Reaction to Electric Space Heater

This morning—thankfully it’s the weekend—had some difficulty waking up. Just felt really tired. When I finally got up and looked into the mirror, wow, surprise! My eyes, especially my right eye was very swollen. I knew immediately what happened as this had happened a couple of years before I got systemic candida.

 

swollen eyelid again ... a space heater reaction

At that time, I didn’t have floor heat in my one-room so used a space heater. Then one day when I woke up, both of my eyes had almost swollen shut. I was so ashamed to go anywhere, but did go to the store immediately and bought a long duck-billed baseball cap and wore it low for three days as I waited for the swelling to go down. I also went immediately to the hospital to consult with docs about what the hey was happening. Allergy testing was recommended because I had cats and the docs all thought it was them. Nope, I would have reacted long ago or at least had some hint, but I did test for cats, mold and a couple other things. Nothing! I was referred to some kind of skin specialist and that doctor (arrogant as could be) wanted all my perfumes, shampoos, conditioners, hair sprays, make-up because he was going to do (very expensive) testing to find the one that was causing my problem. I told him I didn't use perfume (one cat was very senstive), only used two shampoos, never used conditioner (makes my hair feel heavy), hair spray was only one brand and in very tiny amounts, and for make-up only used mascara, and none of these things had ever given me any indication of being injurious to me. He basically called me a liar because all females are cosmetic-freaks. [What arrogance, and mostly because his communication was top-down because (1) he spoke English fluently, a high value here and (2) he had the "doctor is god" attitude! Errrgh!] He only listened enough to ask what chemicals I had been around … Ah, there was a good thought! … but I couldn’t think of a single one. He demanded then that I bring all my cosmetics because that was where the problem was. That just didn’t make sense to me and he was so arrogantly insistent that I just left.

A couple days later my eyes were getting better. BTW, I had to sleep for two nights in my neighbor’s one-room because every time I went into mine, my eyes would begin to swell again. Well, after a couple of days I was back home and my cats were happy and I was happy to be with them as I read, sitting in front of my space heater. And then I could feel my eyes swelling again. I turned off the space heater and stayed in a very cold room that day, and then the next day turned on the space heater again. Yep! Sure enough. It was the space heater causing my reaction. So I went online to find out what could possibly be causing that reaction and what I found is rather disturbing—the coils have asbestos and other toxic materials in them. I read in several places online that over time these materials break down with use. Yikes is just putting it mildly! Here are the toxic/chemical materials listed in the coil heating elements—nichrome, iron-chrome, nickel-chrome, nickel-iron, nickel, stainless steel, molybdenum, tungsten, and MoSi2 conductor wire, and the insulation materials are the ones to really question—mica, asbestos, ceramics, fiberglass, and synthetic liquids (and just what are they??? some evil known-to-be toxins that are a trade secret so they don't need to be listed???).

Well, over the past several years I have rarely used the space heater because of my previous reaction, but yesterday I didn’t care to heat my whole apartment as I was just going to be working in front of my computer. So for four hours the space heater was pointed my way, about a yard away, heating me up and putting toxins in my body. BTW, my face was turned away from the heater so wow, it really fed some toxins into the environment, into probably my whole body, and the outcome appeared this a.m. Not good, not healthy, not going to use the space heater again!!

BTW, here's a very detailed account of Multiple Chemical Sensitivities. I am a bit sensitive to paints and air conditioning filters (they're very moldy and should be cleaned often) and some others, but for the most part if I can just get to better ventilation away from those known toxins I'm fine. I wouldn't say that I have multiple chemical sensitivities, but if I don't practive prevention, then I think I could develop some awful sensitivities.

My Cats' Hematology Reports

Before my female cats were spayed, one vet had a policy of doing bloodwork before operating to see if there would any kind of special problems he might have to address during the brief surgery. He also wanted to know the condition of the animal, and in some cases, would recommend drug therapy, or I'm guess, maybe a special diet.

They both loved sitting behind the books while I studied!

Anyway, both Aulait and Cafe had their operations and he didn't particularly like the outcome of either of their bloodwork. Aulait, at one year of age, had her operation first. The vet commented that it might be necessary to give her some kind of therapy, but I wasn't too keen on infusing a drug cocktail in my baby and that was as far as the conversation went. Aulait as an older cat having the operation really had a lot of pain, and I vowed that Cafe wouldn't have the operation so "late". But since she had panleukopenia as a two-month-old and then needed time to recover before she had her inoculations, which had to be spaced, the vet wanted her well enough to be able to recover from another shock to the system. So finally at eight months of age, Cafe was fully inoculated and thought to be healthy enough. The bloodwork certainly shows that she was f-a-r from healthy. The vet just shook his head, didn't recommend any kind of therapy, and said she was well enough for the operation.


I was so busy at the time writing my thesis and researching that I didn't pay as much attention to Cafe's bloodwork as I had when Aulait's came back. For Aulait I had to look up everything online to figure out why something was 'high' or 'low' or even normal. I just didn't understand much about the medical terms and what they might imply in regard to health. I know a lot more now, but I intend to study further and so I post these hematology reports for future referencing.

Got us a wee cat fight on our hands!

The bloodwork did help me over the past few years to understand a little why Aulait always wanted to eat plastic bags, plastic coated strings, Christmas (plastic) colored strings, and other soft plastics ... she was low in lipase, the enzyme for fats. Cafe was also very low in lipase but only on rare occasions did she go for plastic, so I'm still thinking on this weird plastic eating phenomenon. I've read online about other cats doing it or even eating computer cords. Thank goodness Aulait didn't do that, but I did have a trick to prevent her from eating the plastic bag edges that hung over on my trash can - I would lather my hands lightly with dish soap and smear it on the visible plastic. I would have done that to my computer cord too if necessary. And then looking at Cafe's blood report, it was obvious that she already had renal issues as an eight-month-old, although it wasn't obvious to me at the time. I really wonder what I would have done differently if I would have known how to read the blood report.



Cafe, after being diagnosed with serious renal problems knew and accepted that she couldn't have Aulait's food ... so she would get just as close to it as she could during Aulait's feeding times. She never tried to get IN the cupboard, but boy did she have to sit ON the cupboard while Aulait ate!

Aulait's Bloodwork

On April 17 Aulait had blood drawn to find out why she was so sluggish, listless, and just sick overall. Oh my poor baby, it turned out that she had liver problems, gall bladder problems and very low white blood cells ... those were the three biggest problems. Oh, so sad! While I can do liver cleanses for myself, I had no idea how to clean out Aulait's affected liver and gall bladder. I know that when the liver registers as being bad on a test, then the liver is already 60% or more impaired ... oh poor baby!

Anyway, I'm posting Aulait's bloodwork. One day when I have time to research this better and as I gain more knowledge about treating bacteria or eating better for my own health problems, maybe I'll come across something that I should have, or at least, could have, done for Aulait to better stabilize her health. I know that Cafe, my other cat, could have been greatly benefited by barley green powders and other healing powders if I would have known about them as nutritional therapy back when she was having her kidney crystals 3 years ago. I improved a lot when treating Aulait's health issues and my own.

As for the following blood panel charts, the second chart is especially hard to understand as there are no normal-ranges. I'm just posting all 3 blood panels in the order that they were given on April 17 - respective times for the following tests are 5:41pm, 5:47pm, and 6:03pm. Given Aulait's history of thrombocytopenia, I would have given the third test first, but I wasn't the vet. (My original vet would have immediately tested those points as he was the one who diagnosed Aulait with thrombocytopenia almost 2 1/2 years ago. I moved and so took Aulait to an English speaking vet because it's very hard to explain medical problems and nearly impossible to understand them in Korea and wanted to discuss some points with the vet this time ... although my last vet was awesome about writing down the Latin and I could look up those points later - but then that was the problem, later, and I always have questions.)



LOL! The cat's eyeview of a hot cat!

 Steroids!

Aulait was treated with prednisone and two other serious drugs before I thought to ask what the vet was giving her. I was stunned! I didn't want my cat getting STEROIDS. Prednisone is steroids and if she had candida like I thought, then there would be many side effects from the steroids actually FEEDING the candida! I experienced this - absolutely horrendous! But a shot can't be undone, and really there were no alternatives, so I probably would have had to agree in the long run.

After that, I watched her so carefully to see if she would have problems. She seemed to have a bit less energy - she didn't have much to begin with - than before for about 10 days, and then for the next 10 days she really picked up! And I started looking for a caretaker for her while I would be on vacation ... but then those optimistic thoughts utterly crashed as she rapidly declined again, and lower than before. The only bright times during the day were in the afternoons when she hadn't eaten for a while and she would feel a bit playful.

But inevitably, she would go hypo (as before), and as soon as she went hypoglycemic or had eaten (food reactions!), she would yowl at me to help her. If I didn't move, she would curl up in a pitiful ball and try to sleeeeeep away her misery.

I don't think the prednisone benefitted Aulait. The vet was surprised that she hadn't "picked up" after 3-4 days ... but if she had candida like I thought, then the prednisone was not the solution to the problem. What were my choices though? I had syringed nutrients into her mouth off and on for a couple of years and was just clueless about what more to do. Some day ... hopefully ... I'll find a better solution. No human and no cat should have these awful experiences!

Cats and Systemic Candida

My girls! Cafe (tan) and Aulait (white)

It's been almost 3 years since I got sick with systemic candida, or actually I should say, since both of my cats and I got so very sick. All of us had been sick with something before. For me, I was just diagnosed with hyperthyroidism (September 2006) and had low-to-no energy and looked like a skeleton. And it was because I needed to relax more and stay at home to eat better and sleep better that I got my first cat, my beautiful white Aulait. She was 4 months old and was everything I wanted in a cat - a female, not long or short hair, not afraid of dogs (she played with the leash of my neighbor's dog that I was walking when I stumbled across the new pet shop!), and from a loving environment (the owners at the pet shop allowed the 5 four-month old kittens to just walk around the entire pet shop - how awesome!) Well, within a month of getting Aulait, I realized she had food allergies to the canned food "EVO" or was it "EVOLVE". She farted hugely when she ate the wet food so I changed to another brand, but I still gave her the dry EVO(LVE). Another month later, she bloated and stopped playing. When I took her off of the dry food, within three days she was her joyful self! As she was growing up, I did notice that over time, she got pickier and pickier about the foods she would eat.

First day for Cafe to play after getting the cat killing disease - panleukopenia

And then after a year, Aulait so loudly and over and over again demanded companionship, so one day I spontaneously went to the "meat market". Well, it is the street where teeny kitties and puppies are the products of a thriving business and the poor babies are known to also be the products of overbreeding. I bought Cafe from a tiny boutique that seemed to give better care to its animals. And within four days, Cafe had the cat killing disease panleukopenia, a very contagious white blood cell disease. I didn't know anything about the disease or maybe I would have taken her back to the shop, but for the next 3 weeks, she was pretty darn sick and only survived because we barely caught the disease in time. She luckily pulled through but her GI track was very compromised ... I wasn't aware how badly but was told to keep her on a strict diet for six months to let it heal.

So three years ago, all three of us suddenly got sick ... and the source of our sickness I traced to our tap water which I stupidly was drinking and stupidly was giving to the cats. What made me finally figure out the prob was my cheeks inside my mouth felt like they were being pinched whenever I drank the water. And then I started noticing how much white sediment or deposits were around my faucet and in my dish drip tray, more than that at my friends' houses and other places around the city. Chlorine? Likely but not sure. But that whiteness had been ever increasing since the river directly beside my house had been, and was still being, excavated.

Cafe was the sickest at first. Her very weakened GI track from before resulted in kidney problems and at age 2 she painfully started passing sandy crystals. The vet put her on a low protein diet and for 6 months she was OK, and then she relapsed. The vet was surprised she relapsed so soon, and it was pretty bad, so I had to put her to sleep. 2 1/2 years only .... so very young and so very sweet.

Well, by this time Aulait and I were very sick, and very weirdly we shared some symptoms although I was having horrible bone problems and she seemed less affected in that department. We've both had neuropathies, hers much worse than mine, we've had inflammation in our eyes and elsewhere (I can tell by how she held herself that she was having arthritis and other flexibility issues). But while we both felt badly, I could treat myself more specifically. I could do liver and gall bladder detoxes, eat onions and garlic for cleansing the blood (cats are allergic to both), and go regularly in for vitamin A and D tests. Aulait wasn't doing so well after I put Cafe to sleep so I took her in to the vet and had her tested. Outcome - thrombocytopenia, a white blood cell problem and an autoimmune disease. Her full diagnosis was:

thrombocytopenia: utilization - destruction -  lack of production
lymphocytosis/monocystosis: excitement - antigen stimulation - neoplasia
borderline polycythemia (erythrocytosis)
borderline low MCHC
suspected nucleated red blood cells

Her bloodwork:

HCT ......... 36.2% ........... 24.0 - 25.0 ▲
HGB ........ 13.3 g/dL ....... 8.0 - 15.0
MCHC ..... 28.8 g/dL ...... 30.0 - 36.9 ▼
GRANS ... 4.7 x10³/µו .… 2.5 – 12.5
……. %Grans …. 28%
L/M ….… 12.1  x10³/µו ... 1.5 – 7.8 ▲
……. %L/M …... 72%
PLT …….. 21 x10³/µו ….. 175 – 500 ▼
Retics …... 0.7%
NRBCs … likely

And the vet told me I would have to bring her in regularly (every 4 months) for life to get testing and treatment. Well, I did take her in every four months when her energy was depleted, and Aulait got expensive testing, and then pharmaceutical treatment for 10 days or so and then retesting to see if the therapy worked. After the 3rd time of taking her in, I decided to try diet control in a different way than I had with Cafe. I had syringe-fed Cafe for 6 months a special kidney support low calcium mush-food that helped, so I started syringe-feeding Aulait nutrients, mostly barley green which is very high in vitamin Bs, which I knew would benefit her nerves and maybe help with the neuropathies she was having.  Well, she stopped having energy-loss relapses! And for the next two years she didn't go to the vet's except for her annual inoculations.

Spirulina - she never could eat spirulina neatly like the other supplemental powders.

That didn't stop her ongoing increase in food allergies though. She expressed more and more dislike at foods she had happily eaten before, AND she started having water allergies AT THE SAME TIME I WAS HAVING THEM with seemingly similar reactions!!!! (See Reaction to Bottled Water - headaches and numbness) From this time onward, she stopped going to her water bowl until she was really thirsty and then she would do a little foot scrape dance before she would lap just a few times and then scurry away, with her fur crawling horribly on her back.

Over the past several months I'd really upped her nutritional supplements that I syringed into her mouth. Such a sweet trusting baby. She would just open her mouth and half lap, half back-tongue-action the liquid down quickly. She got barley green, barley green and bee pollen (the latter which is extremely high in vitamin Bs but also with natural sugar so I can't take this for candida - I've suspected Aulait as having the exact same problems as myself since almost the beginnings so I didn't use this in the beginning; later, I used it to see if it's help since I was running out of options. It did a bit. Anyway, both Aulait's neuropathies and candida mess with vitamin Bs and Aulait definitely needed vitamin B to help with her nervous disorder, so I would mix a little bee pollen with the barley green. She loved the taste and if I kept the bee pollen percentage small, her neuropathies temporarily disappeared). Over the past months via syringe I've given her spirulina (she's not particularly fond of this), mullen leaf powder (she likes it), catnip tea (she hates it), and of course also syringed in anti-inflammatory oils like flax seed oil (yuk from her!), cod liver oil (yuk!), evening primrose oil (a bit yukky) and olive oil (sometimes yuk). Although she hated the ickiness of the oils, she was calmer afterwards and her neuropathies were less!

She still got worse though. The last few months I've been syringing three times a day for her. I even syringed dextrose based on the vet's recommendation. It helped her sudden bouts of hypoglycemia, but I had to be careful to not give her too much dextrose ... or she would have horrendous neuropathies that made her madly lick her four paws, her back, her tail, and to "escape" the creepiness she would race all over the apartment in madness. So terrible to watch. Whenever I saw her having one of these bouts (caused by food, wrong supplements, too much dextrose, or even hunger), I would quickly mix barley green with a little bee pollen and syringe it in her mouth and then feed her a wet food that was made from meat and not processed filler "meat" like in the canned Fancy Feast (that brand gave Aulait the worst neuropathies!). She got so she would come and "tell" me when the problems started, because we both figured out that if we could address the problem early, it would be easy to "fix". She had these strange hypoglycemic-neuropathy attacks at least 2-3 times a day in the end.

On May 30 I couldn't stand watching her struggle with her problems anymore. She also seemed to be starting to have pain as her eyelids were usually heavy and she looked dull. She had long since stopped playing much ... and the day I dreaded came when I knew her quality of life was too poor to go on. So I had her put to sleep. Tough decision but she no longer suffers, so in that respect, we are both at peace.

The vitamin loaded powders for Aulait: barley green, bee pollen, alfalfa powder, mugwort powder

Mixing nutritional supplements for syringing

Left to right (back): dextrose, spirulina, barley green, bee pollen; (front) spirulina mixture, bee pollen and barley green mixture

Barley green for Aulait

I don't really know what happened with Cafe, but I think we were all exposed to a horrendous bacteria that attacked our weakest areas - for Cafe, it was her already compromised GI track. [But then as I read somewhere, 70% of diseases start in the GI track!] Even though the vet that diagnosed her with renal sand said she was eventually going to suffer kidney failure, I think the bigger cause of her death was of a bacteria, aka systemic candida. She had a lot of the tell-tale symptoms: very bad breath, extremely waxy ears, and intolerance to foods (but not as bad as Aulait).

Aulait certainly was suffering from a bacteria. We shared so many symptoms it was crazy - food sensitivities, odor sensitivities (Aulait was extremely sensitive), neuropathies, inability to make decisions when at our worst, extreme tiredness, and so many more. Poor baby, to be so sick from food ... But baby, we so understood each other and for seven years we were always there for each other! Now rest and be at peace.