If you’d told me after my op over ten years ago that I’d develop sensitivities to all sorts of things, so I’d end up spending lots of energy and money trying to find a shampoo that didn’t make me itch all over or have me in A & E on a Friday night, or that I’d be removed from my dentist’s list because she felt afraid that I’d react badly to a new white filling and if that wasn’t bad enough, that no other local dentist would take me on for the same reason, I would not have believed it. I’d never heard of chemical sensitivities, let alone as a consequence of having an op for breast cancer. I come from an atopic family, i.e. mum and dad both had a tendency to allergies, but up till then, all I’d had a problem with was milk. Ignorance is bliss.
I’m a psychologist so when I noticed that other health professionals appeared unsympathetic, I began to read the lit in the hope of trying to understand their reactions. I became aware of the theory of MCS as a result of conditioning. It was a leartn reaction. The hypothesis was that the smell or look of something (in this case, the general anaesthetic), followed by trauma (losing half my breast) had resulted in an adverse event (distress) and in a Pavlovian fashion, I’d begun to associate any smells or ‘toxins’ with the negative emotions from that time. (Pavlov, if I recall, rang a bell before giving dogs food and eventually found that they would salivate - a normal reaction to seeing food or eating - when hearing the bell, so the body’s response to food was now connected to what was previously neutral, e.g. the bell). Except that when I started feeling unwell after taking my usual vitamin B drops, I had no expectation of an adverse reaction. I’d tolerated them before. nothing looked or smelled different. When I compared my new bottle with the ingredients listed on the old one, I noticed that the vitamin B3 had changed. It a different compound and I was obviously responding to that. So much for the conditioning theory. If you don’t know that something ‘safe’ has changed, you can’t condition.
So I’m looking for a local dentist who is kind and willing to experiment a bit with fillings. I already know that I have problems with the composites that leach fluoride. And I’ve got my steroid creme ready to save a trip to A & E should I react to a new ‘pure’ shampoo. The sensitivities also mean I can’t take the drugs I need for osteoporosis (painful and potentially fatal disease should you fall and break a hip), so the future doesn’t look rosy. HRT is out because of the breast cancer, and lactose or whatever excipients I tend to react to. But the real horror is the removal from lists and the plain nastiness of the professionals. When a dentist on a list of holistic practitioners turns you down, you know you have a problem.
An allergist informed me that this sometimes happens. Nothing really that anyone can do about it. Tried a few alternative treatments like NAET and hypnosis, but to no avail.
So no breast cancer, but no chicken tikka massala, no nice teeth, no clean hair for a bit and no treatment for other conditions. If my tear ducts still worked, I’d cry. This is one hell of a challenge that the op left me with. I’ve never been depressed before, but this, and the loss of two computers feel like my own, personal tsunamis. They’ve overwhelmed me. I’m treading water and trying to think of a reason why. It’s so hard. I’m so tired. Where are the kind practitioners who’ll ‘have a go’ and at least clean my teeth professionally, so they look nice.
I’ve been made to feel like a trouble maker. I’m not. I just had an op for breast cancer and something went wrong.