For those of you who don’t know, and/or are not my Facebook friends, I broke my ankle so bad it needed surgery, and then during/after the surgery, I don’t even know which, I had a stroke.
So I was in the hospital for two weeks, and rehab for three weeks. Every morning I woke up in the hospital, I woke up and thought, “what is that STENCH?” Keep in mind, I was pretty spoiled for eight years in my low-tox house (https://www.amazon.com/Building-House-Multiple-Chemical-Sensitivity/dp/1540415562/). Tiled floor smells like nothing, plaster walls smell like nothing except maybe a little “rock” if you put your face close, cotton bedding smells like nothing, metal ceiling smells like nothing, metal cabinets smell like nothing, metal counters smell like nothing, and outdoor air smells like pine trees and prairie grass. The hospital had, of course, disinfectants vinyl blood pressure cuffs, plastic mattresses, etc. It really was weird to wake up to that, but the nurses were really great about washing their hands with my Dr. Bronner’s instead of using hand sanitizer. They even used wet washcloths instead of wipes on me sometimes. Boy am I glad to be back in my nearly pristine house. I don’t have MCAS, so I’m enjoying the good cooking smells, and that’s almost the only thing I smell, except maybe the dog.
For those who don’t know, I’m a Christian. This means that I know that human beings are generally selfish, even when we don’t want to be. From governments to toddlers to our best friends, human beings are very self-focused. It also means that I know that I am going to heaven when I die, and that I will see my loved ones who were Christians again.
One day, shortly after my dad passed away, for about ten seconds, I felt as if all of this were not true, and that I would never see my dad again. An unearthly scream escaped from me, and I have never felt such blackness of soul. It didn’t last long, but it was unbearable. If you have lost someone important to you, then you probably know how I felt. Would you like to know how to be sure you are going to heaven?
John 14:3
3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
Why did Jesus say this? First imagine for me that someone abducted your little girl, raped her, beat her up, and killed her. Let’s say you bring your case to the judge, and the judge says, “eh, that’s okay, I’m feeling generous today, just let the offender go.” How would you feel? Angry of course, you would want justice, right? God is just, pure, and perfect, therefore He cannot just let sin go. However, someone has payed the fine for all of our sins and transgressions, no matter how little or big. That someone is Jesus, who died on the cross, innocent of all wrongdoing, but taking our wrongdoing upon Him. All you have to do is put your trust in Him and ask Him to apply His innocent blood to your account, paying for all the things you have done wrong. I’m not very good at explaining, but here is one of my favorite New Zealand preachers:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16
I keep thinking of stories I could add to my autobiography (soon to be published) but this one is really part of my grandmother’s story. This is my grandparents with their two daughters.
She was a phenomenal housekeeper, gardener, and cook, and she was absolutely devoted to my grandfather. For good reason–he was a great man–honest, hardworking, generous, and kind. And she was amazing. He used to say if someone could not get along with her, they wouldn’t be able to get along with anybody. After the war (WWII), they had nothing but a suitcase full of worthless Hungarian money. So they were very, very frugal. But one day my grandfather came home with a woodworking Lathe. He made many beautiful things. But later my grandmother came home with a new hat. When my grandfather saw it, He said, “WHAT is THAT?!?!?! She replied demurely, “It’s a lathe.” 😀
Many of my moldie friends use manmade binders, such as CSM, fruit pectin (made into some kind of pill I think), dirt in pills LOL, and possibly charcoal or Zeolite. This lady’s food list in the link above is great, but I have experienced that these foods also work wonderfully, including taking away muscle pain from insecticide or potentially mold from years ago: nuts, coconut meat, chocolate, and “dry” beans such as kidney beans, black beans, plus lentils and split peas. Fully cooked please (raw are toxic to dogs and humans).
The idea is to have one or more of the items on this list a couple times a day. This is a good maintenance routine. I had this cake nearly every night for two months. Imagine–cake for medicine! LOL If you want to cut back on sugar, eat it with no icing. Full disclosure, I almost always had it with icing. 🙂
I could say a ton about “HT,” but suffice it to say that ours spread like wildfire, caused burning and other “HT symptoms,” but logic, experience, and circumstances mean that it appears to be crystalline DDT from old buildings, used in those buildings before 1972. It does not break down inside a building, because it needs sunlight and/or soil microbes to do so.
This cross-contamination of DDT happened because Steve got a new job in town. Within the first week, I started coughing and coughing and coughing, but I thought “well he needs a job, I’ll just cough.” But then one morning, I woke up and couldn’t bear weight. My nerves and leg muscles were just gone. Steve had to push me to the bathroom in a wheeled office chair for two weeks. As I experimented in the next days, I would hang my legs over the edge of the bed. Sometimes one or both legs were paralyzed, sometimes I could swing one or both of them one way but not the other way. My left leg turned purple for a while, and at one point, I threw up every day for two months in a row. Everything took so long to figure out, but one day we sadly realized all our garden produce (and the small chest freezer we put it in) had gotten contaminated because we had set the lovely garden produce in the contaminated kitchen for too long. Every time I ate it, I threw up. One day I was nearly in agony throwing up, pain, etc. and basically feeling like I was going to die or wanted to. Steve looked at me and said “this is withdrawal.” And it was. The closest description I could find online to what I experienced was withdrawal from heroin. I found out later that this could absolutely be withdrawal from DDT. This was after Steve had quit going to that old building and even other old buildings in town. At some point in there, we obviously realized Steve couldn’t work in that old building anymore. We were slightly panicked until the boss, a guy from our new church, said “hey let me get you a computer, and you can work from home.” Wow!
Through much experimentation, we slowly figured things out. At first, Nathan had to mop my room every single night so I could sleep. In this way, we figured out the DDT would come off the tile with just water and paper towel. We also found that not only was it contaminating the whole house all the time everywhere, through the pets and our using stuff for life, but also I appeared to be self-contaminating it through my skin and through my breath. The rest of the house was getting better, but for a while we still had to wash my curtains (and my curtains only) every day. At some point I finally stopped self-contaminating, basically I think because of treating my liver. https://www.blackhillspicturebooks.com/2022/07/14/my-liver-treatment/
We could tell I was no longer self-contaminating because I could sleep even with curtains not washed and floor not mopped. But I started to get increased symptoms when I wouldn’t eat enough and/or did too much activity for the calorie intake. It was my own body trying to detox, and the stuff apparently was coming out of my fat cells. They body apparently processes DDT into DDE, which is even more toxic than DDT. Ugh. I could usually make the muscle pain stop or reduce greatly by eating a food that binds toxicants in the body: whole grains, nuts, or coconut meat. It worked even better if the snack included some fat (whole grain bread with either butter and/or eggs). Eventually, I stayed in a cabin while Steve and my mom cleaned the house again. They had tried cleaning all this up before, but after the cleaning, I came home and still got aphasia, ophthalmic migraines, exhaustion, and intermittent nerve problems with my legs. So we realized we needed something besides just cleaning. What could we do? We realized that this substance would pass back and forth, it would go through Ziploc bags (the bag would be fine, but the food inside would make me throw up), so we finally realized we would need to replace some things. So I started making priority lists:
1) Amazon wishlist
2) Walmart list
3) Nathan’s mattress
4) Winter clothes
5) Select school books
6) Clothes storage
But how were we going to do all this? After losing our mold house in Indiana, most of our stuff, trying to survive before we built this house, and building this house, we had no savings. Most of our extended family was stretched thin trying to help us because we had no job income for ten years, because Sarah and I needed too much caregiving, etc. So how would we even start? So final on the list, instead of putting number seven I wrote down:
Miracle) Storage for towels
Within two weeks, we got a call from my brother-in-law. He and my sister still work at the church/school where I started second grade and where my father (Nick Ittzes) was pastor for many years. Some guy had come to them and said “Nick Ittzes performed my and my wife’s wedding, and I would like this to go to Christa Upton’s family.” He handed my brother-in-law an envelope containing almost $5,ooo cash. It was enough for all seven lists (including “Miracle)” PLUS a new refrigerator, which we quickly found out was needed. We put the old refrigerator outside to sell, because the average person in town would already be experiencing far more DDT than could possibly be in this one fridge.
One day, I walked around the corner near the old fridge, and started to collapse because it hit my nerves again and I couldn’t bear weight. Good thing I was holding onto Steve or I would have fallen and could have broken a bone.
Later, Steve’s sister came for several weeks to help us continue getting the DDT out of here, put together the metal storage units, and allow Steve to continue working for an income despite the chaos and Sarah’s and my many needs. Since then, I have never collapsed or gone paralyzed again, and the nerve symptoms (burning, zapping, neuropathy) have been getting better, and it’s been a long time since I’ve coughed or thrown up. I still have symptoms, but again they come when I overdo, don’t eat enough, or am around too many chemicals (which I think cause my liver to “back up,” like the time we went out for our youngest’s birthday). The house is excellent again, and we believe the key has been “segregation” of DDT-contaminated items and/or clean items into metal. A side benefit of metal storage is that during COVID, less sanitizer spread around because we put groceries away directly into the food monster (see video for what a food monster is, LOL).
Now, the side benefit is less scent in the air from groceries from everywhere. I don’t have much trouble with scent anymore, but the accumulation potentially affecting my liver is still far less with all the metal storage. And one of my kids still reacts to scent.
(Probably) IOW, I didn’t try this on every dog, just mine, but the science fits.
Feed your dog about a half a cup of plain yogurt every day with his food
Anytime that bad breath crops up again, give him an extra tablespoon
The reason the science fits is because yogurt is full of good microbes that help the gut digest (animals AND humans). Be sure to use yogurt that says “live and active cultures.”
3 pounds organic tomatoes (pesticides can inhibit proper ferment) washed and chopped 1 or 2 organic sweet peppers, cored and finely chopped 2 onions, minced 1 whole head of garlic, finely minced 2 hot peppers, finely minced 1 cup finely chopped cilantro, parsley leaf, or carrot greens (optional) 2 T salt 1/2 t. ground cumin (opt) 3 t. fresh sneezed lemon or lime juice (opt) NO bottled with added sodium benzoate Pour boiling water over glass jars to sterilize. Put all chopped veg and seasonings into jar Be sure to push the salsa down to remove all trapped air, and make sure that all vegetable pieces are underneath the liquid. Leave at least one inch of headspace, then add a fermentation weight or a ziplock of brine (salt and spring water to keep the solids down. put lids on LOOSELY or your jar could potentially explode. Place jars in a baking pan or something in case fermentation causes spill-over. place in a cool room out of the way for 2 – 3 days. Pitch if you ever see mold or it smells bad. When your salsa is properly fermented, you can store it for several months, even up to a year – if you can refrain from diving into it – in the refrigerator or basement/cellar.
some information taken from here: https://www.ruralsprout.com/wild-fermented-salsa/
Small park fee allows you access to Sylvan Lake, buffalo, other lakes, wildlife loop where you can see wild donkeys, prairie dogs, often pronghorns, sometimes wild sheep, and awesome views: https://gfp.sd.gov/parks/detail/custer-state-park/
so I was super thrilled when I realized my great-grandma’s handkerchiefs could be decontaminated from scent, mold, etc. using milk (soak 2 hrs in full fat milk, rinse very thoroughly, repeat) I decided first off I would make at least one bag. I love bags/organization and a means to grab my cross stitch in a hurry to work on outside, etc. do i sewed up the sides. Then I looked at it and thought, how am I gonna make casing for a string, with fabric so thin, and so little of it. Then God put an idea in my head–grosgrain ribbon!! My husband happened to be in the city headed to Hobby Lobby that day! So I called him and he came home with the PERFECT shade of pink, and it truly worked perfectly. I folded it in half and sewed it around the top for a casing, add a fabric scrap “string” and voila!
KODAK Digital Still CameraKODAK Digital Still CameraKODAK Digital Still Camera
From 2007 to 2010, I suffered accidental Toxic Injury (also called Multiple Chemical Sensitivity or Environmental Illness). But, the forced time in bed has given me time to write. It has been such a blessing to work on my children's books and stories!
I love: God, family & friends, outdoors, gardening, animals, writing, reading, photography, cooking, music, dance, bare feet, long skirts, lavender & yellow, and chocolate.
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