Hello all,

I’m back, when I unfortunately wish I wasn’t (meant in the nicest possible way!).

After seeing some minor improvements my health started to decline again about a month ago. In terms of what seemed to have change, I was in a restaurant back in my home town of Bedford and experienced symptoms of breathlessness after a gas leak in the restaurant I was in. Despite feeling uncomfortable at the time I didn’t think much of it, and assumed it would be a temporary thing. I did feel a little better after the weekend when back in Norwich and completed on a brand new house purchase on the Monday.

When I went to the house on Tuesday to pick up the keys, for the first time I noticed a semi delayed reaction to the air quality in the house. Breathing felt heavy and hours later an extremely strong brain fog came over me, with disrupted sleep. This was the first time, despite many previous visits to the house where I felt such a noticeable change in symptoms. This pattern then seemed to reoccur over the weeks when I had to be at the house to sort out various paperwork, furniture deliveries etc, symptoms often staying with me for a few days after.

I feel I do recover slightly, but the frequency of exposures has led to a fairly persistent breathless feeling even when not at the house. That ‘air hunger’ feeling. Both brain fog and sleep tend to improve.

Naturally this is a crushing blow to me to be blindsided by a reaction that means I’m unable to live in my new house healthily. What happened exactly I can’t be sure, but my thoughts have to be that this gas exposure has poisoned me and made me hypersensitive to my environment. I’m even wondering if it was carbon monoxide.

I also have friends, family and employers to deal with. My family think I’m crazy and that these are anxiety attacks, and whilst I might need to pull away from their negative energy at this difficult time, they have some financial investment in the house I have purchased which makes it difficult. I’ll be preaching to the choir when explaining the frustration of no-one understanding how you feel. Because the situation is so extreme, i.e. only after completing on the house (the point of no return) do I feel symptoms, it’s very hard for them to understand my position. I literally never felt even a whiff of a problem in that house prior to purchasing. I feel that repeated exposure may be making my ‘bassline’ health worse as well.

The plan from here is not immediately clear. The rental I’m currently in, which was deemed ‘safe’ expires at the end of next week. Sods law the landlord has started to redecorate before I’ve moved out! I do have some accommodation available in a friends flat for around 5 weeks whilst he is away on holiday. The flat is around 3/4 years old with no renovations since it’s construction. Fingers crossed it’s okay. After that I’ll need to look for a safe rental. I will need to expose myself to my new (toxic) house on a few more occasions, to take delivery of a sofa and move some stuff, and to show people round to setup a rental. I’m not overly keen but I simply have no other choice.

The breathlessness is the real concern, as it’s such a major distraction to normal life. When your noticeable of your breathing, days are long, difficult and depressing. Rarely are you able to think about anything else.

I know my body is ravaged with fatigue, gut problems, toxicity and a sluggish liver, so I know the cause is somewhere amongst that. Until I’m somewhat stable I’m reluctant to try the brain retraining route, firstly as it could be too much of a stress to do exercises that draw more attention to my breathing, secondly my mindset was pretty darn good and positive prior to this happening which obviously wasn’t enough to stave off this reaction.

Has anyone dealt with breathlessness in the context of MCS or chronic illness? Is there anything that might be able help?

Many thanks,