No. She’s allergic to brass. And crock pots.
I hear oxygen oxide is very bad, too: it’s been known to interact with free radicals, and we all know (from skin cream adverts - of course, skin creams don’t have any chemicals) that free radicals are bad, bad, bad.
Now lets look at this …
What is the house going to be made of? Modern stickbuilt housing [which tends to be what most homes are, unless they are brick or stone and mortar, or poured concrete] are chock full of nasty chemicals, in the particleboard, insulation, the treated lumber, and the materials gone into finishing the interior like paints, coatings, carpeting, flooring and pretty much any component ever manufactured.
Saunas tend to be made of wood, and gas off when the heat is on [mmmm that lovely cedar-y smell] reading, books have nasty glue in the bindings, and chemicals smeared on the page to read. Art is chock full of nasty chemicals … and as was pointed out - raising animals is chock full of chemicals, and rescue animals need medical treatment, which is also full of nasty chemicals.
I suppose she could go live in a cave … then she would only have to worry about bat guano, molds and mildew.
Wow, what a loon.
I’m not sad for her. I’m sad for the taxpayers who are forced to subsidize her.
Obviously, Canada will have to launch her into the vacuum of space.
The woman is sick (just not from “MCS”) and catering to her delusions is not the way to help her.
I’d like a pony.
Sometimes the news media are incredibly credulous/clueless when it comes to reporting on “MCS”. The worst example is the Holy Cross football coach who “died” from this condition.
Note from the link that May is MCS Awareness Month, marked by a green ribbon. One hopes the ribbon uses only natural fibers, untouched by any artificial substances. :dubious:
And yet her housing wishlist includes a barn for goats? Maybe she fancies pickled eyeballs too.
I have a friend whose wife is like this woman. She is convinced that she is allergic to just about everything-their house has no carpets (harbors mold spores), no processed foods (chemical additives), and no synthetic fabrics (chemicals).
The woman has been to allergists, quacks and a succession of expensive clinics where here allergies are “treated”. Visiting them is a chore-she manages to stear the conversation away from what ever is being talked about, to her “condition”.
Pretty sad-the poor guy has to put up with this 24-7…and she seems to be getting worse.
Of course, she is a meal ticket for her doctors/quacks-they are always coming up with new “sensitivities”.
Humbug I say!
No, nothing can be done to help her.
She has been offered several free houses - none are good enough. If she got her modest three-bedroom house, pretty soon she would need a masseuse three times a week. If got the masseuse, she would need herbal therapy from the petals of the Educadorian belch-lily, which only blooms on Shrove Tuesday in months with no R.
Hypochondriac discovers people who will enable her. Color me surprised.
The only chance she has of any cure would be about five years hard labor in a completely unsympathetic environment. It might kill her, but it might knock some of the delusions and incredibly inflated sense of entitlement out of her as well.
Regards,
Shodan
I once worked with someone who claimed to suffer from this symptom. Everything gave her headaches and made her nauseous. She couldn’t print out anything because of the ink, couldn’t be around anything with paint, etc. etc. I once came into the office with a candy bar and a cup of coffee. She got sick from “the mi8lk fumes.” She couldn’t deal with customers because of their perfumes, soaps, smells.
She was fired when I found her printing out gay male porn!
The whole thing is entire BS
Having worked on more than a few occasions with a farmer friend’s chickens, I’ll add that the smell from them can pickle your eyeballs too.
An “animal rescue”? I’m picturing her wanting to care for abandoned puppies and kittens, and perhaps other domesticated animals needing a home. But don’t many people have allergies to dogs and cats? If she reacts to most everything else, why not them?
Yeah, seriously. Just thinking about living in 3 acres of pollen, surrounded by hay and chicken droppings, made my eyes water and throat swell.
Sounds to me that what she needs is a climate-controlled carpetless loft apartment inside a Faraday cage.
You know, we were once friends with a couple, the female half of which had lots of sensitivities. Now, she had had a botched sinus polyp surgery, so I could certainly understand her getting headaches from perfumes and such. But her list of trigger substances was not limited to inhalants, and was suspiciously large.
I’m starting to think it is not a coincidence that, when I offered to bake a cake for her husband’s birthday party, she responded by requesting that I bake a sample cake first, for her to try and see if it was good enough. (No mention of allergy issues, she just thought I should function like a professional bakery making wedding cakes and offering samples.)
Or the reporter and the editor put that statement in there to provoke just the reaction it did. Subtle, but probably fair if she actually did make a dumb statement like that.
Exactly!!!
Clearly, she’s only allergic to stuff that she has to pay for herself. Tragic really.
I have a deal for the government. I will only need a modest” two-bedroom house on two acres of land,with only some trees and fresh air. It should include only a sunroom. NO need for a gazebo! I will not need a barn. Imagine the savings!
Wow. My husband’s uncle has been diagnosed with MCS. He is in no way like this woman at all. He is sensitive to most dyes and perfumes, plus a lot of cleaning products. When we go over to his house, we know we can’t use scented products before going over. If there is an event at some one else’s home, we try and make as many accommodations as we can, but he usually just ends up leaving early.
Your husband’s uncle’s doctor’s diagnosis does not echo, and nobody knows why.
My mom is identical to this person.
The condition, whatever it may be, causes a lot of consternation in our family. Whenever us kids or our SO’s visit back home, we have to use special scent-free soaps and shampoos. Our clothes must have been laundered with scent-free detergent. No laundry sheets. She no longer uses any electrical appliance due to the electro-magnetic fields they give off, especially the computer. She only speaks on the telephone via a speakerphone so she doesn’t get to close to the emissions. Fragrances have long been a chief source of headaches, but her sensitivity has grown so acute that she frequently has to wear a surgical-type mask when out in public. Though she’s always been a foodie, the range of foods she can now eat are limited to some of the most bland, unseasoned foods you can imagine.
There is much debate amongst some in the family as to the legitimacy of this condition — my mom does tend to focus on the negative, is a bit alarmist and a bit of a hypochondriac. As long as I can remember, she’s always had some debilitating condition that she would remind us that she suffered from: the earliest I heard about was arthritis, then Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and now Multiple Chemical Sensitivities. She does go to a woo-woo doctor who “clears” her for certain substances but she never seems to get better.
But on the other hand, I have seen her break out in a dramatic rash after one such exposure, and the lengths to which she’s had to isolate herself from the world is far above and beyond what I believe even the most self-involved attention-getter would subject themselves to. Moreover, she legitimately hates what this has done to her life and how it’s strained her relationship with the people that matter most to her. She knows full-well that most people believe MCS to be bullshit and responds that her and people like her are the “canary in the coal mine” people will look at when this condition becomes more widespread. Moreover, assuming for a moment that MCS is a real deal, how frustrating would it be to have a condition that evades diagnosis and is ignored by the medical profession? I would imagine that it could turn even the most level-headed person into a “Cassandra.”
For me, the jury is still out. For me it’s too close to home for me to callously dismiss it as “bullshit” and impugn the character of people who are clearly suffering from something, regardless of whether we or they understand the exact nature of it.
Hold on. Apparently, she’s been surviving on Bloor Street West for 13 years. This issue arose because the property is deteriorating and she’s also being evicted from there. I don’t know about you, but where I come from, the level of pollution-spewing traffic on Bloor Street West — even 13 years ago — is not exactly leaving a pristine environment. I mean, Google it — it’s not exactly a rural, country road. Moreover, she’s living pretty much in the middle of a city inhabited by more than 2.5 million people. Are there not a good number of cell towers dotting that landscape, as well as electromagnetic radio-waves feeding Toronto’s wireless product users? Certainly there’s a streetcar sparking its way along the High Park area. And not so many years ago, the park itself would have been tended to with chemical pesticides and herbicides, as were all city parks.
Hmmm. Upon looking into this further, I found an archived article (hope this link works) that says that she’s lived there since 1991. By 2009 she was $20,000 behind in rent, and her landlord has been trying for a couple of years to find a place it would buy specifically to rent to her at $500 a month. In 2008, the landlord actually purchased a house in Lindsay, Ontario, for her to live in — “I purchased a property (for her) in Lindsay last year," said Carlton Properties chief financial officer Perry Fryers. "The house was empty for six months, totally cleaned out. “She went in and said the (previous tenants) must have used plug-in air fresheners and there was no way she could live there.” See:
http://www.metronews.ca/toronto/local/article/366747--a-poisoned-home-life
I consider myself a fairly compassionate person, and I generally try hard to understand what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes, but this seems just plain ridiculous. She’s had people bending over backwards to help her out. She may have some genuine terrible health problems, but I can’t help but wonder whether she enjoys the attention of being “special”.