CFS/ME with allergy and MCS

---

I'm a 69-year-old woman, I live in Cape Town, South Africa, and I've had CFS/ME and MCS for the past 14 years. I've also had ordinary allergies most of my life. My mother (1913-1972) also had these illnesses, although her MCS was much less pronounced because she lived in an area with reasonably clean air all her life and indoor air was much less polluted then as well. The illnesses had also not been named in her lifetime, she merely "got tired easily" and got "hayfever" from cigarette smoke. In both our cases, the illnesses manifested after many years of constant stress, hers in her 30s already and mine only in my 50s. Had I known what my mother's illnesses really were and that there was a genetic component, I could have tried to take preventative steps, such as remaining in the less polluted environment where I grew up and perhaps concentrated on not indulging my curiosity about life in larger and more progressive areas of the country, such as greater Cape Town. I think even for healthy people, our current way of life can be too stressful. We easily remove ourselves from the support of our families and familiar surroundings in our appetite for challenges, be they work or personal relationships. We realise that too late, however, when we have already lost the health we took for granted for so long. Nothing like illness to make one realise that you are not as invincible as you may have thought! I am stuck in a very polluted atmosphere, with city pollution on one side and agricultural pesticides on the other, but I cannot go anywhere because my support system consists of exactly two people who cannot leave this area. If one has MCS, that mainstay of older and/or sick people, the retirement village, is a death trap because you will have absolutely no control over chemicals used in and around your house or unit. So I walk a tightrope daily, sometimes I win, sometimes I lose very badly.