Inspiration
Multiple Chemical Sensitivity
Heavy Metal
July 2012
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.