One of the most common questions I get is: "How are you able to work when you have MCS?"
The answer: "I didn't work for about 1 3/4 years because I couldn't. I'm working now because I got well enough to."
3 years ago I took a job that I was really interested in and wanted. I lasted for 1 year at the job before I had to quit because I was too sick to manage it.
I tell this story in more detail in this post.
I quit that job just after I had my first appointment with my naturopathic doctor. After hearing his assessment about my health, I admitted to myself that I really did need to devote myself to full time healing. I wasn't making money during this time, and my doctor bills have been expensive. I relied 100% on my husband to support me, which wasn't fair to him at all since he ended up needing to work well beyond full time hours. This has been a major cause of stress. If I had continued to work, however, I likely would have been fired at some point. As I explained in the post that I linked to above, I could hardly look people in the eye and talk intelligently - I was not able to function like a normal healthy person most of the time. What choice did I have?
If I wasn't able to rely 100% on my husband during that time, it would have become a serious challenge, if not impossibility. A challenge that far too many chronically ill people face. I might have tried to fight for disability, but getting disability requires an expensive legal battle that usually lasts years.
I could have tried to take a lesser part time job and prayed that I could have handled it. But it wouldn't have worked out. Why? What I didn't know at the time was that a big part of my problem was
Multiple Chemical Sensitives. I was too sick back then to know what all my symptoms meant, and I was essentially in a constant reaction. I did feel better at home than at work, and I assumed it was the stress of being at work that make me feel worse. Looking back, I was present when pesticides were being sprayed in our office, harsh cleaners were used on the carpets, automatic air fresheners were installed in the bathrooms, new ink was installed in the printers, etc. I was present around a lot of routine toxins. Toxins that I never used in my house. Any other lesser job would have kept me exposed to similar chemical toxins.
I have been incredibly blessed to have my hard-working husband supporting me through all this sickness. No other scenario would have allowed me to not work so I could heal. To those of you with chronic illness who are forced to work and stay very sick, live in poverty without medical help, and suffer financially due to your illness, my heart goes out to you. It's a wonder you continue fighting for your life. Someday when I'm healthy and rich, I'm going to start some sort of benefit fund for the chronically sick who can't get help. I want to do what I can to make the world a more hospitable place for the chronically sick.
It took close to a year of full time healing before my doctor was able to see that I have MCS. I had other health concerns, of course, but MCS made perfect sense. I'd been highly reactive my entire life, especially as a child. I've had a lot of food allergies, couldn't tolerate many medicines doctors had tried to put me on, many things caused me headaches (especially gray crayons,) and I regularly had unexplained eczema or rashes. At some point, my MCS did explode into something much worse. I got very sick (even got a sinus infection) from simply being in a Staples. I got dizzy with heartburn going into my church building. I went into a rage with harsh heart palpations in a JC Penny, later to have rashes all over. And so on and so forth. I had these reaction symptoms nearly every day for the year I was working, and they gradually became worse and worse. MCS makes perfect sense for what I went through.
It's been just under a year now of addressing MCS directly, but almost 2 years of healing my whole body from all its issues, and I've made a huge improvement. My doctor is amazing! But I've also put a lot of work into my healing.
How I, over time, worked up to being able to work my 12-15 hour/ week job:1. I was spending as much time as I needed dedicating myself to healing my entire body, not just MCS. I highly doubt my MCS would have calmed down if I didn't focus on improving my overall health. You can't rush healing. It takes years to get this sick, it's going to take years to get better.
2. I stuck religiously to my doctor's diet for me. I made a few mistakes here and there, but I always suffered the consequences. My body has been incredibly picky about what food it will tolerate. I had no idea that my "clean organic" diet that I was eating before seeing my doctor was causing so many of my heath issues. It's not just about eating organic whole foods, it's about eating the
right foods. As it turns out, I have no tolerance for grains, starches, sugars, alcohol, or dairy. I don't even tolerate brassica vegetables that well, but I will actually eat them in small amounts on occasion. Cutting out all the foods that I wasn't tolerating decreased my stress, improved my mental clarity, reduced the size of my gut, reduced the pain in my gut, reduced my inflammation, and allowed me actually gain energy from the food I could eat. Diet is so so so crucial!
3. I've been taking, and still take, my doctor's supplements and herbs. They're expensive, it's hard to take the 56+ pills a day, and my daily schedule gets tied to my ability to take them when I need to... but they have been worth it. They do help a lot. I have to heal all my organs which have become very fatigued and weak. The supplements are working for this. When organs such as the liver and kidneys aren't working well, they can't detox well. When they're overrun with toxins that they're too fatigued to push out, chemical sensitives only get stronger and stronger.
4. I've been taking my doctor's homeopathic remedy for MCS as well as his pills for MCS. I can't tell you what the remedy is - I just know it's made a big difference for me. I can tell you that taking his N-Acetyl-L-Cysteine and Reduced Glutathione have been, by far, the most helpful pills for MCS. I take 3 of each a day, but if I'm about to go somewhere with potential triggers (such as church or a store) then I'll take an extra one or two of each before going in. Glutathione is the body's natural antioxidant. N-Acetyl-L-Cysteine is the amino acid that's the precursor to glutathione, boosting natural glutathione production in the body. This antioxidant is very effective at cleaning toxins out of the body - the very toxins that cause reactions.
5. I get treatments. My doctor's clinic is set up with several treatments that promote healing. I do as many of them as I can afford. Each of them have provided me with a lot of relief.
http://humannaturenaturalhealth.com/treatments6. I give myself a couple of "treatments" at home. I invested in a
portable Far Infrared Sauna, which causes me to sweat profusely, meaning my skin is pushing out a ton of toxins. I also take
detox baths that promote sweating and restore some minerals in my body. I use my
acupressure mat very often.
7. I regularly visit my local chiropractor and acupuncturist. (My naturopathic doctor would do these for me, but he's in a different state and I travel to see him.) I cannot emphasis enough how helpful adjustments are - they free up the nerves in your spine that go to your organs, helping the nerves to function properly so the organs can function well. Acupuncture has been incredibly beneficial to me as well, and I notice that my body slows down and reacts more harshly to things when I go a while without acupuncture.
8. I'm addressing a systemic candida overgrowth infection. Candida can cause or intensify MCS, as the candida yeast feeds on the chemical toxins. I haven't written much about this yet, but I still plan to. The candida cleanse I'm on is a big part of the reason why I haven't blogged much lately. It's taking a lot out of me.
9. I avoid as much stress as possible. I avoid as many triggers as possible. I allow my body to stay as calm as possible as often as possible. This meant installing an reverse osmosis filter on my kitchen sink, getting rid of all of my polyester clothes and blankets and replacing them with natural fabrics, replacing plastic in my kitchen with a safe substance (like glass, stainless steel, cast iron, or bamboo,) switching to only fragrance-free soaps and cleaners in my house, hiring an organic lawn care company with a safer product, hiring someone to clean the mold out of our house, and so on and so forth. It also means I no longer eat out too. I've had to alter a lot about the way I live my life in order to avoid triggers. It's a major challenge, but it's been absolutely necessary to avoid as many triggers as possible.
10. Once I felt ready and capable, I spent months searching for job openings at businesses that would have the least amounts of triggers. I found a few places in town that I can be in without getting sick, or at least not too sick. When one of them announced a job opening, I applied right away in person and tried to make a good impression. I actually ended up with a couple of offers, so I was able to choose the job that offered the least amount of hours with the most respect to my health condition, knowing I simply didn't have the energy for more than 15 hours a week. The job I chose is at a natural health products store. It's small, locally owned, and doesn't attract stinky customers that I can't be around without getting sick. The store itself is quite nice and sells foods and supplements I already knew enough about, but is challenging me to learn a lot more, which I love. The learning curve was small, it's usually a relaxed atmosphere, and it's not too often that there are stinky triggers in the store. It also keeps me on my feet moving, as opposed to at a computer all day, which would make me worse.
How I deal with triggers on the job:
This is harder to answer, but the fact is that I rely on all the healing tactics I do at home. The more I take care of myself, keeping myself clean, detoxing/ sweating regularly, makes it so I can tolerate more triggers with less harsh reactions. When I first took the job, I couldn't use the Sharpie pens without holding my breath. I got immediate headaches from them. Now I can actually use them for a short period of time without holding my breath. I'm not sure why. Did I build up a tolerance, or is it because I'm using my sauna more and taking more baths than before I started working?
There have been a couple of times when a heavily perfumed customer needs my help. In one instance I was able to have a co-worker help that customer instead of me. I just politely said "My co-worker is better able to help you with this than I am, would you mind waiting a moment and I'll have her come help you?" In the other instance, I spent the least amount of time with the customer as possible and then ran back to the break room and took a few glutathione pills. My headache, fever, heart palpitations, and gut ache calmed down in about an hour. The truly amazing part is that I did manage to help her and was able to continue working through the reaction - that's how much I've healed!
But it did get to the point two days ago where I had to go home early from getting too sick. I wasn't feeling well all day anyway as I was overly exhausted and I was suffering some abnormally bad PMS (I'm on a new anti-fungal for my candida that is quite strong,) but then it hit me like a brick wall. I had no idea what was causing the reaction, but I got hit with an anxiety attack so strong that I had to leave. I was losing control. Once I got outside and started walking to my car I found the source: one single train cart was stopped on the train tracks right behind our parking lot. It was puffing out clouds of black smoke, which the wind carried right towards the store, and me. I didn't feel much better until the next morning, so it took the majority of the day and night to recover from that one.
In conclusion:
Healing is VERY hard work! It requires a lot of time, a lot of dedication, a lot of faith, a lot of money, and a lot of self-love. I always treated myself as "worth it." If I didn't, if I would have assumed that my life wasn't worth saving because I was a leech to society, I wouldn't have gotten better. I had to believe that God was keeping me alive for a reason, and that with enough work and medical help that I could live up to His will for me.
If you're suffering with MCS, looking for answers, I hope this blog has helped you, not discouraged you. I never looked at my healing process in the big picture. It would have overwhelmed me and scared me - I would have assumed it was too much for me to handle considering how fatigued I was! I always took it one step at a time, doing what I needed to at every moment. Before I knew it, I made a lot of progress!
I also want to stress that what has been working for me may not be what works for you. What causes MCS in one person may not be the cause in another person. There are other people who have had success healing from MCS who have used different approaches. I encourage you to read other MCS blogs, talk to natural doctors, and learn your own body. But don't give up. Don't give in. MCS might rule your life, but you can find a good life within the confines of MCS.
