Taking one for the job only to lose the job

May 2, 2018

Year Condition Began: 2015


In the summer of 2015 I was working as a security officer at one of the major hospital networks in the area. We were in the process of increasing our tactical abilities due to a couple of shootings as well as other crime concerns in the area. The first step was to carry OC (pepper) foam. And of course, in order to carry it you must first have to be sprayed with it and complete an obstacle course.

Being a redhead I knew that I'd react differently than the others in the class. Unfortunately I wasn't aware that my life would never be the same again. When I was sprayed I couldn't breathe. I'm not talking the kind where you start screaming, "I can't breathe!" In security and law enforcement there is a saying that if you are talking then you are breathing. There is a difference in panicking and THINKING you can't breathe and actually not being able to breathe. I couldn't tell the instructor that I couldn't breathe; I could only gasp and panic. The next thing that I knew two men in the class began to help me through the course and telling me when to punch and kick and handcuff and so forth. At the end of the course was the water hoses that everyone else would spend a few moments at before going to change. I spent more than half an hour since as long as I was under the stream then I could breath and the burn was lessened. I was the only one in a class of about 50 that the instructor didn't want to drive home. Fortunately, I had my MIL coming to get me who immediately took me to the hospital. Of course they put it in my records that I was being treated for a "sore throat". Not for the foam exposure.

After that day my breathing just didn't get better for months. Eventually I developed pneumonia and then sensitive to more and more things. It took more than a year and a half to realize what had truly happened; I had developed MCS thanks to taking the training that I needed for work. Now I'm house-bound and afraid to leave home.

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