a list of products that effect my health and things that can be done to improve it.

I wish I had a sensitivity meter too.

Anonymous, thank you for your comment. It's good to hear from the other side what it's like to deal with this. I know it's difficult for people around me. I wish there was an easy way to say "this yes, this no". I think the hardest thing for me is when people don't ask. If we don't communicate, how can we know? I'm not certain what else I could do to make my needs clearer. But then again, the physical reactions I have are slow and build upon each other. It takes months to figure out what substance is bothering me. It doesn't help that the main symptoms are confusion and grumpiness.

Maybe if I lay it out for myself, I can see it more clearly and then be able to communicate what I need better. I'll give it a try and maybe someone here can help me learn how to communicate this with those I care about.

• Some symptoms: The first symptoms that shows there is something bothering me are grumpiness, being tetchy, and impatient. Also dizziness, fatigue, joint pain, and low blood pressure; but those are harder for people around me to detect. The brain fog that I get makes it difficult to identify that there is a problem right away, it gets in the way of the cause and effect part of my brain. But like I said, it often takes months for me to identify the specific substance that is making me ill and weeks to realize that I am getting worse. (Oh the joys of an infection in one's brain.) It's not just these symptoms that are the trouble. It also puts a strain on my immune system which stops it from fighting the primary infection that is causing all these troubles. The more exposure I have, the less likely I am to ever get better.
• From the bathroom: All cosmetics like hand lotions, toothpaste, shampoo, soap, any scented product, shaving lotion, cologne, makeup, and the like are the worst possible things to have in the same building as me. If you hate me, this is what you use. From experience, if I use these products, I'm in bed for a month. Not joking. Not exaggerating. It puts me right back to the beginning. I can manage being around someone who uses some of the more mild cosmetics for a few hours, but I need several days to clear my body of their effect. If I'm exposed to this sort of thing for several days in a row, even faintly, it has a cumulative effect that is disastrous for my health.
• More on cosmetics: There are a few cosmetics that do not have this cumulative effect that the regular stuff does. Burt's Bees for example are easy for me to be around. I can only use their Beeswax Lip Balm and one or two other products myself, but almost all their other products are safe to use for people who are around me. They don't make me feel good, but they don't have that same toxic accumulation that most products do so they can be used day after day. Most soaps, even eco friendly health food shop, all organic, stuff, have an ingredient in them that is retched for me. There is one olive oil bar soap from Greece that works for me (funny thing is, it's the least expensive and longest lasting soap I've ever known), but everything else leaves a heavy sent on people after they use them. Yes, even the unscented ones. A few other products you can find in the health food shop, but not all health food shop cosmetics &c. are safe. Only buy things with a full ingredient list. No ingredient list = no buy. If they have words containing the letter combinations "ethal", "methal" and/or "glyc", then they are completely unacceptable. Also note, companies change their recipes all the time so what was good one month, may not be the next. Add to that the fact that my infection is constantly changing how my immune system reacts - adds new sensitivities every few weeks - I assure you it's just as difficult for me to know what will effect me how. When in doubt, just ask.
• Laundry: In the apartment there is a coin operated laundry. Lots of people do their laundry there, and they use lots of different products. All commercial laundry products are out. I make my own laundry soap and vinegar makes a good fabric softener. I don't use the laundry downstairs because I discovered that even after putting six loads of wash through before mine, using nothing but cleaners I could handle, the scents from the commercial products still transferred to my clothing and made me so ill. Even though I know that my dad and Brazil don't use these products on their own laundry when they do the wash, I can still smell it on their clothes, especially after they have just done a wash. Even having the product in the house, in the bottle, not opened, is bad enough. If you want to see the effect this has on me at full strength, take me down the laundry aisle in a grocery shop. I advise that you call an ambulance first. [Again, NOT EXAGERATING!]
• Good Laundry products: The soap I make for my laundry averages around one to three cents a load. The Soap exchange makes a laundry soap and softener that even though I can't use on my own clothes or in the machine I use for washing my clothes; however, the sent dissipates within about an hour of being washed and is great for people who live with me to use. It's also only slightly more expensive than the stuff I make myself. Note: unscented only.
• The kitchen and general cleaning: Guess what. Regular cleaning products are out. Even most eco-friendly dish soaps tend to bother me. I don't know what it is about them. Ones that are clear are better than coloured ones. Sunlight is perhaps the worst. The Soap exchange is tolerable, but still not good enough for me to be in the same room as it. Actually there was one I bought in the US that felt fine, but I don't remember what kind it was. As for general household cleaners...Nope! I have a long list of alternative cleaning recipes that can be used for household cleaning. They actually save a huge amount of money and work well with only slightly more elbow grease than the expensive commercial stuff. I bought this one eco friendly cleaner for the new house, but it has to be used several days before I go there and the house well aired afterwards. And most importantly, not used while I live in the house.
• Note: If you are just visiting me for a few hours then don't worry too much. Stay away from scented products when you do you ablutions and don't worry too much about make up (I love you no matter how you look and given that I have almost no facial recognition ability, I wouldn't know if you had make up on or not). But, if you are going to see me more than one day at a time, or if you are going to be in close proximity (small room, no ventilation) for an hour or more, please do what you can. Every little bit you do do, equates to days less I have to suffer through this recovery.
• Most important, if you don't know, ASK.

I read this list and all I think about is how stupid it sounds. All these every day innocent little things stand between me and good health. Both my doctors say I need to have minimum, or preferably no, exposure to any of these. They especially state that to get better sooner, non of them may enter my living environment. I'm desperate to get back to my life. What do I need to do to help people realize how important this is? How do I say it? Do I get them to pay the three thousand plus dollars a month to treat me out of their own pocket? Do I put a scent jar on the counter and people have to put five dollars in it when ever they come home smelly? Would that make them realize how much an innocent two dollar bottle of shampoo is actually costing me? Two to four monts of recovery if someone in my house were to use a product like that for a few weeks. If I put it in those terms, does it make more sense? I can see it clearly: We don't know every single thing that makes me ill and retards my recovery, so every possible thing that could harm me must stay away! There are general themes that I know makes me sick. They need avoiding. But how do I, with my rather blunt personality, say this to people I care about without them thinking it's an attack on them as a person? It's the chemicals (which, by the way, do harm to them too and leaves them more vulnerable to future illness) that I'm angry at. That, and the infection in my body. Not the person. It frustrates me when a person dosen't learn or is careless, but it's not the person who I am upset at. It's their action. How do I communicate this? I feel stupidly lost in all of this.

Maybe it will be helpful for people to have a field guide to being around me. I've missed out a bunch, but even still, I was worried if I posted this, some people in my life might take things personally. It's not unprecedented. People usually take what I say personally. I'm not as careful in real life as I am in my blog - I say it how I see it and that dosen't usually end well for me. So, I asked Dad to read through this. He's very good at identifying when I'm not feeling well. He can actually tell if a substance is bothering me before I can. I asked him, "would people take this personally if I posted this?" and he says, "if they take it personally, then so much the better!"