The Viable Alternative

NOTE: The story below is a TRUE story but at the request of the subject of the story, the names have been changed. Also the person in the picture below is NOT the subject of the story.

The Background:

After almost 12 years in the construction business, I was really burned out. I was making money but I was not happy. One year I took on four projects because I wanted to make a big push and make a lot of money. Maybe I was contemplating buying my way out.

Anyway, it seems from the beginning that nothing was working out. My regular guys were unavailable or abandoned me for more lucrative projects. I was also trying to do some things differently to get better results and make myself enjoy my work more so I thought getting some new guys to work for me would give me a chance to do that. It would have been necessary anyway to do all the projects I was working on.

Needless to say, that did not work out as well as I had planned.

My new guys were awful. They were inexperienced, unprofessional and in one case, the guy flat out lied that he was a carpenter in the first place.

My plumber apparently hired thugs to do his day to day work. And my electrician was actually insane!

Things really went south when the third project started and they guys that were supposed to start it were unable to do the work.

I therefore had to split my team that was already not great between two different projects.

On the first day of the third project I had my first on site accident. One of my guys fell and hurt himself.

He went home the same day. But that was difficult for me to take emotionally. I wasn’t in business to hurt people and I felt really bad about it. There was a lot of paperwork and reporting to do because of this and that was stressful.

I thought about freezing everything but I continued to work, which was a bad decision because about a week later, on another project, a client asked me to change an installation that included some painted on polyurethane. He had approved it initially but later decided he wanted it changed.

I should have stood my ground but I decided to change it to keep good client relations.

One of my guys who was incidentally on the accident project volunteered to remove the paint and I left him in charge and went to visit one of the other project.

When I came back later on that day, it was a crazy nightmare. He had created such a mess that we had to stop all other work to clean it all up. It took a lot of time for the cleanup to take place and I tried to do a lot of it myself to save money.

The Problem:

After about a week of working on this cleanup I was unable to sleep. I couldn’t understand why that was. I would go to bed and toss and turn all night. I got headaches and I felt fuzzy in the head. I also became very sensitive to stress. My thoughts started to become scattered and I couldn’t hold the same idea in my mind for very long.

I thought the whole situation was probably because of the intense stress of my situation, but when I couldn’t concentrate enough to say a prayer, which I did on a daily basis for almost my whole life and which had given me a lot of comfort in my new situation, I started to suspect that my problem was more than just stress.

I began to think that maybe polyurethane material in the mess that my guy created was a culprit when I began to see bits and pieces of it when I blew my nose…

My breathing also because labored in certain situations and I began to smell the polyurethane everywhere.

I decided to do some research on it by checking the ingredients of the paint. I soon found the problem.

The polyurethane used was an oil based material that OSHA found could cause sensitivity reactions in some people. I tried to deny it but as time went on, I had to admit that I had to be one of those rare sensitive people.

NOW What…?

The next few years were very tough.

It was difficult to sleep, as I said, and that made work very hard to do.

Things got pretty weird pretty soon after.

I had to cancel one job after the other until I only had one left.

I was too tired and weak and exhausted to continue.

To make matters worse, after several weeks of tracking everything that I was allergic to into my apartment, I could no longer live there.

I moved back home and later found another apt.

But I was still experiencing the weird fuzzy head syndrome and was having breathing issues. I remember one day, I was so sensitive that I tried to visit the park in early spring to get some fresh air, and I had to leave because I could feel the pollen getting stuck in my nasal passages! I had to leave immediately.

It was a very scary time.

I got no relief from visiting several doctors and hospitals.

They had no idea what was happening. For many of them the only explanation was that the sensitivity was all in my head.

I’m sad to say that for many of my immediate family members who were no doubt fazed and shocked at my apparent unhinging, the response was the same.

I tried to do some very intense and targeted research with what little energy I had to try and find a solution. I also tried to find out how such dangerous materials could be allowed on the public.

I quickly realized that there was a lot of collusion between the medical and governmental organizations and the chemical companies that create over 5000 new chemical compounds each year which are not tested for their possible deleterious effects on people. So when something happens, unless it is glaring and affects large amounts of people, the victims are usually blamed and nothing comes of it.

I later realized that I had become sensitive to all plastic and polyurethane products.
The polyester and rayon clothes that I was wearing were causing me to lose sleep and be unable to live like a regular person. It was pretty radical move but eventually I had to get rid of all my clothes and most of my furnishings that had plastics as ingredients.

That left me with next to no personal belongings. I basically had to start my life over.

It was a nightmare at first but I later saw it as a blessing as it forced me to take stock of my life, cut down to the bare essentials and figure out what is important to me and what I could do without.

Still however, because doctors, hospitals and even family members (and a psychic) were unable to do much to help me, I thought it was a hopeless situation.

To add, hearing stories on the news of people who had contracted respiratory illnesses with symptoms similar to mine as a result of being at the World Trade Center during the 9/11 attacks that were now dying off despite receiving conventional treatment from Doctors made me feel more hopeless and anxious.

I started thinking that I was going to have to live my life as some type of non-functional chemically sensitive weirdo.

The Turning Point:

I almost resigned myself to that and began to ponder even more unpleasant ways out when I saw a news story about some desperate 911 first responders who had tried some unorthodox therapies with of all people—scientologists—and were actually able to get their lives back.

I didn’t waste much time.

I contacted them right away and paid to start their body ‘purification’ protocol.

The Transformation:

The protocol they had me go through was to come into the facility after eating whatever I felt like eating that day, especially meat and vegetables. Then they had me exercise for at least a half hour everyday, especially running on the treadmill to get my heart rate up and start the sweating process. Afterwards, I would shower and then they had me take lots of vitamins, more than 500% recommended daily values (especially Niacin) to help me cleanse and detoxify. From there, I would go into the sauna for 3-5 hours daily, coming out every 30-45 minutes to get a lot of water. As I sweated in the sauna, I would notice a grey, gooey material oozing out of my skin, including my face and my hair follicles.

I would then shower afterwards.

There were also some regular interviews with staff to see how things were going and give feedback.

After about a month of a combination of sweating in a sauna, taking lots of vitamins, and forcing myself to exercise, I started seeing improvement in my mental and physical condition. Around this time, I went back to see the Doctor who initially couldn’t offer me any help, in hopes that he’d be willing to look further into the methodologies that were helping me get better and provide some sort of explanation and help for others who may be going through what I was going through.

What I found interesting (and disheartening) at my visit was that despite the fact that this guy had no answers to what I was going through when I first sought his help, he still wasn’t interested in exploring the reasons why I had been improving.

Upon hearing that I was receiving treatment from the Scientologists, he immediately began to dismiss and criticize the methodologies they were using on me, even telling me that there was no scientific proof that perspiration was an effective method of detoxifying the body.

Apparently, because he got a lot of funding from the government and private sources, he was afraid that “associating” himself with the Scientologists would garner him ridicule and even scorn from his colleagues in the scientific and medical community that would have a negative impact on the funding he received.

I guess politics were a more pressing concern to him than the health of his patients.

After this visit I told myself, “Screw this guy,” and never went back to him again. I continued with my protocol, and after almost a year and a half, I felt like a completely different person.

A few months before I ended the purification program, I met a woman who was just starting the program who had been suffering from a respiratory illness that had affected those who had been working at or near Ground Zero during the 9/11 attacks. Though she was a nurse by profession, she hadn’t worked for years because she had been suffering many of the symptoms I had, if not more.

By the time I left, when she was a few months into her protocol, she was already noting increased stamina, an ability to think clearer, and felt she was finally getting her life back.

It really was a miracle in my eyes because I almost lost hope. And although I don’t consider myself a proponent of this organization, the detoxification did help me so I can definitely vouch for the protocol.

Final Word:

What is the final word? At the end of the day I found a great girl, got started in a new career path (finally!), as a web developer. Even though I have to wear all cotton clothing all the time and follow some pretty strict rules about how I live my day to day life in some areas, I was forced to get clear about who I was as a person and who I allowed into my life, all in all, I think the experience was not all bad.