Question from Ruth
Debra, there is something that has me wondering. I’ve read your MCS recovery story and it is wonderful, and I am so glad for you.
I wonder, with everything that people who have MCS do to gain back their health, why would it be that so very many, many of them never do regain the quality of health that allows them to say “Ah, I have my life back!” There are things about having MCS that have changed my life for the better…being green is the number one thing….but I would love to have more quality,
more choices of what I can do, where I can go, being able to work again, etc. You seem to be the exception to all of this.
Please speak to that if you will. I know that everyone is different in how they do or don’t recover from MCS….but there just seems to be such an extreme number of people who never get that well again. Perhaps other readers of your blog have felt the same way.
Thanks.
Debra’s Answer
Two things came to mind when I read your question.
The first is that my definition of “have my life back” doesn’t mean having my life be the way it was pre-MCS. It’s a different life. I know for many people, their idea of having their life back means having the ability to live as they did before, being exposed to toxic things with no reactions. I don’t have any desire for that. I love my nontoxic life. I feel no deprivation not having toxic chemicals around.
I do have the ability to be in “regular” environments where there are toxic chemicals because I spend so much time in my clean environment at home. I work at home, too, so most of the time I am in an environment I have pretty much complete control over. This allows me to go into other, more toxic, environments without getting toxic overload. And this is fine for me, because I understand the destructiveness to health of toxic environments and I have no need to have the ability to tolerate them.
I do not feel “confined” to my safe home environment. It’s just the environment I prefer.
The other thing I thought of is that when I first found out about MCS, I made a decision that I didn’t want to simply “cope” with MCS, I wanted to have a life. I wanted to be able to travel, go shopping, eat in restaurants, go to the movies, and do whatever I wanted. And I can do all those things, for certain periods of time. Like I went and lived in an apartment in San Francisco for three months last year, but when I came home, my body was pretty stressed. I couldn’t live that way every day for the rest of my life, but I was able to do so for three months, and then came home and recovered.
You mentioned work. I think it would be difficult for me to go to an office building every day and work. But I am very happy working at home. I think I would have a home-based business even if I didn’t have environmental concerns. I love being able to work whenever I want to, and be able to do things like take a break to prepare dinner and then come back to work while it’s cooking low and slow in the oven.
