Until we meet again

After a scary night where I woke up with half my swallowing reflex gone (a result of sleeping in an old building with the windows not open), I saw my Saltspring Island friend, Ranaan, for what will be the last time until probably next summer. Like me, Ranaan is also getting these amazing Brainstate treatments (but more about that later!).

We walked along the seawall of Victoria, him tired from three hours of sleep, as he's been sleeping outside in the cold each night, unable to bare it in the place he rented. He's finishing his first set of Brainstate treatments next week, then he's off to his usual winter escape--woolfing at an organic farm in California for the winter.

I'd just had another night of dreams of house-hunting (I've had to endure these creepy dreams for years now) I wasn't in much of a mood to converse, but didn't know when I'd see him again.

We serendipitously met about four years ago on the island. He was one of my saviours along the way by telling me about a German doctor who was giving magical craniosacral treatments which I initially scoffed at but which gave me such clarity of mind that I wanted to do them daily. They showed me (though I basically knew this from yoga) the inherent beauty and power of the body to heal what others call psychosomatic or incurable--MCS. Gently moving bones and fascia in the body not only helps drain toxins from cerebralspinal fluid but affects the nervous and immune systems also, magically entailing the body's own healing powers.

It felt like time hadn't changed at all; me wondering how to find the right housing situation, and Ranaan talking about how much time he feels he's wasted--endlessly moving from one place to another; I've seen him do this for years, paying rent and not even sleeping indoors at the place he rented. I pay rent, sleep indoors, then I lose rent since I have to ditch the place and signed a lease! In February, I slept on the lanai at the house I was staying at; the bedroom was beautiful but too moldy. I'm looking for a warm place to do that again.

One of us has to stop our circular path though or life isn't going to change; he's not going to make a living being the great songwriter he is, I'll never write my dream article for the New Yorker, and it will be like a bad reply of the infamous poster, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams". I may just have to rent pricier places that aren't moldy, be able to write more and it will all even out. Makes sense to me.

I'm off to Vancouver to a short term rental that has an organic bed; the rental from LA didn't pan out--I decided to not repeat the mistakes of renting with unknown roomates, carpeted places, even when the person sounds great. My life is too complicated as it is, so off to a new life of simplicity and greater clarity I go.

Leaving once again

Yesterday was the last day of cleaning up my apt at Jane's (where I basically lost two months' rent). I took the last few bags out--it only took me about two weeks to move out of there fully since I could only handle it in there for an hour at a time even with the windows open. I ended up with about 15 boxes of stuff--papers, clothes, computer stuff, vitamins, juicer, printer, etc.. Which to mail back to Toronto, which to keep here? I decided to just keep the necessities here so that when I do find a place, I'll have what I need handy.

I UPS'd five boxes, gave five more to a friend to hold, and five are in a small storage that I'll use while I'm here. I've repeated this tiring cycle many times in the past six years of coming to BC to escape the pollution of toronto.

Luckily, the tenant below (Corrie) was quite empathetic and understood why I had to cancel my rent cheque when I mistakenly bounced the $2000 cheque I'd written to the therapist giving me brainwave training (I thought she'd cashed it and she hadn't until too late). Now I had none left for rent when I had to rent a new place!

Corrie was quite empathetic and has been one of my angels of late during a period which has turned into an unexpected nightmare (Maybe should have maybe just rented the good place I saw a few months ago even though it was quite near hydro tower fields!). Then she gave me a big hug goodbye. For a person who has never met an MCSer, she's been an angel in disguise.

The letter

This may give some people a good laugh for the day. It's from one MCSer to another (myself) and she's even worried about renting to me...not that I blame her! But I think I can work it out since it's in warm weather and open windows help alot...I kept her name annonymous . I"m trying to go to california for a month so that I can take a much-needed yoga retreat, be in warmth, sleep with the windows open, go for long walks and get more oxygen to my brain....here's her letter...

From: Fellow MCSer
To: envirolisac@yahoo.com
Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2008 5:25:41 PM
Subject: Re: APT IN SANTA MONICA

HI,

I have to think about it..I am just concerned..I myself do not have the energy to help with such matters ...I know what a nightmare I have been when I was really sick..you have told me you move from place to place..it sounds still very critical..I am not sure I can take the stress myself..you are very nice and I appreciate your being for sure..I just have to make sure...I am going to sit with it for the night...please make sure you have a back up plan..regardless what if something bothers you here and I can't do anything about it..I have to let you know I can not refund your money..it goes to rent and it is gone and financially I can't do it from me being sick I am scraping by myself from spending it all too from being ill...sooo..mm let me ponder it..

Thanks\many blessing for healing....

Fellow MCSer

Here's mine back to her....

Dear Fellow MCSer:
Thanks for your concern. Seriously, even though it's been very stressful being denied rentals by so many people due to my illness; being turned down by someone else whose been ill is kind of humorous in a way! Actually, if I ever become a standup comic, I'll add this to my material! I may even put your letter (making you annonyous!) in my mcsrecovery.blogspot.com blog!!

So please consider this: my idea is for me to pay for a month, try it a couple weeks, and if it doesn't work, here's FOUR different ideas: you can put me in your other condo if no one has rented it yet, or I share it with someone, or I find another place or I just come back here!! (and you still keep the rent). If I had to leave and found you someone for the rest of the time, I'd get paid back; otherwise not.

But hopefully we can make it work out. As long as you don't think your carpet is moldy from all the steam cleaning, the other roomate doesn't use hairspray or perfume in the bathroom (it's not good for your health either), and she's respectable and kind, it should be okay.

I can just sleep with the windows open partially as I did last night in the carpeted hotel. It's much warmer there at night than here in BC!

Lisa

anyways, tonight I'm off to Fairholme Manor B&B in Victoria for the week--the best B&B you could find for MCSers on the island, and the only one I've felt good in (affordable for me for a week!).

---

I'M BACK!

Its about 20 days since my last post because I've been quite ill in that apt; we turned off the pilot light for the gas stove two days after I moved in (I was waking up with no feeling in my legs and I was falling over as I couldn't balance), but even after the gas was turned off, something was wrong. So, I ended up in a hotel (not great, but no gas and I don't feel like my head is caving in).

I'd be feeling better if I didn't keep returning to this house to cook food and spend an hour or two there to make sure I wasn't imagining feeling ill (then my head would start feeling like it was crushing in and I'd get even worse). Stupid. Either there is a gas leak (but can't be since I had the gas guy come check) or since it's a 100 year old house the cooking and cleaning fumes from the people living below are coming up through the floorboards (not inconceivable since people in apts can smell paint when someone below them is painting!). There's also a garage below my bedroom (though it's just storage).

The GOOD NEWS is that the brain wave therapy I'm doing in Vic (www.wavesofpotential.com) is starting to work. It had a very hard time working when I kept counteracting it with toxins--which caused me to cry almost every waking hour for the past two weeks--until I decided yesterday to keep the door wide open while cooking then I run out of there.

But today, after 24 hours of pretty much avoiding the apt (other than having an ENVIRONMENTAL INSPECTOR come in yesterday--I'll write more about that later), I had a major shift in the brain wave therapy.

I seem to be coming out of what has felt like near-amnesia for the past four years (and it's been getting much worse as time goes on) where I felt very disconnected from myself. From my questioning other MCSers, this is an extreme symptom which goes beyond brain fog and it shows some brain damage, according to the therapist treating me with this Brain States therapy, and I'll talk more about that coming up. I never thought I'd get back to myself or remember what myself even is, but the train may be reversing, returning back to its home. I'm still reacting to things, but at least I can think clearly. But there's more brain wave treatments for me coming up. I've gone from basically being near suicidal to having hope. Stay tuned.

The latest apt.

I'm in my new suite in Vic. The good thing is it's near a great yoga studio, accuncture, coffee shops and health food store.

The bad side is that I had my friend, Ian, check it out for me after I found it online and liked the photos. He has severe MCS and I was out of town but figured I'd rely on his body's intelligence-- if he didn't react to it, "I wouldn't either." Dumb idea. Deep in the recesses of my mind, I knew that everyone reacts differently, and that I'd made the mistake of having others check out places for me before, but I relied on him since I was in a different city and figured I may get lucky this once.

Unless one is very careful, finding a place in the rainforest that's not moldy is rare; many people don't think about the mold-factor. If there is no insulation in the walls as there isn't in this bedroom and if it's often cold as this house is, mold grows and it can be black and behind the walls even if no one sees it. It's most certainly in the walls of the bedroom here, and I only know because my head starts not only to feel like it's "caving in" with my brain being squished, but I get "radio head" where my background thoughts--or "monkey mind" as it's called in yoga--becomes very loud and it sounds like I'm hearing a non-sensical radio. It only happens in moldy or pesticide-ridden areas.

Inflammation --as is discussed in a great book "Brain Allergies"-- isn't good for the brain and as my friend and "mcs coach" Annie says, my "health comes first". This may literally be around the 39th place I've lived in, in the past 8 years of my MCS, and I've only had to skip out on one other (for poisoning me out with moth ball fumes seeping in from the adjoining garage causing 'firework' images to go off in my head) where I lost $500 in a small claims court, but I can't stay in here though there's a good chance my exhaustion will give me no alternative. It takes alot of energy to house hunt and is one of the prime stress factors in Maslow's triangle.

I don't like skipping out on landlords even when they don't tell the truth about mold (in the walls), loud noise (from a nearby construction site) or inconsiderate neighbours (in this case, a non-empathetic nurse ironically lives in the suite above my head), but I am reacting badly and I'm even slurring my words (happens in the worst of conditions) and this would only be the second time I'd have to do it, but I'll try find her another tenant instead.

WHAT DO DO while looking for another place to live? I've bought about three space heaters, and I plan to open windows slightly to bring in fresh air and blast the heat at the same time so I don't freeze. Wallmart's great; you can return items (eg. if you can't afford them) with in 90 days. If it wasn't so cold out and if I wasn't renting a new (smelly) rental car, I could even sleep in that as I used to do for naps in my old car, but overnighters won't work in this one.

I'm starting brain-wave treatment tomorrow and the ten sessions will cost me almost $2000 so I don't want to offset any good I may do by sleeping in a toxic apt., so hopefully this heat-window idea will work. Fortunately, I have health insurance to pay me the $2000 back.

There isn't anyone in the family offering safe accomodation so if this doesn't work and I don't find a healthy place, it's off to warmer pastures where I can sleep with windows wide open. Can't do the research work I'd like but at least I could heal.

Hawaii may do the trick. And maybe in the light of the moon and the darkness around it I may be able to do research on my laptop outside.

Stay tuned.

Hope

Today, as I walked along "The Wall" or the boardwalk of Kitsilano Beach in Vancouver, I passed several people lounging out in the sun on park benches or jogging by with their dogs. It made me feel better about hanging out too as others were taking the luxury to take care of themselves and do their writing in this small paradise with its ocean and mountainous backdrop.

There was one person who, in particular, caught my attention, however. She was sitting on a bench with a pad of paper in her lap, writing while busily talking on the phone. "Hope is the key to life," she loudly told her friend on the other end, and repeated it a few times. It sounded like she was answering a homework question, actually. Maybe she was.

And I found it quite apt that I would walk by then and catch that snippet of conversation. Hope really is all I;ve hinged my life on the past few years, even in times I wished I'd have the courage to end it all, and I continue to hang onto the threads of hope. There is nothing else. And luckily I think I'm getting closer to the answer at the light at the end of the tunnel.

gas heating

Gas heating doesn't always bother me, but propane heating does. Big time! Right now i"m in an old natural gas heated home for two weeks before taking another place for two months, and there's something that gives me a headache in this Vancouver one, so what I do is open the window about 4" and turn up the heat a bit (which costs a bit more in heating but is worth it).

It works in BC where I am right now since it doesn't go below zero here so the pipes can't freeze and burst!

Then I also have a Heaven Fresh ionizer going.

Today I felt much better when I awoke and it was either because I had a glass of water with Cell Food in it before bed, or because i did a chlorophyll enema also and swallowed a blue green algae capsule. Or, maybe it was just the super-alkalizing of my body which helped.

Anyways, I'm going to try this tonight too and then I'm off to alpha waveland by meditating for at least half an hour to ward off my bad dreams where I seem to always be looking for housing!

The first day of your recovery

Today is day one of my recovery zine, a zine I have begun because I have a book to write to help others, but first it starts with a blog. I have a dis-ease I need to heal, I have a story to tell, and I have the millions of others around the world with this illness who don't know what is happening to them, to reach.

Ten years into this illness, I've learned much and I learn more every day. And lately, I've encountered several treatments which are getting me closer to my former fantastic state of health and I'm going to bring them to you daily, as well as offering updates often--a health diary of sorts--which help me realize which foods and treatments help me daily; it's a diary similar to one which you may wish to begin for yourself as well--a calendar of your symptoms: when you feel better, what caused this? When you don't, what caused that? Then, when you refer to it later, you can take the road best travelled.

Today is the first day of your road to recovery. You are not crazy, you are not alone. The environment is crazy, our diets are crazy, the mercury fillings in our mouths are crazy, and we have poisoned ourselves with all. This is the reality. Your illness is real, but you can change this.

Environmental Illness (aka. MCS or multiple chemical sensitivity) was recognized by the Canadian Government as legitimate; so legitimate, in fact, that all treatments for it, including vitamins, are not taxed.

The first tip for recovery is believing that your illness is real but paradoxically not dwelling on it. Instead, use your energy positively--in taking action by doing things which help you--yoga, clay baths, enemas, colonics, reiki, avoiding toxic people: whatever helps. Flip every negative thought into a positive one as the adrenaline caused by the negative will just make your symptoms worse.

And, to help you begin to believe in yourself, check out the fantastic book: "Allergic to the 20th Century" by Peter Radetsky which some of the science. It was my first step along the road to recovery--recognizing what had happened to my body and it may be the first step in your recovery, as well.

All the best,
Alisa Miriam Cherry B.Sc.
www.lisacherry.ca