There and Back Again (Sorry Bilbo, but)

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My story began in '83 after I had my first child. My OBGYN diagnosed me with the flu. I had "the flu" for 5 months. After the 5th month's diagnosis I was sure he was an idiot. By the grace of God I caught an episode of 60 Minutes that featured Chronic Fatigue. I began my studies there. I had more questions than answers, but I stumbled upon one major factor, MSG, and by happenstance, we moved. My chronic fatigue resolved. It would not be until 2 decades later that my misadventures and research would lead me back to the town I first became ill in, and the whole answer.

I did find that even though I no longer had chronic fatigue, I had escalating hypersensitivity to MSG and other excitotory neurotoxins. I dug into the research. I eliminated more substances that caused problems. Things were pretty good there, for awhile.

In the spring of 1996 I was surveying a large farm, when an ag plane flew over a hill top, circled me 3 times and unloaded his tank full of Monitor, an OrganoPhosphate pesticide right on the circle I was set up on. I was engulfed in a cloud of the extremely toxic pesticide. I had nowhere to seek shelter. I pulled as much of myself inside the heavy jacket I was wearing and waited for my partner to come get me with the rig. It was an action that saved my life. If I had tried to run, I would have sucked more poison into my lungs, destroying them and killing me.

I saw 8 specialists. Only one bothered to write down the pesticide poisoning. I got a diagnosis of a particular type of asthma (Your lungs fill with fluid and you drown yourself), and 2 diagnosis of Fibro.

I tried contacting a lawyer. The lawyers in my community are related to the big farmers, as is the ag pilot who sprayed me. No one would tell me the pilots name. It became a community retaliation against the "horrible vindictive outsider." That would be me. Suddenly I, my children, my livestock, my small farm were all being straffed and sprayed by an ag pilot. I later learned that I was supposed to "have a vendetta against (him)." I'm guessing it was the same guy who sprayed me with Monitor. More ag pilots began harrassing me. I got help from the FAA.

Then big farming operations began offering my neighbors huge sums to rent their farms. My neighbors took the bait. Extremely toxic farming operations moved in and grew melons on all the fields adjacent to me from 2003-2007. Melon growing is pesticide intensive agriculture. They begin in the winter drilling a fungicide into the soil. It kills all living (fungus-mammalian) cells by uptaking glutathione. They apply the same fungicide every week during the growing season. The season ends the end of October. The fungicide: Chlorothalonil.
I told them I'd had one pesticide poisoning already and to please warn me whenever they were going to apply any pesticides. They said, "oh don't worry about it. Its only fertilizer."

It was that first year that I began to have problems with the detergent aisle, candle and bath stores, perfume counters. Plug in air fresheners were just coming into use. Every time I taught in a room with a plug in air freshener I got "the flu." By the spring of 2004 my reactions were so dramatic that I lost my vision, my small muscle control and projectile vomited when I taught in a room with out them, but in a wing with plug in air fresheners.

I went to my asthma doctor. He tried to steer the visit t'words a runny nose, and force asthma inhalers into my hand. I repeatedly told him I didn't have a runny nose. I described the symptoms that his inhalers gave me (I'd quit using them years ago), and asked him, "What do you call that? I expected him to say, " Brain seizure." But he said, "Chemical Hypersensitivity." It went down hill from there. He sent me home to die. He told me there was nothing that could be done for me, and that I had 2 months to 2 years, tops, to live. He also kicked me out as a patient, refusing to see me anymore or help me. He said if I told anyone he'd diagnosed this, he'd deny it.

That was just the begining. I ended up fighting for my life with everyone. My neighbors, the state Dept.s of Ag, Heath, Voc Rehab. The County Commissioners. The State's DOJ. I even got set up by the District Attorney and a State Circuit Court Judge. One of those County Commissioners is now my State Senator... Pesticide is big business, big money and big power. I got slayed. However, I did discover the chlorothalonil connection by 2007 thru an EPA inspector. From there I made the connection to the glutathione deficiency and talked my EI into IV glutathione, which has saved my life on (literally) hundreds of occasions.

My neighbors are still forcing me out. I've been living in the wilderness , in an RV for 4 years. I've finally found a much less toxic wilderness property and am transitioning to living here.