questions hanging there and I feel anxious when I think about them. I am glad that spring is on the way - I always feel better when it gets warm outside.
Showing posts with label chemicals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chemicals. Show all posts
Friday, February 11, 2011
Thursday, June 11, 2009
my new shoes are nontoxic!
i am overjoyed. today: positive decontamination results.
i bought new shoes for work. the old shoes had been contaminated badly for a very long time.
how did they get contaminated? mostly because i would put them on, wearing socks that had been contaminated by the carpets. the main contaminants on the carpet are: borax, tobacco, stevia, st. john's wort, and ephedra. i wear sandals at all times when i'm in the house, but sometimes my socks or feet get contaminated by accident anyway. so gradually, the old shoes had contamination building up in them over time.
my feet have been burning quite noticeably for a while now. i know they're getting poisoned with something when they sting like that. and i feel slow and tired at work, while wearing the contaminated shoes.
the new uniform and new pants were very helpful. but i didn't get new shoes for a while. then i bought some and tried them on today. i was so much more alert and clear and energetic. i wasn't slow and exhausted all day at work. (i also wore new socks, and kept them separate from the socks i wear in the house. the new socks are kept with the new shoes. i won't put contaminated socks into the new shoes.)
something unusual happened on the way home, too. i cried while listening to music. i haven't been able to cry much for a while.
i had also covered up the car seat with a garbage bag, too - the old garbage bag ripped off, and i started getting hit with the mystery chemical on the car seat - it resembles the new york contaminant, but it might have come from someplace else - it causes physical and emotional numbness, sexual dysfunction, and i think also high sugar, insomnia, restless legs, akathisia, and trouble swallowing. i thought it was abilify.
however, i might have gotten contaminated with a similar drug someplace else - it could have been on the waiting room couches at the doctor's office where i took peter, in altoona, or it could have been on the waiting room chairs at his dialysis place. it began rather recently, in the past couple months, at the same time that i tried to wear clothing that had been exposed to the new york contaminant. all of those incidents happened in the past few months - reopening the bag of new york clothes and wearing something from it, and going to the doctor's office several times with peter. so i'm not certain what drug it is or where it came from, i just know that the car seat contamination correlated with several different things.
(note: quick story behind the 'new york contaminant.' i visited a friend in new york; he was probably using an anti-anxiety drug at the time, or at least, had used the drug at some time in the past, and was contaminated with it. at the time, i did not know that it was possible to get severely contaminated with a drug just by touching someone briefly - i suspected it, but i didn't know how severe it would be. when someone is using a drug, it gets all over their clothing - partly because it is excreted in sweat, and partly because they are handling and touching pills, then touching their clothes. i have found, since then, that if i hug or touch someone who uses a drug, i can get hit with it very badly even with a very brief, shallow physical contact.)
so... i also covered up the car seat again today, along with wearing my new shoes.
well, i heard 'halo' sung by beyonce, and i've been writing about beyonce lately, about how her voice has so much range from high to low. i was feeling overjoyed, manic, and very excited all day because of the decontamination - i felt so much clearer and healthier. i was able to react emotionally to music, while driving home. i wept listening to 'halo,' and, as i said, it's been a long time since i was able to cry, and a long time since i responded strongly to music. the drugs and contaminants have made me emotionally numb, and physically unable to weep.
it is wonderful to have a positive confirmation of what i knew: that there's nothing wrong with me at all. i'm just contaminated. all i have to do is get away from all of the chemicals, and the clothing that's contaminated, and things like the car seat. i will get healthy quickly, immediately, for sure, within the very first day of being decontaminated.
it makes me hopeful for other people too. peter has been worse than usual, especially with erectile dysfunction, and whenever i lean against or sit on the couch in his living room, i become numb and sleepy, and i stop moving and i lie still, and i stop responding sexually. there is something on that couch. i don't know for sure what it is or where it came from. it might have come from me, but it might have also come from his clothing or his drugs. he wasn't using anything new, though. well, not really, but kind of.
he's using phosphate binders, and THEY ARE HORRIBLE. phosphate binders are about the most horrible drug ever created. they make you vomit. i don't know how he's surviving. i think the only way he eats anything is by sometimes skipping the phosphate binders. so, it could be phosphate binders that i'm reacting to. he's only been using those somewhat recently.
he also used one free sample of levitra, and didn't use it ever again, because it gave him a headache - not just a headache, but 'my head is going to explode - this is almost bad enough to go to the emergency room' kind of thing, lasting for hours and hours. i wonder if levitra could, paradoxically, cause impotence? this would be like homeopathy. at a low dose, it causes impotence, but at a high dose, it causes an erection. the concept of homeopathy is that a particular drug or chemical has some effect, whether good or bad, on a particular organ or tissue - the 'target organ'. it affects it, that's all you know, and depending on the dose, the effects can be helpful or harmful. so that's one theory.
but i still believe it was a contaminant that came from my new york clothing, which was probably abilify. and i don't know for sure.
i know that i felt better immediately today, wearing the new shoes and new uniform, and re-covering my car seat with plastic.
'passive detox' or 'passive decontamination' is the name i'm calling it. i call it 'passive' because i do not detoxify people by using new chemicals - for instance, i'm not going to use chelation, where they give people some activated charcoal, or something, and other chemicals, to try to get the heavy metals out of their bodies. and i'm not going to tell people to take a whole bunch of nutrient supplements and herbal pills. that's 'active.' you add a new chemical. i'm not adding anything, i'm just taking things away, but i'm doing a more thorough method of decontamination than any other 'detox' programs do. there are lots of detox programs and methods that exist, but i haven't seen anything yet that mentions clothing and surface contamination that goes through the skin (transdermal route of entry) and affects the body at microdosages for many months or years, even after somebody stops using the drug.
so 'we' were thinking about this, all day long - i was talking to voices about it, and they were seeing it as a program or method or protocol to follow, a set of rules for decontaminating yourself from drugs and chemicals that cause symptoms by entering the body through the skin.
i was overjoyed by the results. the new clothing and new shoes worked - i got rid of the contamination, and felt better immediately, the very first day.
it will be difficult to fix the car seats. i was thinking about reupholstering them. anything durable, any objects or belongings that are very expensive, and sentimental, things that can't be cleaned off or thrown in the garbage - those will be the worst.
this is like a 'cursed item.' cursed objects might be real. all you have to do is contaminate something with a poison that cannot be washed off, and it's 'cursed' forever. there are rumors that have been around for hundreds, or thousands, of years, about magic, and some of the phenomena can be explained if you know about transdermal drug contamination. cursed areas, cursed locations, cursed people, the 'untouchable castes,' all of those things could be explained if you knew that some people, places, or things were covered with chemicals or drugs that made them sick and would be passed from person to person through touch.
so it's nice to have hope.
dealing with air pollution will be a little more difficult... the health problems caused by urban air pollution - that's what i'm researching now. or rather, researched a little bit recently. 'dabbled in.'
so far:
1. no vaccines
2. no synthetic dietary supplements: vitamins, minerals
3. no drugs, no herbal drugs, no alternative medicine drugs (there could be some exceptions to this)
4. avoid air pollution
5. avoid contaminated objects and surfaces, avoid plants and drugs and chemicals that cause contamination
6. eliminate certain foods and chemicals from the diet, which can trigger reactions in some people
7. no dental fillings of any kind, no retainers, no braces
8. no removal of body parts, organs, teeth, tonsils, appendix, foreskin, etc
9. no implants, like pacemakers or defibrillators (i don't know what to do about pacemakers - i don't know enough about them)
10. no drinking tap water
i'm sure there are more things i'm forgetting, which i will think of as soon as i've posted this. or rather, 'they' will think of, and remind me about. there are more things to do and things to avoid, on the list of ways to prevent chronic illnesses.
what i have lived through is almost unimaginable to anyone who hasn't experienced environmental illness or chemical sensitivity.
i bought new shoes for work. the old shoes had been contaminated badly for a very long time.
how did they get contaminated? mostly because i would put them on, wearing socks that had been contaminated by the carpets. the main contaminants on the carpet are: borax, tobacco, stevia, st. john's wort, and ephedra. i wear sandals at all times when i'm in the house, but sometimes my socks or feet get contaminated by accident anyway. so gradually, the old shoes had contamination building up in them over time.
my feet have been burning quite noticeably for a while now. i know they're getting poisoned with something when they sting like that. and i feel slow and tired at work, while wearing the contaminated shoes.
the new uniform and new pants were very helpful. but i didn't get new shoes for a while. then i bought some and tried them on today. i was so much more alert and clear and energetic. i wasn't slow and exhausted all day at work. (i also wore new socks, and kept them separate from the socks i wear in the house. the new socks are kept with the new shoes. i won't put contaminated socks into the new shoes.)
something unusual happened on the way home, too. i cried while listening to music. i haven't been able to cry much for a while.
i had also covered up the car seat with a garbage bag, too - the old garbage bag ripped off, and i started getting hit with the mystery chemical on the car seat - it resembles the new york contaminant, but it might have come from someplace else - it causes physical and emotional numbness, sexual dysfunction, and i think also high sugar, insomnia, restless legs, akathisia, and trouble swallowing. i thought it was abilify.
however, i might have gotten contaminated with a similar drug someplace else - it could have been on the waiting room couches at the doctor's office where i took peter, in altoona, or it could have been on the waiting room chairs at his dialysis place. it began rather recently, in the past couple months, at the same time that i tried to wear clothing that had been exposed to the new york contaminant. all of those incidents happened in the past few months - reopening the bag of new york clothes and wearing something from it, and going to the doctor's office several times with peter. so i'm not certain what drug it is or where it came from, i just know that the car seat contamination correlated with several different things.
(note: quick story behind the 'new york contaminant.' i visited a friend in new york; he was probably using an anti-anxiety drug at the time, or at least, had used the drug at some time in the past, and was contaminated with it. at the time, i did not know that it was possible to get severely contaminated with a drug just by touching someone briefly - i suspected it, but i didn't know how severe it would be. when someone is using a drug, it gets all over their clothing - partly because it is excreted in sweat, and partly because they are handling and touching pills, then touching their clothes. i have found, since then, that if i hug or touch someone who uses a drug, i can get hit with it very badly even with a very brief, shallow physical contact.)
so... i also covered up the car seat again today, along with wearing my new shoes.
well, i heard 'halo' sung by beyonce, and i've been writing about beyonce lately, about how her voice has so much range from high to low. i was feeling overjoyed, manic, and very excited all day because of the decontamination - i felt so much clearer and healthier. i was able to react emotionally to music, while driving home. i wept listening to 'halo,' and, as i said, it's been a long time since i was able to cry, and a long time since i responded strongly to music. the drugs and contaminants have made me emotionally numb, and physically unable to weep.
it is wonderful to have a positive confirmation of what i knew: that there's nothing wrong with me at all. i'm just contaminated. all i have to do is get away from all of the chemicals, and the clothing that's contaminated, and things like the car seat. i will get healthy quickly, immediately, for sure, within the very first day of being decontaminated.
it makes me hopeful for other people too. peter has been worse than usual, especially with erectile dysfunction, and whenever i lean against or sit on the couch in his living room, i become numb and sleepy, and i stop moving and i lie still, and i stop responding sexually. there is something on that couch. i don't know for sure what it is or where it came from. it might have come from me, but it might have also come from his clothing or his drugs. he wasn't using anything new, though. well, not really, but kind of.
he's using phosphate binders, and THEY ARE HORRIBLE. phosphate binders are about the most horrible drug ever created. they make you vomit. i don't know how he's surviving. i think the only way he eats anything is by sometimes skipping the phosphate binders. so, it could be phosphate binders that i'm reacting to. he's only been using those somewhat recently.
he also used one free sample of levitra, and didn't use it ever again, because it gave him a headache - not just a headache, but 'my head is going to explode - this is almost bad enough to go to the emergency room' kind of thing, lasting for hours and hours. i wonder if levitra could, paradoxically, cause impotence? this would be like homeopathy. at a low dose, it causes impotence, but at a high dose, it causes an erection. the concept of homeopathy is that a particular drug or chemical has some effect, whether good or bad, on a particular organ or tissue - the 'target organ'. it affects it, that's all you know, and depending on the dose, the effects can be helpful or harmful. so that's one theory.
but i still believe it was a contaminant that came from my new york clothing, which was probably abilify. and i don't know for sure.
i know that i felt better immediately today, wearing the new shoes and new uniform, and re-covering my car seat with plastic.
'passive detox' or 'passive decontamination' is the name i'm calling it. i call it 'passive' because i do not detoxify people by using new chemicals - for instance, i'm not going to use chelation, where they give people some activated charcoal, or something, and other chemicals, to try to get the heavy metals out of their bodies. and i'm not going to tell people to take a whole bunch of nutrient supplements and herbal pills. that's 'active.' you add a new chemical. i'm not adding anything, i'm just taking things away, but i'm doing a more thorough method of decontamination than any other 'detox' programs do. there are lots of detox programs and methods that exist, but i haven't seen anything yet that mentions clothing and surface contamination that goes through the skin (transdermal route of entry) and affects the body at microdosages for many months or years, even after somebody stops using the drug.
so 'we' were thinking about this, all day long - i was talking to voices about it, and they were seeing it as a program or method or protocol to follow, a set of rules for decontaminating yourself from drugs and chemicals that cause symptoms by entering the body through the skin.
i was overjoyed by the results. the new clothing and new shoes worked - i got rid of the contamination, and felt better immediately, the very first day.
it will be difficult to fix the car seats. i was thinking about reupholstering them. anything durable, any objects or belongings that are very expensive, and sentimental, things that can't be cleaned off or thrown in the garbage - those will be the worst.
this is like a 'cursed item.' cursed objects might be real. all you have to do is contaminate something with a poison that cannot be washed off, and it's 'cursed' forever. there are rumors that have been around for hundreds, or thousands, of years, about magic, and some of the phenomena can be explained if you know about transdermal drug contamination. cursed areas, cursed locations, cursed people, the 'untouchable castes,' all of those things could be explained if you knew that some people, places, or things were covered with chemicals or drugs that made them sick and would be passed from person to person through touch.
so it's nice to have hope.
dealing with air pollution will be a little more difficult... the health problems caused by urban air pollution - that's what i'm researching now. or rather, researched a little bit recently. 'dabbled in.'
so far:
1. no vaccines
2. no synthetic dietary supplements: vitamins, minerals
3. no drugs, no herbal drugs, no alternative medicine drugs (there could be some exceptions to this)
4. avoid air pollution
5. avoid contaminated objects and surfaces, avoid plants and drugs and chemicals that cause contamination
6. eliminate certain foods and chemicals from the diet, which can trigger reactions in some people
7. no dental fillings of any kind, no retainers, no braces
8. no removal of body parts, organs, teeth, tonsils, appendix, foreskin, etc
9. no implants, like pacemakers or defibrillators (i don't know what to do about pacemakers - i don't know enough about them)
10. no drinking tap water
i'm sure there are more things i'm forgetting, which i will think of as soon as i've posted this. or rather, 'they' will think of, and remind me about. there are more things to do and things to avoid, on the list of ways to prevent chronic illnesses.
what i have lived through is almost unimaginable to anyone who hasn't experienced environmental illness or chemical sensitivity.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
The Great Chemical Purge of '09 - Toxic Fumes and Environmental Illness
This is hard to explain, because I'm sitting in my apartment, and I can't think clearly. I'm spending as little time in here as possible right now.
I've had severe fatigue for a while now, but I've had bouts of fatigue on and off for years, usually triggered by chemicals. I don't always know right away what's causing it. It takes troubleshooting and trial and error.
In the past couple days, the fatigue turned into the scary kind of sleepiness, where it's not like the usual chronic fatigue, but instead, it's more the 'Carbon Monoxide Is Putting Me To Sleep' kind of fatigue. I can't find my carbon monoxide detector - I think I might have left it at McDonald's or something, back in the great 'Poisonous Fumes At McDonald's' incident in December 2007. (I think I wrote about that one on MySpace. 'Go ahead and fire me!') But I don't think it's carbon monoxide.
(In addition to the fatigue and sleepiness, I also had almost two weeks of recurring Norovirus, which developed into appendicitis. The appendicitis is going away on its own. Viral appendicitis can happen when you get an ordinary stomach virus, but it's usually mild and it heals itself. I have had *mild* viral appendicitis many times before and I recognize the feeling. But with two weeks of Norovirus, it was getting bad enough that I was ready to talk to the doctor - and that's saying something. Just when I was about to look up a doctor in the phone book, the Norovirus went away and the appendicitis died down.)
So far I've had a couple theories. There is definitely bad air. I feel it when I breathe, especially in certain locations. It's very similar to what happened at McDonald's. And this is the third time that I have had a toxic fumes incident in my apartment. The previous two times, it seemed to have been triggered by cleaning chemicals.
Well, I just recently sprayed some Windex in the bathroom, and last time I had a toxic fumes incident, I had recently done something similar, except that it had bleach in it last time. This time, there was no bleach. I am not sure if the bad air is caused by the chemicals or if it has some other unknown cause. But it began shortly after I used that spray.
While trying to find the problem, I found a pool of mystery liquid which was in the middle of a pile of mystery powder. You don't know how messy my house is. This mess is the result of several years of unimaginable disaster and a lack of social support. (The lack of social support is finally being fixed right now, a little at a time.)
I had a whole bunch of bottles of cleaning chemicals sitting around in the kitchen on the floor, which I had been using to attempt to clean the herbal oils out of the laundry. (It didn't work, and the chemicals made everything much worse than it had been originally.) I just recently moved a bunch of junk around, and there was one bottle that I sort of kicked from one pile of junk into another pile of junk.
I had about a dozen different boxes and bottles of various things all around. There was Borax (I got rid of that long ago because it made me so sick), bleach, ammonia, PineSol, some kind of wood-cleaning oil, Windex, carpet shampoos, Mr. Clean, and other things. The one that spilled was the PineSol. Oh yeah, I also had de-limer and rust remover, and I remember that the de-limer we used at McDonald's was horrible to breathe, so I didn't trust the one that I had.
After cleaning up the spill as well as I could, I then collected every single bottle of every single chemical that I had, and I threw all of them away, out in the dumpster. (Definition of 'chemical': something liquid or powder, usually in a bottle or can, intended for cleaning, and able to react easily with other chemicals. It's a vague definition. I realize that, technically, all physical objects in the universe are made out of chemicals.) I don't use those things except on very rare occasions. I bought them all out of desperation when I was trying to fix the laundry problem.
Some of the bottles had been there for years. They are now no longer a hazard in my house.
I slept with the windows open last night. I bought a sleeping bag so I could keep warm.
Even though I wiped up the spill, there is still something wrong with the air. I am going to try a couple things. First, I've had the windows open. I will try again cleaning up the area where the spill was, and cleaning it more thoroughly. I am also observing the hot water heater because there seems to be bad air lingering in that area, although that could be just because it's back in an enclosed corner where the air doesn't circulate much. The water heater is electric, *NOT GAS*, thank goodness, so it isn't having a gas problem. I am afraid of gas appliances. They really can put out carbon monoxide. There are no appliances in my apartment or in this house anywhere that could produce carbon monoxide. It's most likely a chemical problem from the cleaning fluids.
So, I didn't sleep very well last night. I actually got a second sleeping bag just this afternoon. The first sleeping back was a lightweight one, and I used it while sleeping indoors. The one I bought today is a heavy-duty one and I am going to see what happens if I try to take a nap in my car.
This is deja-vu. It was the dead of winter the last two times that I had toxic fumes incidents. In 2007, the ephedra/tobacco/herbs cleanup triggered an incident, and I attempted to sleep in my car a couple times, and it was in the early spring or late winter, maybe around March, or April. In 2008, the incident was mild enough that I was able to handle it by just opening the bathroom window and putting a fan on - but it was also in the winter, around February.
This incident is mild enough, and I'm pretty sure it's the little pool of mystery chemicals that was on the floor in the kitchen. So I don't expect it to be that big of a deal to clean up and air out, and I expect it to be fixed in a day or two. In a way I'm glad it happened, because it caused me to throw away all of the bottles of cleaning chemicals that I wasn't using, and I'm happy to be rid of them. I will not buy cleaning chemicals again - I don't want any chemicals in my house except for just a couple of small, simple things that are less threatening. (Like dish detergent.)
The other positive thing is that I have spent the past few months meeting more people and making some (tentative) new friends, local people, so if it's an emergency, there are real people who I can go to if I have a situation so severe that I have to get out of the apartment immediately. This hasn't quite reached that phase yet, but if it did, I'd have somewhere to go.
The other aspect of this is that I recently changed my work schedule so that I'm on three days a week. I wasn't quite ready to do that, but I had to, because, as I said, I've had the problem with fatigue and it was getting worse, and I was having trouble going to work and having trouble concentrating and getting my job done. (There was an incident where I was supposed to make a whole bunch of salads because the salads were going on sale the next day, and I didn't get it done, and everybody was angry. And it was mostly because I was too tired to think clearly, and I didn't communicate with them about how many salads I could realistically produce in a certain period of time, while also shutting everything down and cleaning up. It would not have been possible for any person to do it, but I said yes, I could do it, and they all expected that I would do as I said.)
This is my very first week with the three days schedule, and cleaning up the house is exactly the type of thing I intended to do during that 'free' time. (I don't really feel like I have any actual free leisure time to do fun things - my life is still too full of problems and anxieties.)
This is the year of asking for help and getting more social support and meeting people. That's the only thing that can help me right now, getting more people involved in my life. The problems and disasters were piling up faster and faster, and they buried me. I could not clean up one disaster before the next disaster hit. And the time is passing. So I am doing something different now, and I am getting people to help.
So that's my day today. There's a lot more space in the kitchen with all of that clutter gone.
I've had severe fatigue for a while now, but I've had bouts of fatigue on and off for years, usually triggered by chemicals. I don't always know right away what's causing it. It takes troubleshooting and trial and error.
In the past couple days, the fatigue turned into the scary kind of sleepiness, where it's not like the usual chronic fatigue, but instead, it's more the 'Carbon Monoxide Is Putting Me To Sleep' kind of fatigue. I can't find my carbon monoxide detector - I think I might have left it at McDonald's or something, back in the great 'Poisonous Fumes At McDonald's' incident in December 2007. (I think I wrote about that one on MySpace. 'Go ahead and fire me!') But I don't think it's carbon monoxide.
(In addition to the fatigue and sleepiness, I also had almost two weeks of recurring Norovirus, which developed into appendicitis. The appendicitis is going away on its own. Viral appendicitis can happen when you get an ordinary stomach virus, but it's usually mild and it heals itself. I have had *mild* viral appendicitis many times before and I recognize the feeling. But with two weeks of Norovirus, it was getting bad enough that I was ready to talk to the doctor - and that's saying something. Just when I was about to look up a doctor in the phone book, the Norovirus went away and the appendicitis died down.)
So far I've had a couple theories. There is definitely bad air. I feel it when I breathe, especially in certain locations. It's very similar to what happened at McDonald's. And this is the third time that I have had a toxic fumes incident in my apartment. The previous two times, it seemed to have been triggered by cleaning chemicals.
Well, I just recently sprayed some Windex in the bathroom, and last time I had a toxic fumes incident, I had recently done something similar, except that it had bleach in it last time. This time, there was no bleach. I am not sure if the bad air is caused by the chemicals or if it has some other unknown cause. But it began shortly after I used that spray.
While trying to find the problem, I found a pool of mystery liquid which was in the middle of a pile of mystery powder. You don't know how messy my house is. This mess is the result of several years of unimaginable disaster and a lack of social support. (The lack of social support is finally being fixed right now, a little at a time.)
I had a whole bunch of bottles of cleaning chemicals sitting around in the kitchen on the floor, which I had been using to attempt to clean the herbal oils out of the laundry. (It didn't work, and the chemicals made everything much worse than it had been originally.) I just recently moved a bunch of junk around, and there was one bottle that I sort of kicked from one pile of junk into another pile of junk.
I had about a dozen different boxes and bottles of various things all around. There was Borax (I got rid of that long ago because it made me so sick), bleach, ammonia, PineSol, some kind of wood-cleaning oil, Windex, carpet shampoos, Mr. Clean, and other things. The one that spilled was the PineSol. Oh yeah, I also had de-limer and rust remover, and I remember that the de-limer we used at McDonald's was horrible to breathe, so I didn't trust the one that I had.
After cleaning up the spill as well as I could, I then collected every single bottle of every single chemical that I had, and I threw all of them away, out in the dumpster. (Definition of 'chemical': something liquid or powder, usually in a bottle or can, intended for cleaning, and able to react easily with other chemicals. It's a vague definition. I realize that, technically, all physical objects in the universe are made out of chemicals.) I don't use those things except on very rare occasions. I bought them all out of desperation when I was trying to fix the laundry problem.
Some of the bottles had been there for years. They are now no longer a hazard in my house.
I slept with the windows open last night. I bought a sleeping bag so I could keep warm.
Even though I wiped up the spill, there is still something wrong with the air. I am going to try a couple things. First, I've had the windows open. I will try again cleaning up the area where the spill was, and cleaning it more thoroughly. I am also observing the hot water heater because there seems to be bad air lingering in that area, although that could be just because it's back in an enclosed corner where the air doesn't circulate much. The water heater is electric, *NOT GAS*, thank goodness, so it isn't having a gas problem. I am afraid of gas appliances. They really can put out carbon monoxide. There are no appliances in my apartment or in this house anywhere that could produce carbon monoxide. It's most likely a chemical problem from the cleaning fluids.
So, I didn't sleep very well last night. I actually got a second sleeping bag just this afternoon. The first sleeping back was a lightweight one, and I used it while sleeping indoors. The one I bought today is a heavy-duty one and I am going to see what happens if I try to take a nap in my car.
This is deja-vu. It was the dead of winter the last two times that I had toxic fumes incidents. In 2007, the ephedra/tobacco/herbs cleanup triggered an incident, and I attempted to sleep in my car a couple times, and it was in the early spring or late winter, maybe around March, or April. In 2008, the incident was mild enough that I was able to handle it by just opening the bathroom window and putting a fan on - but it was also in the winter, around February.
This incident is mild enough, and I'm pretty sure it's the little pool of mystery chemicals that was on the floor in the kitchen. So I don't expect it to be that big of a deal to clean up and air out, and I expect it to be fixed in a day or two. In a way I'm glad it happened, because it caused me to throw away all of the bottles of cleaning chemicals that I wasn't using, and I'm happy to be rid of them. I will not buy cleaning chemicals again - I don't want any chemicals in my house except for just a couple of small, simple things that are less threatening. (Like dish detergent.)
The other positive thing is that I have spent the past few months meeting more people and making some (tentative) new friends, local people, so if it's an emergency, there are real people who I can go to if I have a situation so severe that I have to get out of the apartment immediately. This hasn't quite reached that phase yet, but if it did, I'd have somewhere to go.
The other aspect of this is that I recently changed my work schedule so that I'm on three days a week. I wasn't quite ready to do that, but I had to, because, as I said, I've had the problem with fatigue and it was getting worse, and I was having trouble going to work and having trouble concentrating and getting my job done. (There was an incident where I was supposed to make a whole bunch of salads because the salads were going on sale the next day, and I didn't get it done, and everybody was angry. And it was mostly because I was too tired to think clearly, and I didn't communicate with them about how many salads I could realistically produce in a certain period of time, while also shutting everything down and cleaning up. It would not have been possible for any person to do it, but I said yes, I could do it, and they all expected that I would do as I said.)
This is my very first week with the three days schedule, and cleaning up the house is exactly the type of thing I intended to do during that 'free' time. (I don't really feel like I have any actual free leisure time to do fun things - my life is still too full of problems and anxieties.)
This is the year of asking for help and getting more social support and meeting people. That's the only thing that can help me right now, getting more people involved in my life. The problems and disasters were piling up faster and faster, and they buried me. I could not clean up one disaster before the next disaster hit. And the time is passing. So I am doing something different now, and I am getting people to help.
So that's my day today. There's a lot more space in the kitchen with all of that clutter gone.
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