"Most people didn't believe it," "And I have to admit, I would have been one of those people saying the same things."
"Within a matter of a couple months, I lost weight," she recalled. "I went to doctors and they didn't know what was wrong. I was getting sicker and sicker.", Schaefer said she became sensitive to even low levels of other chemicals, and even some foods.
"Multiple chemical sensitivity is a multiple-system disease that results from unusually high-level exposure to a chemical or chemicals that renders the individual subsequently sensitive to other chemicals," said Dr. Christine Oliver, an associate physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and assistant clinical professor of medicine at Harvard, who treats patients with MCS. The chemicals that bother the patient are "not necessarily the same chemicals that caused the problem in the first place."
Even at home, she said, common chemicals began to bother her.
Household cleaners, molds, city air and even treated fabrics affected Schaefer. Living in her own Melrose home became dangerous to her health, she said, despite receiving two hours of high-density oxygen daily to improve her breathing and sauna treatments to sweat chemicals out of her system.
In the end, she said, she had to tear up her home's carpeting, remove paint cans from the basement and cover wood floors with aluminum foil to block polyeurothane from rising into the air.
Read full at: Boston Herald
