We Are Not Alone...

...that sounds like a blog post on aliens. How many of us felt like aliens when we first showed signs of chemical sensitivity?

I was reading a blog on allergies and someone posted that she/he started having chemical sensitivity symptoms in 1986. The doctor diagnosed it as stress and asthma. End of story. For years this person didn't know and just recently, this last week in fact, discovered the world of MCS. What an epiphany that must have been! It made me reminisce about my first experiences, my confusion, and my isolation.

I spent every Sunday of my youth in church surrounded by properly dressed elderly women bathed in a whole lot of stink. My reactions at that time were like hay fever symptoms: sinus congestion, watery eyes, heavy lungs, and some slight throat clearing or coughing. Oh well. I chalked it up to allergies. After all everyone knew perfumes were made from flowers, right? My dad reacted the same way and avoided church for that very reason. Consequently, we didn't use a lot of scented products at home. I do remember opting to buy older relatives fragrance gifts for lack of a better choice. I'm sure that was influenced by television commercials. What else does a grandmother want? They already have everything!

As a young adult I was given a tiny, beautiful bottle of Oscar de la Renta perfume. I'd wear it on my wrists, but only if I went some place fancy. I knew better than to wear it anywhere near my neck. Or nose. Hay fever symptoms are anything but attractive. As soon as I'd get home I'd wash it off, but rarely did I have problems with my own perfume or anyone else's. I also didn't bathe in it.

Years later as a teacher every now and then one of my teenage students would bring a bottle of cologne to school and proceed to throw it on other students. Yeah...junior high. Whadda ya gonna do? Many students had asthma and would complain immediately, even run out of the room. Total disruption. We'd all gag choking on the stink. I'd confiscate the bottle of perfume and send the little brat to the office. It took all my will power not to smack him across the head with a book.

I took pity on one kid, but I don't remember why. Instead of sending him to the office, I took the bottle away and told him he'd get it back when his parents came in to get it for him. He came back after school that same day and begged for the return of the bottle claiming it was his older brother's cologne and he would die a thousand deaths if his brother found out.

I said, "I guess you should get your parents to make that appointment right away!" He walked away scowling. I don't know why teenagers always thought I couldn't see through their bullshit.

The student eventually rotated out of my class at the end of the quarter. Months later I discovered the bottle in a drawer where I stashed it. I figured he wasn't coming back for it and threw it away. A week later, the last day of school, he shows up again begging for his cologne claiming his brother will kill him if he doesn't return it. I'm not sure why his brother hadn't notice it missing for the past six months?

At first I panicked remembering I threw it away and then I calmly said as I looked around him innocently, "OH! Are your parents here?"

LOL! He left and I never saw him again. His brother probably killed him. Over a bottle of cologne.

Sick of the antics of junior high students, I took a break from teaching and went to work for a large corporation in an office filled with perfume-drenched women. After a few days I became incredibly sick.

It must be the flu, I thought, The stress of a new job and all.

It would go away on the weekends when, I assumed, I was getting extra sleep, drinking lots of orange juice, and taking other steps to eradicate the virus. Monday it would return and I again assumed ignorantly I did something unhealthy to make it return. This went on for three weeks until I realized one Monday when every one of those ignorant bitches came in smelling freshly bathed in stink and instead of typical flu symptoms my lungs inconveniently stopped working. I was horrified. And scared. Was I going to have to quit my new job??

Even with this new-found realization, I thought it was just me. I was weird. It's MY allergy. No one else could possibly be so weird. No one else was going to understand. I mean, WHO is allergic to scents? Everything is scented these days. Maybe I could try some allergy medications? I assured myself it would go away and until then maybe I could avoid the stinkers. Being so anti-socially different and damaged isn't something that makes one feel proud. I didn't want to tell anyone. Maybe I can still survive and fly under the radar? They'll never notice me wheezing in the corner with an asthma attack. I didn't want to quit my new job.

For the next few years I changed jobs several times. I had all kinds of logical reasons for quitting each job so I could maintain some kind of professional demeanor and my resume wouldn't suffer, but the real reason was I couldn't tolerate the personal fragrances used by fellow employees. If I could just find a job without stinky people, I'd be fine.

Teaching. Teachers don't wear perfume. Why would they ever wear perfume? They aren't trying to be sexually attractive to...children! Are they? Eeeewww. This was right about the time Mary Kay Latourneau was caught with her twelve-year old student. I didn't remember teachers ever wearing perfume. Did Mary Kay? So many of the students had asthma. That last year teaching one of my students died from an asthma attack. It would be idiotic for a teacher to wear perfume. Even I know that! I thought I found my answer. Back to teaching! Back to safety!

Why would teachers wear perfume? It took me one more job filled with perfume/cologne-bathed teachers and a desperate desire to save myself before I started doing serious research on chemical sensitivity. It was only then did I realize I'm hardly alone with this! Thirty-four percent of the population has some level of reaction to fragrances, fifteen percent have had their lives drastically altered because of it, and five percent are diagnosed with MCS. These are statistics from fifteen years ago. More recent studies suggest the age group for the highest percentage for chemical sensitivity are those between 70 and 90 years of age. By the time the baby boomers get to be 70 - 90 I think we will see a huge increase in those percentages.

No, we are not alone....

Too bad we can't organize, harness our collective energy, and effect more change.


(Confession: I have NO idea how to draw an alien! Any ten-year old can draw an alien, but I don't have a clue. It's embarrassing....)