I’m not sure I will ever publish this even though I have been thinking about it for twenty years. As long as I’ve been sick, I’ve been trying to put all the theories, studies, and anecdotes about TILT into some unified cohesive etiology and treatment. This is hubris on an impressive scale because I am … Continue reading
A Less Examined Life
I have been living more and reflecting less, which is not necessarily a natural fit for blogging, thus the yearlong silence here. After a decade of living within strict chemical sensitivity parameters and another decade devoting the bulk of my time and energy to pushing those parameters farther away, I had reached a place where … Continue reading
Planning for My Reactions
Reacting is the worst. I hated reacting long before my body was compromised with MCS because I am a planner by nature. I can act spontaneously, improvise even, but those are situations where I am free to choose. Reacting implies something has happened to me and my actions are dependent on and limited by that. I … Continue reading
Reacting to My Reactions
I had some extended family visit over the holidays and a familiar pattern played itself out again. Given any 10 day stretch of time, there will be at least one 12-24 hour period when I don’t feel well, when I don’t feel like my normal self. Usually it’s a mild to moderate reaction to some … Continue reading
Sisterly Advice
It seems that there are more and more people in my far flung network of friends and acquaintances who are coming to grips with chronic illness in their lives of. Part of this is probably because my peers are aging and what used to be a young person’s physical weakness has settled into a middle … Continue reading
The Inevitable Moment When Renovations Go Wrong
I did not stay vigilant on one of my renovation guidelines and so it all went to hell. Which is why I should call them rules, not guidelines, dammit. Despite the small size of the job, the project has involved a plumber, electrician, carpenter, tile guy, and air conditioning company. Apparently, once you get into … Continue reading
Bathroom Renovation and Updated Guidelines
Even though I continue to use the R word, TILTed folks don’t really do renovations. That word implies optional work that improves a home’s aesthetics. We don’t fix aesthetics, only functionality and safety. … Continue reading
Self Image Problems
A Question… How do we deal with the pervasive and chronic nature of TILT? How do we escape something that effects every aspect of our lives? How do we think of ourselves separate from it? I don’t mean physically; obviously, if we could physically escape chemical sensitivity that would be very big news indeed. I … Continue reading
Research and Advocacy Review
It’s been a while since I actively checked in with some of my resource and advocacy sources. They send me information (which I appreciate) but sometimes (a lot of the time) it builds up til I choose to really focus on it in hopes that I will also then DO something about it. This time … Continue reading
TILTed Road Trip 2015
I pulled off another family summer road trip last month. When you live in FL, you don’t want to vacation at the beach, you vacation in the mountains or desert, especially for the benefit of the children who think palm trees are normal foliage. So we went to the anti-Florida, which we deemed to be … Continue reading