I'm quietly resting at home today, drinking fluids.
While "earthing" yesterday at Gloucester Bay, Massachusetts, I tried twice to Tweet a photo. Neither photo went through.
I took this as a sign: It was an oxymoron to "earth" with a cell phone. I turned off the device -- except to take isolated photos when something picturesque came into view -- and luxuriated in the serenity of a large, sun-warmed rock. Ensconced upon this benevolent chair, I finally felt the earth under me. Contact. One-to-one. Self-to-rock. This was a physical connection which expanded exponentially to include the reverberations of sand, ocean, currents, sun, and sky. I wasn't about to move. Not yet. Not for a while.
A mother with a vivid Bostonian accent tended energetically to her child on the sand. I enjoyed the ring of both accent and action. Hearty. Direct. Strong. Capable.
I let the sun shine on my swollen legs draped over chosen rock. Warmth from above and below. Now, I had it all.
With every little lap of the tide, gratitude washed over me. I was alive. Some 15+ hours earlier, the word "hospital" had been coursing through my head. Unable either to sit or to lie down, I had leaned on hotel windowsill, chair, and desk like a woman in labor. Could barely speak, barely moan. Color gray and green, I'd alternated between hot and cold as the pain seized and temporarily paralyzed each set of internal organs in turn, beginning with a sore, abrasive sensation in the highest region of the stomach and working its way down over a 12-hour period.
First, the muscles seized up and squeezed me in the region of the pancreas and liver. Hours later, the pain moved down into the kidney area. Wherever it moved in the front and side, the pain also went to the corresponding level of my back, so that sitting against or lying upon the affected areas was impossible. I was sore from the inside to the outside. The kidney area was then gripped in this way for several hours. Pressure was building inside of me because digestion and metabolism were literally frozen at these places. I was swelling more and more in the middle, could barely cart myself around, the sensation of being weighted down was increasing, and I thought I might die. I went from sweaty to chilly, color green to gray, back and forth, back and forth.
I felt the instinct to get myself outdoors. I crept my way down the hotel stairs, barely able to inhale against the neurological restriction gripping me, outside to the car. I tried to sit in the passenger seat with the windows open. My back was too painful in the kidney area. It was impossible to lean back. My middle was growing intolerably heavy with the increasing swelling of paralyzed digestion. I could barely move, but I stood up and leaned on the open car door, not caring what I looked like. I was laboring against something toxic that was trying to kill me. That's all I knew.
Insight came with a blast when I was able to focus on the significance of a relief measure I'd discovered several years ago. It's not a cure, but it always relieves to a marked extent. This relief measure consists of: (1) intense massage pressure applied to the feet (especially to the soles/arches), and (2) the squeezing of the pad of the big toe. These measures have the effect of helping release the grip of the digestive/abdominal/back muscles to some extent, enough to enable easier breathing and some relaxation under the overall feeling of intense muscular restriction and pain. There are apparently some noteworthy nerve paths from these areas of the feet to the digestive muscles.
Out there by the car, the significance of the consistent effectiveness of this partial relief measure pierced through my consciousness with absolute certainty: What I was experiencing, although it played out through the entire digestive tract, was definitely a neurological event . . . poisoned tissue and nerves recoiling, systemically.
Let me count the triggers: Extreme and abrasive synthetic scents (e.g., chemical deodorizers) in a historical building we'd visited that afternoon. I was exposed to these repeatedly, on and off, for over an hour. Two to 15 minutes is usually sufficient to do damage to me. This went above and beyond. Shortly before that, I'd ingested a restaurant meal of grilled cheese and french fries. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd had grilled cheese out. This kind of restaurant meal often involves the spraying of pans with synthetic oils.
During my last trip involving a hotel stay in September, 2013, it was highly probable that a hotel breakfast I'd eaten had come from cookware sprayed with a synthetic oil. If my meal had not been affected by synthetic spray right there on the buffet line, then it was clear that the cooks would obviously have had no objection, in general, to using this spray within the kitchen -- from whence the food emerged.
This had been a chemical procedure which was easy to see, although the realization that it might well have affected my own food came much later. Much spraying of the oil had been done by servers and guests, alternately, on the buffet line where some food items were cooking. The guests were spraying it on the cookware excessively, some doing this several times over. I'd had a physical reaction, on the way home from that trip, identical to the reaction I've been describing here, above. In that hotel, last September, there had also seemed to have been reapplications of synthetic deodorizers in the public areas.
The essence of the problem, as I see it, is the impact of both inhaled and ingested neurotoxins. For me, this impact is disastrous. In case I had any doubts, I realized this weekend that I am still very chemically sensitive. I need to pay attention.
I reflected upon the increased swelling of my lower limbs over the past several weeks and months . . . which has steadily improved since this physically cataclysmic event of two nights ago. My knees are beginning to feel like knees again, instead of like two swollen and gritty pools of sludge. The swelling around my ankles has come down noticeably. I've been exceptionally careful, since two nights ago, to avoid chemicals in food and air.
What had been different for me over the past year -- or two?
Increasingly, I've exposed myself to more and more neurotoxins, neglectful of a process called "masking." It is said that chemical sensitivity, over time, can change in its physical symptomatology. Some symptoms can disappear, or become "masked," while the chemical sensitivity continues and even increases on other physical levels. Quietly, unobtrusively, the body is overwhelmed until it becomes "too sick to be sick." The toxicity, at this point, is so bad, it's embedded deeply within the body. Organ systems can be affected.
Over the past year, especially, I've tried to approximate doing everything "normal" people do. I've eaten plenty of foods with chemical additives, thinking I was scoring so many victories. There have been no complete cessations of airborne chemical exposures for me anymore -- it's been one exposure on top of another within a day or two of the last one. My rest periods from chemical exposures used to be longer, more defined, more deliberate. They worked.
Until digestion resumed and my metabolism started flowing smoothly again yesterday and today, I hadn't realized I'd been so utterly filled with ingested and airborne toxins that I couldn't tell up from down, so to speak. Now, I feel much more clean and clear. Because the Massachusetts hotel room, besides being impeccably clean, was also remarkably scent-free, I was able to recover there beside an open window. I slept the longest I've slept in months. There is a calm to my physical being, a more fully "present" feeling, a long-missed sensation of being "in command."
It took a severe crisis to bring this about. But since it did, and since I lived through it, I can discern through my body and mind the huge impact of being free of those toxins. I am so grateful. Grateful to have learned this priceless lesson:
I am truly chemically sensitive, and denial is not an option. Being able to reclaim that truth and work with it -- even at this late date, whether or not I still have Lyme disease -- is a gift that I dare not spurn.
Cheers!
~ Carolyn
While "earthing" yesterday at Gloucester Bay, Massachusetts, I tried twice to Tweet a photo. Neither photo went through.
I took this as a sign: It was an oxymoron to "earth" with a cell phone. I turned off the device -- except to take isolated photos when something picturesque came into view -- and luxuriated in the serenity of a large, sun-warmed rock. Ensconced upon this benevolent chair, I finally felt the earth under me. Contact. One-to-one. Self-to-rock. This was a physical connection which expanded exponentially to include the reverberations of sand, ocean, currents, sun, and sky. I wasn't about to move. Not yet. Not for a while.
A mother with a vivid Bostonian accent tended energetically to her child on the sand. I enjoyed the ring of both accent and action. Hearty. Direct. Strong. Capable.
I let the sun shine on my swollen legs draped over chosen rock. Warmth from above and below. Now, I had it all.
With every little lap of the tide, gratitude washed over me. I was alive. Some 15+ hours earlier, the word "hospital" had been coursing through my head. Unable either to sit or to lie down, I had leaned on hotel windowsill, chair, and desk like a woman in labor. Could barely speak, barely moan. Color gray and green, I'd alternated between hot and cold as the pain seized and temporarily paralyzed each set of internal organs in turn, beginning with a sore, abrasive sensation in the highest region of the stomach and working its way down over a 12-hour period.
First, the muscles seized up and squeezed me in the region of the pancreas and liver. Hours later, the pain moved down into the kidney area. Wherever it moved in the front and side, the pain also went to the corresponding level of my back, so that sitting against or lying upon the affected areas was impossible. I was sore from the inside to the outside. The kidney area was then gripped in this way for several hours. Pressure was building inside of me because digestion and metabolism were literally frozen at these places. I was swelling more and more in the middle, could barely cart myself around, the sensation of being weighted down was increasing, and I thought I might die. I went from sweaty to chilly, color green to gray, back and forth, back and forth.
I felt the instinct to get myself outdoors. I crept my way down the hotel stairs, barely able to inhale against the neurological restriction gripping me, outside to the car. I tried to sit in the passenger seat with the windows open. My back was too painful in the kidney area. It was impossible to lean back. My middle was growing intolerably heavy with the increasing swelling of paralyzed digestion. I could barely move, but I stood up and leaned on the open car door, not caring what I looked like. I was laboring against something toxic that was trying to kill me. That's all I knew.
Insight came with a blast when I was able to focus on the significance of a relief measure I'd discovered several years ago. It's not a cure, but it always relieves to a marked extent. This relief measure consists of: (1) intense massage pressure applied to the feet (especially to the soles/arches), and (2) the squeezing of the pad of the big toe. These measures have the effect of helping release the grip of the digestive/abdominal/back muscles to some extent, enough to enable easier breathing and some relaxation under the overall feeling of intense muscular restriction and pain. There are apparently some noteworthy nerve paths from these areas of the feet to the digestive muscles.
Out there by the car, the significance of the consistent effectiveness of this partial relief measure pierced through my consciousness with absolute certainty: What I was experiencing, although it played out through the entire digestive tract, was definitely a neurological event . . . poisoned tissue and nerves recoiling, systemically.
Let me count the triggers: Extreme and abrasive synthetic scents (e.g., chemical deodorizers) in a historical building we'd visited that afternoon. I was exposed to these repeatedly, on and off, for over an hour. Two to 15 minutes is usually sufficient to do damage to me. This went above and beyond. Shortly before that, I'd ingested a restaurant meal of grilled cheese and french fries. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd had grilled cheese out. This kind of restaurant meal often involves the spraying of pans with synthetic oils.
During my last trip involving a hotel stay in September, 2013, it was highly probable that a hotel breakfast I'd eaten had come from cookware sprayed with a synthetic oil. If my meal had not been affected by synthetic spray right there on the buffet line, then it was clear that the cooks would obviously have had no objection, in general, to using this spray within the kitchen -- from whence the food emerged.
This had been a chemical procedure which was easy to see, although the realization that it might well have affected my own food came much later. Much spraying of the oil had been done by servers and guests, alternately, on the buffet line where some food items were cooking. The guests were spraying it on the cookware excessively, some doing this several times over. I'd had a physical reaction, on the way home from that trip, identical to the reaction I've been describing here, above. In that hotel, last September, there had also seemed to have been reapplications of synthetic deodorizers in the public areas.
The essence of the problem, as I see it, is the impact of both inhaled and ingested neurotoxins. For me, this impact is disastrous. In case I had any doubts, I realized this weekend that I am still very chemically sensitive. I need to pay attention.
I reflected upon the increased swelling of my lower limbs over the past several weeks and months . . . which has steadily improved since this physically cataclysmic event of two nights ago. My knees are beginning to feel like knees again, instead of like two swollen and gritty pools of sludge. The swelling around my ankles has come down noticeably. I've been exceptionally careful, since two nights ago, to avoid chemicals in food and air.
What had been different for me over the past year -- or two?
Increasingly, I've exposed myself to more and more neurotoxins, neglectful of a process called "masking." It is said that chemical sensitivity, over time, can change in its physical symptomatology. Some symptoms can disappear, or become "masked," while the chemical sensitivity continues and even increases on other physical levels. Quietly, unobtrusively, the body is overwhelmed until it becomes "too sick to be sick." The toxicity, at this point, is so bad, it's embedded deeply within the body. Organ systems can be affected.
Over the past year, especially, I've tried to approximate doing everything "normal" people do. I've eaten plenty of foods with chemical additives, thinking I was scoring so many victories. There have been no complete cessations of airborne chemical exposures for me anymore -- it's been one exposure on top of another within a day or two of the last one. My rest periods from chemical exposures used to be longer, more defined, more deliberate. They worked.
Until digestion resumed and my metabolism started flowing smoothly again yesterday and today, I hadn't realized I'd been so utterly filled with ingested and airborne toxins that I couldn't tell up from down, so to speak. Now, I feel much more clean and clear. Because the Massachusetts hotel room, besides being impeccably clean, was also remarkably scent-free, I was able to recover there beside an open window. I slept the longest I've slept in months. There is a calm to my physical being, a more fully "present" feeling, a long-missed sensation of being "in command."
It took a severe crisis to bring this about. But since it did, and since I lived through it, I can discern through my body and mind the huge impact of being free of those toxins. I am so grateful. Grateful to have learned this priceless lesson:
I am truly chemically sensitive, and denial is not an option. Being able to reclaim that truth and work with it -- even at this late date, whether or not I still have Lyme disease -- is a gift that I dare not spurn.
Cheers!
~ Carolyn
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