Now that I believe that I am toward the end of a six week MCS challenge I thought I’d take the time to write a little about what has been going on. 

It’s been a while since I had given my apartment a really good ceiling to floor cleaning. In fact the last time I had was about three years ago when metals had become a problem in my living space once before. That time someone had sharpened some k

nives in the kitchen. Before it happened I had absolutely no idea how bad this very small amount of airborne metal dust would be. I had planned a seven day vacation before this happened and wound up using six of those days cleaning up the mess. At that time I vacuumed the entire house several times. Cleaned the inside and outside of all the cabinets and closets. Wiped down all the walls, washed the bedding several times and even removed all the appliances so I could clean behind them. After spending between 6 to 10 hours each day for six days I finally got the apartment back to normal.

Fast forward about a year from then. My now ex-girlfriend while in the process of moving out bought a motorcycle. This motorcycle needed some welding done on it. Both of us went down to a friend’s house and helped out as we could during the entire process. Now at this point the only other time I had ever had a real problem with metals was the previous issue with the knife sharpening. Metals were simply not too bad of an MCS trigger at the time so I my radar was simply not alerted to how big of a problem us going down and watching some welding would be. Metal got in our cloths, hair, motorcycle helmets… but I was not aware of this till it was way too late. We both got home, took showers, and changed out our cloths. We knew to do that much. The problem this time was the metal that had gotten into our helmets on the ride back to the apartment. Each time we put on our helmets and got into bed it transferred metal to the bedding. By the time I noticed what was going on it was way too late. The pillows were infested as well as much of the rest of the bedding. I threw out the pillows and washed the bedding many times. What I was not aware of was how much of the metals had gotten into the rest of the apartment. I felt bad for almost six months that time.

The good news is that when this last issue happened I had a lot of practice in taking care of it. Again let’s back up a little. The girl I’m dating right now is excellent when it comes to MCS. She is a friend form about twenty years ago and when she first ran across me she asked how I was doing. My response was to say, “The short version is Good, the much longer version is (the url to my MCS blog)” To her credit she read the entire blog over the next few days. We got to know each other again during the next few months and have been spending a lot of time together over the last four or five months now. She understands MCS. She has changed the way she does laundry at her house so that the detergent on the cloths will not cause me problems when she comes over. She is always willing to take a shower and/or change her cloths when she comes over if need be. If there is an issue that could remotely cause an issue she will always ask me. I could not ask for a better person to spend my time with. So what triggered this last metal related MCS issue? We could not get the top of a bottle of vinegar, she asked if she could use her knife to poke a hole in it and I said that she could… It turned out to be a very, very bad idea. The cheap tin in the bottle cap caused an almost instant, severe and prolonged issue. 

The next day I cleaned almost the entire kitchen. This was not enough. Over the next several weeks I again found the need to clean the entire apartment from top to bottom. I cleaned out every cupboard, closet, shelf, carpet, fixture, appliance and so forth. I vacuumed the back of the refrigerator. Behind the stove, the entire bathroom and even threw out the curtains in the kitchen. I cleaned all the blinds piece by piece, cleaned each item that was in the cupboards and threw out what could not be easily cleaned. I probably spent about four to twelve hours of cleaning on over a dozen different days. This included going over to friends houses and washing all the bedding several times and washing every article of clothing I own several times. In the end it has taken about six weeks to get the living space mostly clean and about $300 in cleaning supplies to get the job done. I say mostly because I hope the job is done but I suspect it may not be. Yesterday I took a total day off from everything and everyone to do nothing but rest from the last several weeks effort. I slept about thirteen hours then woke up for two hours only to pass out for another four. When I did wake up I played video games for about six hours then went back to sleep in my very clean and comfortable bed. I have felt better today than I have in the last six weeks since this entire ordeal started. I will say thank you to the girlfriend, she helped on several of those days and let me use her high capacity clothes washer to clean a lot of the bedding and clothing. 

I do not believe that poking a hole in a metal cap was the only item that set off this last round of cleaning. I suspect that I did not clean enough the last time metals got in to the apartment. So this was just the straw that broke the camel’s back or the last drop that broke the Rain Barrel. With any luck I’ve cleaned enough to have a small cushion when the next issue comes around.

One last very important item was that my mother gave me several bottles of chelating Herbs, that I have been taking double the recommended amount of for the last four weeks. This has helped to remove the metal that have gotten into me during this challenging time.

So I’ll let you all know how things turn out over the next few days. With luck I can again get back on track to moving forward in my life, instead of just scrambling to not fall too far down the rabbit hole.