A Time to Weep

After watching the video of Dr. L. Christine Oliver (Harvard/Massachusetts General Hospital) and Alison Johnson, author, speaking frankly about the reality of toxic injury/MCS, I knew what my next subject had to be.

Reading from her book, Amputated Lives - Coping with Chemical Sensitivity, Ms. Johnson draws our attention to the ravages of misunderstanding and disbelief which can lead an MCS sufferer to suicide or to repeat attempts at suicide.  She points out that "there are many ways to assist in suicide" -- one way being through disbelief in the reality of MCS.

Disbelief can feel scathing at times.  When we feel strong enough within, we can try to let it roll off our backs. When we feel extremely poisoned, weak, helpless, sad, and lonely, disbelief can feel like a cruel punishment.  We might then rack our brains for ways to explain our ongoing state of toxic injury better "the next time."  Simultaneously, we already know how very low the common tolerance is for such verbosity on our parts.  We're walking a thin line and we know it.  

When we really need the physical assistance of others to accomplish physical labors, we often can't accept the help that is offered.  Due to others' often incomplete picture of chemical sensitivity (what they've already heard from us in the course of things is quite enough, thank you), they're liable to come to us wearing one scented product or another that still puts our bodies over the edge.  If we mention this lingering scent, let it suffice to say that reactions to such a "complaint" can vary widely.  The mere mention of the problem could send the help right back out the door in disgust.

But, more often than that, it will simply inspire further, more intractable disbelief.  And where do we go from there?

To be disbelieved when you're telling the truth, when your nose really is that bionic, when the loss of balance really is that bad, when the drugged, electrically charged feeling intensifies just as you're speaking to the person about the scent in your midst, when you know that you're going to be disabled for the next two or three days for every few minutes longer you speak with this person  . . . or, one step worse, you've had to give up even broaching the subject at all . . . . .

This is a phenomenon so grinding, so cognitively torturous, and so physically sickening, I'd rather not even go there.

But this -- this continual need to prove oneself and beg while "under the gun" for real support, support which often does not materialize while friendship blithely burns out -- this is what drives worn down, desperate souls to the brink.

The toxically injured are often pushed out of the easy come-and-go of social life, only to find, once we are "out there," that very few people -- if any -- actually miss us.  Why is this so?  Because we've been pushed back so long and so steadily by persistent disbelief in our toxic injury, by lack of real concern for our plight, and by others' nonnegotiable choice of fragrances over us, they've finally just assumed that "we left them."

If we lack a loving spouse or a close-to-the-heart best friend, this is a terrifyingly cold, abandoned place to be.

And many are there right now.

Please, friends and new readers, remember them.

~ Carolyn