by Priscilla J. Farrell
Severe brain dysfunction, dizziness, inability to function on my job as an accountant found me at home on medical leave, piecing together the puzzle that brought on severe multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS). It was not an overt poisoning, but rather a long progression of seemingly inconsequential exposures that preceded my disability.
“We frequently had odors in our yard from the oil refineries when you were a baby,” my mother told me recently. “Maybe that’s what caused your eczema, only your cute little face was free of the rash.” She went on to say that after two years of the miserable condition, the doctor suggested milk allergies might be the cause. “But we moved to California and it mostly cleared up,” she said.
As a young teenager, I remember runny noses, constipation, swollen stomach and big circles under my eyes. Well, I was still drinking milk. As a young adult I came down with mononucleosis, then, like many women, I went on the birth control pill, enduring various side effects. I developed hypoglycemia that made me almost crazy and seasonal hay fever, another reason for swollen eyes and nasal congestion. I had thin hair, and pale, wrinkled skin. I still had no waistline in spite of being underweight. By my late twenties, I had chronic, genital herpes. I had become despondent about my condition, when I happened onto a health food store that pointed me to a book: Supernutrition, Megavitamin Revolution, by Richard Passwater. I devoured it. My health took an amazing turnaround.
“Do you have a store here?” one acquaintance asked when she saw my stock of vitamin bottles in a back room.
“Don’t you see? I cured my herpes with these vitamins.” I was excited. “You can do it, too.”
But sensitivities to perfumes and tobacco smoke began to be a problem. Knowing no better, I started using pesticides to control the fleas on my cats. We built a new house: new carpet, paint, wallboard, etc. Treated the carpet with pesticides. I developed sleeping problems. Several years later, working in a school building with on-going construction, poor ventilation, and many heavily scented occupants, I began to get dizzy. Unlike the painful headaches that I’d had around some perfumes, being high seemed manageable. I was forty-seven at the time.
“I’ll tough it out,” I thought, hoping naively for accommodation.
I didn’t realize other problems that I’d been experiencing were all related to MCS: mini black outs at my desk, bouts of diarrhea, an irregular pulse, fatigue and problems with bladder control. These were all new since starting work at this job the previous year. I also did not know about the “spreading phenomena,” that soon I would be reacting to just about everything. Within a few weeks of the onset of brain dysfunction, I was transferred to a different wing of the building, in the “scent-free” library. The change just postponed the inevitable.
“How can you even go into that place?” another victim of environmental illness asked me. “My eyes start to quiver and my muscles go weak,” she said. “ The pesticides they use circulate through the whole building.” Now strong formaldehyde contamination from books, newspapers and even the mail was part of my library assistant job.
It took three months for me to be hyper-sensitized again. I was working in a small office when I almost fell over a stack of new books. I felt like I was drunk. My husband came and drove me home. Persisting in my efforts to work, I brought paperwork home to do, but the odor from the printed material made me dizzy again. I was bumping into things, doing simple errands was now a monumental task. Eventually, my medical leave ran out. With an MCS diagnosis and no prognosis for recovery, I lost my job.
After a nine-month period of healing, I attempted to return to the workforce as a self-employed, non-toxic housekeeper. I had been to many medical specialists, even done faith healing. I was hopeful. But the combination of new exposures and the task of making my own home safe turned out to be another overload situation. I continued to become sensitized to more things. My reactions increased to include muscle and joint pain, stomach churning and spinal subluxations. After a year of very part-time work, I was knocked down further by a couple of incidents that a normal person wouldn’t have blinked at. The outcome: sleep dysfunction and fatigue, both chronic. After almost two years, the picture is still bleak. Emotionally I have run the course from anger and denial, to grief and depression.
“My life is totally truncated,” I told my mother recently. “I do what I can in a day and pat myself on the back. I am grateful for what I can do and for the health that I do still have.”
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Note: At the time of writing this article, I am experiencing some relief from my symptoms using a variety of free form amino acids. But given my medical history, I am not expecting a quick fix.
Priscilla Farrell was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming and grew up on the outskirts of San Francisco. She holds a B.S. degree in Business Administration from California State University at Sacramento and did graduate work at Southern Oregon State College in Ashland. She currently lives in NW Arkansas, with her husband, Jack Goodell.
ã 2001 Priscilla J. Farrell