Interminable Analysis

Very strange.  There's a somewhat health-oriented store from which I buy certain groceries, but which usually causes me some sort of MCS trouble.

Last night was the most prompt example of "trouble."  The grocery store is situated a few stores away from a laundromat.  Now and then the laundromat emits one of its distinctly powerful laundry fragrances.  This occurred last night as I was walking into the grocery store.  The minute I picked up a shopper's basket and the doors closed behind me, the hives began.  My palms, in a flash, were reddened and felt raw, itchy.  My arms, too, became itchy and the hives began.  When I returned to my car to drive home, my palms felt raw, sore, and itchy as they gripped the steering wheel.  The hives came in batches all night, straight through until 4:30 a.m., when sleep finally triumphed over them.  By then they had afflicted my arms, legs, and the backs of my hands for hours on end, while my palms had remained red, raw, and itchy. 

There are days when I am just speechless and wondering.  This is one of those days.  Perhaps sometime, in the future, I will learn what gives me such repetitive trouble at that strip mall or in that particular store.  For now, I'll have to assume that it's the frequent emitting of synthetic laundry scents all around the outside of the store.  But then again, I visit another strip mall regularly, where the laundromat is in much closer proximity to the stores I actually enter, and reactive hives do not occur.  So perhaps it really is something within the walls of this particular grocery store . . . . .  I should consider some kind of fragrance or chemical residue on the basket handles, as well.  Very tricky matter.  I recall no scent on my hands afterwards.

Possibilities also include some kind of a standard, underlying chemical "on premises" within the store -- a cleaning agent, a deodorizer, a pesticide, a piped-in "food scent"  -- now this is a possibility based upon previous visits, because strong and inexplicable food scents there have varied -- who knows?

I surely don't.  Now and then it's almost a relief to say, "I'm stumped."  There are just too many factors at play for me, a layperson, to be able to isolate the precise cause of this bout of hives.  There was also the early hint of a migraine in process.  I will hope that stays away, at least just for today . . . . .

Hopefully, one day, chemical regulations will be in place which will make this interminable "detective work" unnecessary.

Cheers!

~ Carolyn