The Year End Assessment, or, What an Awesome Year!

Happy New Year! 2015 came and went. Fast. Did it go as quickly for you as it did for me? It's now time for reflection and personal assessment. I've been doing this every year since 1987 and it's always an interesting learning experience.

GOOD STUFF:

1) My blog...which serves as therapy, community, and entertainment.

2) My house...with it's newly stained fence, crazy painted porch, and outstanding garden. I'm so thankful to have a safe place to live (relatively speaking) that provides lots of fun and entertainment!

3) ZIPPY! After years of shopping, I finally found and bought a car that's more like a large dog that doesn't bark, poop, stink, have fleas or beg. It goes where I want, when I want. Very obedient and oh so cute! My gratitude is overwhelming.

4) My polka dot chair and table...makes me feel like a party is always at my house. Next year I plan to paint more polka dots! On everything!

5) I FEEL WONDERFUL! My health has improved by leaps and bounds. I rarely have any noticeable fatigue and I have enough energy for life. I finally found the secret: stick to the diet, no cheating, and no overeating as that also creates inflammation and taxes the thyroid. As Dr. Kharrazian says, "It's not just what you eat, it's HOW you eat."  Hooray for progress!

6) My fragrance-free friends, both online and offline. THANK YOU FOR KEEPING ME SANE.

7) Money. I love money. With energy comes money. With money comes security. With security comes less stress. With less stress comes better health. With better health comes happiness. Money is good.

Hmmmm?

Re-Friending. This was both fantastic and traumatizing so it's under neutral or questionable or hmmmm?. Reconnecting with old friends at first was really fun and exciting! I love finding out what people have done with their lives. With so much catching up to do, most of them emailed consistently at the beginning. We laughed until we cried. We confessed mistakes and regrets. We shared life goals and health challenges. It was nice reconnecting with my former life and wonderful to have pen pals...for a short time.

Peopling my life isn't without challenges. One friend only wanted to send me short headlines of self-centered drama every couple weeks without shared conversation. "My Son's Back in Prison." "My Daughter is a Meth Addict." "My Brother is Dead."  If it wasn't so disturbing it might have been entertaining.  It ended up just being exhausting as I kept wanting to fix her life, but I realized after a while there was no solution to any of it. Another old friend did the same thing. She never emailed, but if I emailed her in hopes of inspiring her to email, her excuses were surgery, family problems, and then finally cancer. Then she'd post photos of herself with friends shopping at the mall looking quite healthy and unstressed. Hmmm?

Some refused to email at all. One kept sending me her email addresses repeatedly with "I look forward to our reconnection" and that was it. Right around the time of my high school reunion, several ex-friends followed me on Facebook in lieu of friending because I have that option blocked. When I wrote to them to tell them I really don't do Facebook, but I'd love to hear from them and catch up via email, they immediately un-followed me and disappeared. LOL! So much for the value of ex-friendship. Do they really want to connect or am I just a Facebook number, a trophy, someone who will tell them they are beautiful when they post their daily selfie? I don't know if all the disappointment was worth it. Nearly all reconnections eventually disconnected with the confession they really don't like to email. Oh well....

Email communication was great, but I didn't stop there! A few of the new ex-friends made an effort to visited or we went places for fun! It was so glorious not to feel so isolated. So grateful for human contact I let my guard down and stopped reminding people they need to be fragrance free. One by one encounters became toxic with people walking into my house saturated in stinky laundry detergent, on-the-road bathroom hand soap, or some unidentified stink. Some people just didn't get it or couldn't smell it so they had no clue.

Aside from the stress and frustration it caused, I viewed this as a opportunity to practice patience. For someone who is perpetually impatient and irritable as a side-effect of chemical poisoning, this has been quite a challenge. I resisted the urge to scream at them, HOW CAN YOU BE SO THOUGHTLESS? I avoided the impulse to sarcastically berate them in writing, HOW CAN YOU BE SO STUPID? I abstained from being disrespectfully unfriendly, ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME? I took a step back (and out of their air space) in each instance and let the anger wash over me and reminded myself these people don't deal with stinky poisons on a daily basis like I do.  I taught myself how not to burn bridges with my vile tongue. I was so thankful for people who wanted to visit and TRY to be fragrance-free I took too many risks. As a consequence I'd be forced to go to bed for hours if not days feeling so ill I couldn't function. It's been a great learning experience. YES! I can be around real people and not kill anyone, but it's exhausting. It's easier to be a hermit. There is a reason I've exiled myself out in the middle of no where - a place people do not want to visit. It's less tempting and less compromising. I've kind of given up on the search for new friends...for now...and I'm thankful for my isolation.

Anyway, yes, some set backs, but I prefer to concentrate on the positive experiences. People can make life really enjoyable!

BAD STUFF:

1) Health care and mystery pain. Too many useless, expensive doctors wanting to do too many unnecessary, expensive tests with no answers and no solutions. I got really tired being quoted $1300 for labs only to be told after I complained loud enough that, OH! there is a discount and I guess we can give that to you for only $500. What is with these two-tiered health care costs? If they think they can get away with it, they will. I finally self-diagnosed myself and things have been improving. Whether my self-diagnoses are accurate is anyone's guess, but my assumptions can't be worse than the ignorant opinions of doctors with dollars signs in their eyes who all contradicted each other!

2) Useless insurance coverage. My insurance decided I wasn't paying enough money through the health care exchange and refuse claims without telling me. Nine months later one of my doctors contacted me to let me now this is what they were doing. When finally questioned, they said it's not their job to communicate with the customer as the customer should call them if there is a problem. Of course, they were taking the money I was paying, just not providing the service according to my contract. I wrote to anyone who mattered included every political representative in my area voicing my displeasure with the health care system demanding an apology from the insurance company. I was immediately informed by the powers-that-be I WAS paying the correct amount and after a month of bureaucratic bullshit, the insurance company sent a written apology and resumed service. The apology was really surprising! Needless to say, they are no longer my insurance company. When are we getting single payer insurance coverage? This corporate sleaziness has got to go.

However, for 2015, the Good far outweighs the Bad. It's been an excellent year!

New Year's Resolutions: Vote for the presidential candidate who supports universal health care (that's NOT Hillary!), maybe next year I'll finally get to move, and NO DOCTORS if I can possibly help it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I wish everyone much joy and happiness in 2016.

Validation and Vindication

As a young girl I watched my mother die. She sat on the couch every day for months and cried in pain. After she died, my brother and I were forced to live with my father, his new wife, and step-siblings to grow up surrounded by smokers, junk food eaters, drug addicts, alcoholics and every other manner of poor parenting and little nurturing. As a young girl I made a solemn vow to not get cancer, be healthy, and not end my days in such a miserable situation. I started reading health books. I refused to ever smoke cigarettes, drink much, or do drugs. I probably missed out on a whole lot of fun in my youth, but I was convinced it was for the best. Anytime I started to slip, I hit the "play" switch in my brain and listened to my mother's tears.

I grew up being harassed for my health-driven determination. No one really understood my emotional baggage. They just thought I was weird. Or bossy. My step-mother constantly accused me of being a hypochondriac. I'm pretty sure she got really tired of my epiphanies and constant dietary advice...you shouldn't drink Coke constantly, we shouldn't eat that fake cheese, the book I just read said smoking will kill you, why are we eating frozen dinners or pizza so often? She didn't understand I was trying to save them. I didn't want anyone else to die. My siblings, who all started smoking around eight years old, always asked me with a smirk and snarky tone, So, what weird diet are you on now? My father constantly told me I was fat, but he didn't seem to connect our diet with his obesity nor my weight gain. As a young adult I'd have to stand out in the rain during holiday dinners because everyone inside was smoking and my lungs couldn't handle it. Eventually I stopped trying to celebrate the holidays with family, but I was the only one left out and this always made me question if my desire to be healthy was wrong. After all, I was the minority and I was the one suffering in exile and isolation. Everyone was having way more fun than I was!

I do blame much of my chemical sensitivity on my family's ignorant bad habits. I've heard there is a connect between hypothyroidism and second hand smoke and chemicals of all kinds contribute to autoimmune diseases. Children don't have much control over their environments: poor air quality, poor diets, and general emotional stress can take a toll on developing bodies. Stupid, irresponsible people shouldn't be allowed to be parents, and unfortunately, they usually pass their bad habits on to their offspring. We really shouldn't wonder why our health care system is overtaxed with all the unhealthy, apathetic people doing whatever they want regardless of the outcome.

Aside from the chemical sensitivity and the thyroid disease connected to the chemical sensitivity, the rest of me is fairly healthy. Hooray! I can deal with dying. I just don't want to be miserable on the way there or for any length of time. Is that too much to ask? I am determined to outlive all my relatives and I am hopeful all my sacrifices and healthful habits will pay off. If not, I'm going to be a very resentful dead person.

I visited my brother yesterday who lives about three hours away. I do this once a year around his birthday and when his organic Asian pears ripen. Because of the bad habits of all family members, I don't have much contact with any of them. Once a year or every other year, my brother visits me. He works hard at not smelling like smoke, we usually sit outside, and I catch up on the latest family gossip. Sometimes I ask him about his diet and he tells me he had Twinkies for breakfast, McDonald's hamburgers and fries for lunch, and dinner will be two cans of processed spaghetti with four slices of margarine-frosted, bleached-white Wonder Bread. Eeeww. There have been times I've uncontrollably exclaimed, WHY ARE YOU STILL ALIVE?, but I no longer lecture or advise. It took me a long time to realize trying to be helpful was a waste of my time. I've trained myself not to care.

Everyone is getting older. There have been times over the years when I've whined about MCS and wondered why no one else in my family seems to be as unlucky as me. Poor, poor, pathetic me. But it's all relative (pun intended), and it's all starting to catch up with them now. In the last year alone, family members are plagued with newly diagnosed diabetes, Crohn's disease, fibromyalgia, blood clots, back problems, heart attacks, strokes and out of control stupidity forcing perpetual unemployment and disability. And that's just what I could drag out of my brother. He's not really forthcoming with the gossip. I can say I'm not surprised, but I confess, as I listened to him I silently thought, It's about time!

Am I a horrible person for thinking this? Am I bad? I know I should probably be more sympathetic, but really? If you smoke for 40 years, this is what happens. If you eat junk food all your life, this is what happens. If you do drugs or drink excessively, this is what happens. Did they really expect a better outcome? My brother tends to blame all health problems on genetics. He thinks if it runs in the family there is nothing that could have been done to prevent it. Really? This is a common medical assumption I always hear, but in truth I think it's just a way to avoid personal responsibility. The only thing we've inherited from our parents were their bad habits and the nasty environment they provided for us. As adults, we have a choice to continue the stupidity or stand up and take responsibility for ourselves. I put up with a lot of abuse as a kid for wanting to be healthy and throughout the years I've questioned if it was worth the effort. Even with MCS and Hashimoto's, I'm still fairing better than anyone else and I am thankful for that! Their bad news is my validation. (I AM a horrible person! Why don't I feel bad about that?)

The best news, however, was my brother quit smoking!!! This is a MIRACLE. He said his lungs started really bothering him to the point where he couldn't breathe. Such excellent news! He had a new house built and doesn't let anyone smoke in it. Hooray!!! I'm trying to pretend I didn't hear about the tumor doctors recently found on his spinal cord. Hey, he did say God told him smoking would kill him, I just figured it would be lung cancer, esophageal cancer or something more obviously connected to his cigarette addiction.

"Nothing Feels as Good as Feeling Good Does"

Happy New Year! Tis' the season to make those resolutions to be a happier and healthier person. This is when we commit to losing weight, eating better, or stopping any number of bad habits that effect our quality of life. Sorry to say, this new-found willpower and inspiration will often last about a month or less until we go back to our old, nasty ways using any number of excuses to justify the failure. I speak from experience. The travesty is how we acquired nasty habits in the first place. Why weren't we taught how to eat and drink for health? Why aren't we afraid of bad habits and the bad health they can cause? Instead most of us spent the first two or more decades of our lives eating garbage, drinking poisons, and indulging in other health-sacrificing behaviors without any concern for what it could be doing to our bodies and ultimately, our health. We were having fun. Is it any wonder it's catching up to us?

How many of us had to get sick before we became healthy? I was recently sent this article with just that title: Why I Had to Get Sick to Get Healthy My favorite quote from it is "nothing feels as good as feeling good does." So true. Those of us suffering from any number of debilitating illnesses would do almost anything to feel better and those sacrifices are worth even moments of feeling healthy. I can't count how many sacrifices I've made just to feel good.

I often hear people accuse their bodies of betraying them with illness, but I'd be more inclined to blame my neighbor for wearing perfume, the grocery checker for using that nasty scented shampoo, or my parents for not teaching me how to live a healthy life. After a lifetime of body abuse, I share in the culpability. If I would have treated my body better, would I be chemically-sensitive today?   If I would have resisted all those pizzas, soft drinks, chocolate candies, cakes, cookies and pies over the years, would I be chemically-sensitive today? If I hadn't worked at perfume-saturated department stores or air-freshened schools, would I be chemically-sensitive today? If I hadn't lived in some of the most polluted cities in the world, would I be chemically-sensitive today? Some of it I couldn't have controlled, but in most cases I had a choice even if it was a difficult choice. Still, I don't blame my body. My body is the victim of my past bad behavior and the bad behaviors of others.

I wish I would have paid more attention to the signs. How many times did eating a whole bowl of cookie dough or cake batter make me sick? Candy bars would give me a face of zits. Drinking diet Coke and I'd be moody and temperamental for days. Once on a dare I ate nine pieces of deep-fried fish with three baskets of French fries then washed it all down with a McDonald's Shamrock Shake. To describe my body's reaction to that torture as horror doesn't even come close! These were choices I made. Did I listen to the warnings and worry even for a moment about the consequences? Nope.

My body is doing what a healthy body should: protecting me from poisons. Even after years of abuse, it's still working. Amazing. Granted, the headaches, nausea, and respiratory failure responses are a real bitch and it is definitely a disadvantage to not be able to live in a toxic city or be anywhere near the bad habits of others, but reacting to poisons are my body's warning signs and I've learned the hard way I should be paying attention. If I would have listened to my body earlier in life, I might not be where I am today. I am a much better listener now.

Hooray, body! Thank you for always being there for me even when I ignored and disrespected you.

I am grateful.

X-Ray Vision

Can you count how many times you've been to the doctor and leave with no hope? Feeling like your body is betraying you? Falling apart? Wondering, good lord, what is the next thing to go? More bad news? Will it never stop?

I went to the eye doctor yesterday. He said repeatedly I am very lucky to have better than outstanding vision. Others would kill for my healthy eyes. He even got out these weird little lenses and showed me how other people see. Really?! I am lucky. He even said as we get older our eyes deteriorate. Cataracts develop and get worse requiring surgery. Macular degeneration befalls most of us. If you have diabetes, good luck. But my eyes...a gift from the gods.  Amen.

St. Lucy is the patron saint of vision. I know this because I majored in art history in college. Lucy was the one who held a plate with her eyeballs in it. Very cool. While taking a Renaissance Art History course, I visited relatives who had a one-eyed kitten.  Her name was One Eye. This relative wasn't very imaginative when it came to naming pets. She was such a pretty kitten with an incredibly ugly name. I felt she needed a better start to life so I renamed her Lucy after her patron saint. I am reminded of this story on my day of eye-health gratitude.

How often have I received good news from a health professional? I am going to revel in its glory for at least a week and remind myself daily about how lucky I am! I feel like a superhero.