That Time I Ruined Everything in my House with a Non-Toxic Essential Oils Flea Spray

 I wanted to chronicle what's been going on in my life/my house for the last 6 1/2 weeks and counting for the internet because I've searched everything and although I've found some small amount of help in the form of people who've posted they were experiencing something similar, I did not find much in the way of solutions. 

So here's a post in case you are googling because you sprayed a supposedly non-toxic flea spray in house that you ended up being intensely allergic to and you found out the hard way there is no way to clean it and trying just makes it worse. 

It started out when the cats got fleas and I treated them with Frontline which had always worked for me before.... but that was when they didn't have fleas yet... and it worked so good and consistently I forgot to flea treat them and then they got fleas.

My poor babies were suffering pretty bad by the time I noticed them. 

It couldn't have been that long since my furniture is white and I'd only just noticed the flea dust they were leaving behind so I dosed them with the Frontline and thought we'd be fine in a day or two... but instead they got worse and they were crawling around on my poor little girl's face and she was so upset she was hiding in the basement, and my little guy was waking me up every half hour or so, so I decided first thing in the AM, I'm going to the pet store to get some Capstar (which makes the adult fleas jump off them and die for about 24 hrs while you get a jump on the cleaning) and some treatment for the carpet. 

This is where I went wrong. First off I bought this "non-toxic home spray" from a brand called Vet's Best that was highly recommended all over the internet. Its main ingredients seem to be clove oil and peppermint oil which sounded about as non-threatening as possible, so I treated the cats and the fleas fell off them and died, and I treated the carpet with this stuff and while i was at it sprayed the cat tree and the furniture and the bed.

Which is basically everything. 

All was well at first and I can't even recall how slow or fast it happened because I was having what I thought was a mild allergic reaction to my conditioner, which is a thing that happens to me sometimes and I'd recently switched conditioners. 

I'm allergic to the emulsifier in a lot of creams and lotions, which is super-weird but true and I've learned to live my life around it in the last 10 years since it first started happening. So I rinsed my hair and threw out my new conditioner and I sad cause it made my hair feel nice.

Only the reaction didn't stop, it got worse and worse and worse and then somewhere in there it became clear that it was the flea spray I was reacting to and not the conditioner at all, so I tried to shampoo the carpet and wash the sofa covers and things like that, but it was all suffering the whole time for me since I'm allergic to this stuff I was trying to clean.

I am still unclear as to whether or not I was reacting to the clove oil (Eugenol) or the peppermint oil or if perhaps the emulsifier I'm allergic to in this product, or if it's some other thing entirely in there that is making me react but what I do know for sure is that it makes my heart race, and my skin feel like its tingling, burning, numb and I go red and swollen and I feel cold and hot at the same time and like im shivering but only in the middle and when it gets really bad I feel lightheaded and I can't think properly and i'm not sure if I can breathe properly either and I feel kind of sick. I think at that point i pretty much crack a window or go outside and get some air so I don't know what happens after that but probably I pass out im guessing. 

Or maybe not, because I wasn't able to sleep hardly at all because my heart was racing so I was just cleaning, or trying to clean it up, like 24/7. I had no appetite and i couldn't sleep and I was just cleaning literally every single thing in the house trying to get rid of this stuff that was clearly making me sick, but cleaning it with water just spread it around more and getting it in the clothes I was wearing and launching it into the air where it seemed to land in every fabric surface from throw pillows to bedding. Stuff I hadn't sprayed originally. Just everything soft in the house. 

I was convinced I was poisoning me and the cats, so I took them to the vet who was like... umm theyre fine, theyre just acting weird because you're annoying them and you keep taking the blankets away from them. and they have fleas.

The worst part of all this is that the fleas didn't die.

I'd poisoned myself but the fleas didn't die.

In fact they were multiplying at an alarming rate it seems since they were starting to bite my ankles and jump into my hot food when I'd set it down on the coffee table. 

So I vaccumed with baking soda trying to get rid of the fleas, and I found that just putting the baking soda down on the carpet made me feel better. It was soaking up the flea spray. My body responded to it somehow so i put a ton of baking soda down on the carpet and that helped at least for a little while.

Meanwhile, I'd contacted the manufacturer who told me I "used the product wrong" and basically said sorry about your luck. The company that sold it to me refunded me, which at least was something but that $20 refund was barely a drop in the bucket in comparison to the amount of money this all ended up costing me. 

All-in-all, I contacted poison control for both people and animals, 2 vets, the manufacturer, 2 pet stores, 2 allergists, and a company that cleans up chemical spills and no one had any advice for me how to clean this stuff, but the chemical spill people took two days to research it and told me to replace the carpet. 

I should have understood at that moment that what they were saying is "you cant clean it" but I didn't get it. or I didn't want to get it or something like that. So I was still trying. I just had the hardest time believing that this less-than-a-full bottle of non-toxic essential oils flea spray had made everything in my house garbage. 

I googled a lot of phrases and I did come up with a few stories like mine. The most helpful of which was one about a clove oil spill at a business, who offered a lot of great advice about how... same as me.. they made the mistake of trying to clean it with water, they had nobody come forward with any answer how to solve the problem, and that they basically left a fan on 24/7 for three weeks, left pans of kitty litter out to absorb the odor/oil/evil and had to paint with Kilz and that was all kind of good enough for people to carry on working in there, but the smell remains and they never quite got it all out. 

So I opened up all the windows, turned on all the fans and set out pans of kitty litter thinking in 3 weeks it'd be OK in here and decided to stay and live in here and suffer through it while it dissipates and then all would be fine.

Only not even close. and my suffering was pretty terrible. 

I cant sleep because the bed stings me. I try to use the air mattress but after a few days the air mattress stings me. So does the bedding. So do my pajamas, so do my daytime clothes. Its in my clothes its in my desk chair, its in my bras now. Wearing clothes is unbearable, sleeping is impossible, I have no surfaces to lie down on anymore. The whole house is toxic. 

The more laundry I do the more its spreads to the other things in the load. I buy some blankets and pajamas at the thrift store because I've burned through mine. I wash them in a load with some other stuff and they're infected before I even use them.

I google some more and I find stories of a couple with a new baby having the same problem posting "What can I do?" and "Is this going to harm my baby?" and no answers.

My cats are acting weird but they have fleas and its hard to know if they're experiencing what I am.

I move us to the garage because its terrible inside but im having similar issues out there since the bedding and my clothes are infected. But i dont know thats whats happening yet. I just know I don't know what to do, how to fix this and I can't sleep. The cats are miserable living in the garage with me and they still have fleas. and it starts to get really cold at night and it's just not fun living out there. 

So we move back in the house.

I google some more and I find a woman also asking for help. Says this has cost her $10,000 and counting because she replaced her bed and same thing happened to the new bed. and she replaced her washing machine and same thing happened to the new washing machine.

And I concluded that the chemical spill people were right. Need to replace the carpet for sure. And that her washing machine is because shes still washing the infected clothes and bedding I bet. In fact the bed might be because shes put the infected bedding back on the bed. And shes probably wearing infected clothes she thought she washed.

You can't wash this stuff out.

Everything thats infected is garbage.

So I know this but I still cant sleep. I'm still working from home so I have to be here. The cats don't want to leave plus they have fleas anywhere. Where can I take them? No one trying to rescue me deserves a flea infestation.

At least the baking soda and constant vacuuming got rid of the fleas in the carpet. Then at the 3 week mark I used Advantage II on the cats and it got rid of the fleas in about 2 days. Not entirely but enough that the cats don't seem flea-ridden anymore, they're not leaving flea dust around and they seem chill.

In fact theyre flopping all around on the floor and the infected blankets and bed like its no big deal.

I've taken most of the furniture out of the house and im living on camping chairs and a camping cot, all of which are getting a little more infected daily till i cant sleep on the cot anymore either.

I wake up every night around 2am unable to sleep freaking out i should have left a long time ago. I decide i need to move out. Get an apartment. move out. fix the house once im out.

Ive stopped wearing my clothes becuase I love my clothes and dont want to ruin them. So theres a lot in the back of the closet and in the drawers that I think/hope will be OK. I don't want to have to throw away everything I own. 

A friend who's a landlord gives me a key to an unrented property he is fixing up inbetween tenents. I take the cats there for a night and sleep a few hours on the hardwood floor. The cats are flipping out and hiding in the closet. It got as cold as it was in the garage and I moved us back home when it was time to work, from home. I wasn't going to leave them there by themselves. 

I give up trying to clean it and know that I have to throw everything out that got infected. Most of its in the garage now. The blankets, the furniture, the clothes, the camping furniture. 

I tried cleaning it all with everything. Vinegar, Baking Soda, Lemon, Dawn, washing soda, borax, laundry detergent, oxy clean, steam. None of it works.

The bed gets a little better every day because I'm literally soaking up the evil with my clothes and skin and bedding and then starting over with fresh. After six weeks its not bad to sleep on. 

The kitty litter does nothing exept when i dont use it its worse in here.

Opening the windows only helps if its dry out. On humid days it makes it worse in here. I got a dehumidifier, which does seem to help. Its one of the few thigns that does. My neighbor loaned me 2 air purifiers. I had one too. They kind of help I think. Like the kitty litter I dont know they do anything but its does seem worse without them so i keep them going.

It keeps getting colder so I have to shut windows and turn off fans, which is fine somehow because the humidity stays down, but i open everything every so often because fresh air helps too till it gets humid in here. 

I have to vaccuum the baking soda in the carpet constantly. Because its just as bad it seems as the original evil spray that I can't clean. Or maybe its aborbing it and thats why. So i vaccum constantly becuase my vaccuum isnt powerful enough to pull it up but the more I pull up the better i feel, even if it feels good when i first put it down. 

So im in a constant state of putting baking soda down and vacccuming it up and opening and closing windows and not getting enough sleep and changing out pans of kitty litter and buying thrift store clothes and bedding and taking infected things out to the garage.

I've got a new carpet being installed next week. They're going to seal the floor with Kilz and im going to remove the rest of the soft furniture and start fresh. I dont think the hard furniture is effected but it may be. Theres no way to know until the carpet is gone. 

The front room right now is pretty bad because I attempted to shampoo part of the carpet, even though I know it doesnt work but I was trying to get up some more of the baking soda and now it just feels like its all in the air. 

So i have 2 more days here working from home around this, in my thrift store pajamas, but at least the bed isnt bad. I baking soda the bed every night too. 

The cats are fine and not affected by this. My friends and the carpet salesmen who've been in here dont seem to be either but I dont believe theyve been here long enough. i can't decide if I should donate the contaminated bedding and such back to the thrift store because I don't know how to know if it's just me that is effected by this stuff or not.

The bottle of flea spray said "some people have a reaction to it" but i think most people don't and if that is the case I will donate all this stuff back. I just dont know how to verify that.

I might try getting some things i really like dry cleaned to see if that works or not.

I dont mind losing my stuff. It's just stuff. And I know im in for a lot of $$ but truthfully none of my things were that expensive and none of them are not replaceable. And the carpet was 9 yrs old and the cats have been hard on it. 

And i signed up for a new kitchen floor too and the kitchen is fine.

Just while we're doing this.

Makes me think the hard furniture is probably fine too cause the kitchen and bathroom and everything in it are fine still and the clothes in my walk-in closet and dressers seem to be as well. It's literally just things that got that spray on it or transferred on it. And anything i tried to clean w water ended up a billion times worse for it. Water somehow makes it much more toxic to me.

But I'm living under the current assumption that the hard surfaces will be OK and new carpet will solve everything. I'll live with the carpet and no soft furniture for a week or two to confirm and if not ill get rid of hard furniture and paint. 

It really seems to be the carpet at this point now that most everything else is outside. 

I haven't solved the laundry yet. Just quit doing it. It wasnt helping. But i am wondering if I have to replace the washer/dryer or not. I dont have the uninfected laundry to burn doing experiments right now but ill probaby get some thrift store something or other and try washing it with nothing infected and see how it comes out.

But for now I'm just suffering through the next few days till new floors. 

If this happens to you, stop everything and remove anything the spray got on cause it's trash.

All of it.

Don't bother trying to clean it, just remove it from your house. 

I will update after new carpet, hopefully with a success story. 

Or if not, with details of whatever came next.

My feeling is that if its still a problem after carpet, i will paint, if its still a problem after paint.. well the house is ready to sell because i can't live here.

I love this house. I want to live here.

So I'm getting new carpet.

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it was not a success story. in fact the new floors are beautiful but within a few days the evil stuff that burns my skin was back in the air .... i got a big $$$$$ air purifier which made it breathable in there but the air was stinging me still and ruining my clothes and blankets after a few days and after weeks and weeks of thinking it was gtting better every few days and then itd be a bad day.. i wish id chronicled it all.

I mean it did get *better* but thats just because it was SO BAD before... and i was in some denial i think and i put some felt over the ducts at some point which helped enough i paid for a duct cleaning.

the guy who did it said he it was making him itch and burn so i figured he was taking it out of the house with him but in a few more days it was still bad and i was literally at my friends house trying to sleep shivering and twitching because it makes my body shake. 

This went on for weeks and i basically stopped eating or sleeping and even though the clothes were lasting longer and i was able to wash and wear some of them again for awhile, which is a big improvement from getting 3 days max and not being able to wash the stuff out at all..

Well i had one really terrible week where i was just so tired and i kept falling asleep on the floor since there wasnt anywhere else and the carpet was doing it to me worse than anything so id have one day where i was so tired id wake up in the am and i seemd okay and then the next night id expect to do the same only id sleep an hour and wake up shaking and id drive across town to sleep at my friends and not be able to sleep for the shaking and vow to get an apartment, and then come back in the am to work-from-home and fall asleep all night and it was OK so i thought id be ok there, and this cycle repeated till i was just about crazy.

also i felt awful all the time and it was getting worse. sick to my stomach and i couldnt sleep or eat unless i basically passed out from exhaustion and i dont think it was OK in there i think i was just that tired... and apartment hunting was its own nightmare and i basically shot a text off in a moment of desperation to a building manager that i saw an apartment i thoght was "ok" for a price i thought overpriced at the time but turned out to be on the lower end for apartments that were "ok" 

and the building manager said she had one unit left and would give me a month free if i moved right away. so I signed a lease and I'm in an apartment now.

and im healing.

and i hate it and i want my house back but i have no idea how to fix it

hoping the evil flea spray wears off with time but its been 3 mos and it hasnt yet.

my new carpet is contaminated too and i think i should probably pull it out. but im not going to yet. im gonna stay here and heal myself and wait for it to get warm again and then reassess the situation.

i hate all of this. 

i dont know if my washer/dryer is ok or not but im going to run some test loads to try and figure it out. its possible theyre just contaminating my clothes and making me suffer worse. 

I have new bed/bedding/sofa/blankets/clothes at the apartment. nothing from the house save hard furniture at the moment. I may try to bring in some clothes that didnt get worn/washed in the flea spray era. and i brought a few clothes from that last set that lasted awhile and i thoguht i washing ok.

I really dont know anything about anything except that i am healing now that i am not there.

i will update when updates happen. but its crazy 3 mos in and i still dont know shit. 

-----------

So now I am at the 4 month mark, 6 weeks in the apartment.

I am not healed yet, but i am better than i was. My skin still has burning sensations and i feel prickly and itchy but maybe not numb anymore. My heart still races and i still feel like im shaking in the middle sometimes but nothing to the degree of before and nothing to the degree of the first few weeks when im sure this stuff was killing me. 

I've moved things over to the apartment one car load at a time and since i was still reacting to everything and nothing, I basically outfitted this apartment with nothing from the house at all except for some hard surfaces like the desk and a metal shelf, and some kitchen supplies and all new furniture and bedding and clothes.

it's all still trial and error and after spending a few hours in the house doing my hair and having a bath in my bathtub, i had a bad reaction a few hours later..... so ive been staying out of the house entirely. or as much as possible. I've been going in to grab a few things, mostly food. Theres not much left in there besides clothes and some hard furniture. 

But then 4 days after id been in the house last i had a bad reaction to nothing at all so I think my symptoms are just waxing and waning all on their own. Which means I have no idea at all, here at the 4 month mark, if the house is OK and its all just my body... or if the house is not OK at all.. and no way to know because im not a reliable indicator. 

Also i washed a shirt and a pair of leggings at the house in my washer/dryer and had a terrible reaction to it, so I believe its in either the washer or dryer or both... but once again im not a reliable indicator... and i'm not willing to spend time in the house and im not willing to sacrifice more clothes to figure it all out either.

I will, ill get to it eventually.

So its winter and i have to keep the windows closed and the heat on at a minimum so the pipes dont freeze and I'm just basically waiting at this point for my body to heal and spring to come so i can open windows and maybe i'll be better able to know what im reacting to and not reacting to if my skin isn't burning and the sensations arent moving and changing constantly even when im not being exposed to anything. 

I got hired permanently at my seasonal job and ive finally been able to relax, because i can stay here as long as i need to now that theres money coming in. Also i get the good health insurance next month so I may go to a doctor even though i dont believe they can help me at all. 

So many people tell me to go to a doctor as if they have a test or a treatment for this. They don't. And people want me to get checked out to try and figure out whats wrong with me as if I don't exactly know what caused this. It's crazy to me how many people don't believe that there's a direct line from me spraying this stuff and reacting badly to it and act like it's a mystery when it is absolutely not a mystery at all.

I tried online therapy because I was so sad and upset and I couldn't eat or sleep and even at the apartment when I was starting to feel better.... i was still sad and upset and it wasnt the relief id expected. The therapist just made me mad not understanding my situation and giving me all the wrong platitudes and I just stopped messaging him. and that was some relief. but when i got hired that was a HUGE relief because im not worried about how im going to pay for this or how long im going to be out of work or job hunting or getting another job or if ill be able to afford all this and if i have to go back to suffering at the house.

I go to the house a few times a week to get mail and packages, i didnt change my address on anything. I'm not going to. and im paying for recycling there and theres no recycling at the apartment so im putting out the garbage over there, plus it helps it not look vacant. Some days i dont even go inside at all, but i change lightbulbs. i have air purifiers running on high 24/7 and i clean and change the filters. 

I need to color my hair every month so I'll do that over there and hopefully that will give me some clue if its safe or not. I love being there but I have reactions for sure.. but then I also have reactions to nothing at all. 

So im no closer to understanding any of this, but I am sleeping much better and i believe i am healing very slowly.

I have settled into the apartment with the new bed and new cat tree i expect to the house whenever the day i can move back in is. I'm just really waiting for healing, waiting for spring, hoping it wears off naturally... i feel like it has to lose potency eventually. I mean how can it not?

So its either in my floorboards and it has to wear off enough for me to be able to be in there w my extreme sensitivity, or its in my washer and/or dryer and ive been wearing the stuff and thats why my skin is so messed up and maybe the house is ok and i can just replace the washer/dryer. Or clean them somehow. Or its just my skin and everything is fine and if i'd stayed id be feeling just exactly like this and healing really slowly.

and theres just no way to know whats true.

And after i figure all that out i need to figure out what stuff is salvageable and what is not. 

But in the meantime my house needs some work so maybe ill get some appointments to fix up the place while they dont have to work around me trying to work from home with two cats in such a small place. 

Trying to look at some bright side here.

If i have to sell the house, the housing market is at an all time high right now but its *my* house and i want to live in it till I die. That was always the plan. I hate not being in my house. I hate not knowing how long I have to live here.

My apartment is OK. its safe here and im OK here but i still just hate not being home. 

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I'm considering pulling apart these entries and dating them but for now I'll just update this one again.

2/10/2021

I'm in the apartment for two months now.

Basically, its winter and i cant leave the windows open because the pipes will freeze. What little I've been able to find out is that heat and light are the enemies of this stuff but I can't afford to run the heat high in winter for no one... or maybe i can if it would work. ... maybe i should do that.. i dont know.

Thats the problem. I dont know what to do at all and theres no one to ask and no guide to follow. I'm just trying stuff and so far every single thing other than literally leaving and starting over somewhere else with new things has failed.

I had a dream the other night that this was all a bad dream and then I woke up in the apartment and I just wanted to cry. and then i went for a walk with a friend later and my eyes welled up with tears when I was telling her about it.

I can't explain how sad I am not to be in my own house. I've lost so many of my things. Maybe all of them, I don't really know. I'm trying to avoid bringing things from the house to the apartment but i need ... everything... I mean I lived in a 600sq foot 1 BR house and I didn't keep a lot of extra stuff besides clothes and now half of those are trash and Im too scared to try and figure out which ones are still good. 

Because basically the only way to know if anything is safe is to give it a try and see if I poison myself.

And so far the answer to almost everything has been yes. I'm poisoning myself.

On the one hand I'm doing a lot better physically. I'm not sick to my stomach or swollen anymore and I don't seem to get shakes (convulsions?) and my heart has mostly stopped racing randomly. but my skin is still burning/prickly/itchy especially on my back and shoulders but also my butt and my legs and my mid-section. Its just constantly moving and changing weird sensations which it does seem to feel like its healing as long as I stay out of the house and away from clothes and things that have been in the house or the washing machine (and /or dryer?) in the house.

On the other hand, I keep accidentally poisoning myself and even a few hours of contact with this evil stuff takes what seems to be about a week to clear out of my system. And by that I mean to go back to the state I was at before, I've not healed completely at all. So this is four months now since I sprayed that spray that I've been in some level of physical distress from it.

I'd thought I'd be able to go back and forth and use my bathroom in my house (which I love and miss) and use my basement and my laundry.. when I moved out.. that was sort of the plan. To hang out in the house and still use it while I figure everything out and sort through the mess i made moving all the furniture and clothes that were ruined out to the garage, and paint or replace appliances maybe.. fix up the place so i can move back in and it'll be better than it was before.

The first weekend i spent the day in my house, doing some cleaning, dying my hair in my basement where I have a little "hair dye studio" set up, did a load of laundry, Took a long bath in my bathtub. And when I got back to the apartment, the clothes id worn in the house were starting to make my skin burn. I was in denial about it so i kept wearing them a few hours longer than i should have and my heart was racing (it hadnt stopped yet) and i was starting to shake when i took the clothes off and set them aside. Put on an outfit id washed in the machine. Only one.. it was a test..  and it did it to me as well, but i took it off pretty quickly since I knew..... this outfit had never been in the house except that i took it there to wash it so i at least determined that it seems to be the washer and/or dryer... but the other outfit was on me and that just absorbed the stuff out of the air. Had to be the air. 

So i think its both in my laundry machines and in my floorboards. 

I've been staying out of the house as much as possible. Only going in to grab things I need for the apartment. Which I've been trying to make more comfortable now that I know I'm not going to be able to go home anytime soon. 

It makes me very upset to think this and all i do all night and day and inbetween and during everything is worry about how/when/if i will ever get back home. Every time im there im so sad because i love it there so much and I want to live there, not in the apartment. 

Every single thing i bring to the apartment is just one more thing that makes me feel more and more like I'll never get to go home. where I belong. I'm in for so much money at this point that I'm not trying to think about it, but I did start thinking about seeing if I can sue the manufacturer of this stuff. There was really no way to know that spraying this stuff could cost me tens of thousands of dollars and displace me from my home for unknown amounts of time.

I don't know if i'll ever get my health back to normal, but I've started doing some zoom yoga classes to start to try to get my fitness level back. It's winter so i can't walk regularly and up until this week my work hours were late and I couldn't walk till the middle of the night anyway and i haven't been doing Jazzercise (my go-to workout) because I don't have the stamina for it right now, and doing it in a small space with cats never works out well. But thats next on my list, to work back to being healthy and to not worry about the house until it gets warm enough I can open windows. 

I don't think i should even be in there until I can open windows. 

I go over there a few times a week to get the mail and get things for the apartment. If im staying more than a minute i open the windows, but i try not to stay.

Last week I put a pair of pajama pants and a tshirt that had never been in the house in the living room. I've been living in thrift store clothes because i ruin them so quickly i try not to pay more than $1 for a shirt or $2 for pants. So i left a $3 outfit on my coffee table for 3 days and then brought it back to the apartment to wear to see if it poisons me. Totally poisoned me. Took about 2 hours before I could tell it was making my skin burn. 

Tried to wear that outfit that poisoned me 3 weeks before that id washed in the machine to see if time alone helps, totally poisoned me.

Tried to clean my washing machine, ran washing machine cleaner... three times... washed all these clothes in there before i thought i should have tried non-infected clothes in there first... but here i have a bunch of clothes ive washed in the clean washer but i havent been brave enough to put any of them on. Because im sick of poisoning myself.

Takes much longer to leave my system than to get into my system. 

But the big mistake i made last week... my neck and back have been messed up not having a real desk chair and working from home, so I got a chair from my garage that I really thought I had saved... i was reallly careful, or so i thought, about not leaving it in the house unless i was working and even then I didnt use it except for a couple off weeks toward the end when the house wasnt as bad. 

The house was really bad at first, and then i started getting rid of stuff and i dont know if it was ever really getting better or if id just convinced myself it should be fine soon if i just suffer through it, which i never expected would take more than a week or two and surely would get better every day and then everything would be fine soon.

It's crazy to me that four months later i'm living in an apartment for two months and i brought this chair over, which was never in the house at its worst, and has been in the garage for 2 months... 

I sat on it to start my work day and my back and neck were so happy and i could feel my skeleton changing, and in that respect, my body was so happy, but within 2 hours my whole midsection was on fire, through my clothes which had never been in the house ever. 

You can't see or smell anything on this chair. There's no way to know or reason to think anything is contaminated until i am poisoned. In this case, I was so happy sitting on a real chair with back support, i was willing to suffer but before lunch my heart was starting to race and i was starting to feel sick.

So i changed out the chair at lunch. 4 hours I spent on this chair and in another few hours i had to abandon the clothes i was wearing and add them to the ever-growing pile of things I've ruined that i don't know how to wash because it doesnt wash out. 

I washed these things in  my bathtub and air dryed them. 

Haven't been brave enough to put them back on to see if they are clean. Because I don't want to poison myself anymore. This particular round of poisoning myself was so bad that its days later now and I still feel the effects of it. 

So my goal for this next week is to NOT poison myself, which means not spending time in the house, not doing any experiments with clothes and just trying to heal, which needs to be my focus.

Ive ordered a new desk chair online which should arrive soon because what i did learn is that I need a proper desk chair. 

and i got some tables and brought over some more things to make myself more comfortable at the apartment. Which feels like defeat. But having what i need here keeps me from going back to the house. or trying to bring things over from the house to see if they're OK.

I brought a pair of winter boots over which seem to be OK, so i brought some slippers over which im not sure about even though I've been wearing them. Its one of those things I know for sure when I know for sure but since I still have symptoms all the time its hard to know.

I brought my yoga bolster over. Its almost certainly infected but i don't use it for long enough to be really effected by it i don't think. Just a few mins here and there. So I'm willing to experiment with that because most things that poison me I had to wear or use for a few hours straight. 

Like i can be in the house for awhile and not feel poisoned but that one time i was hanging out there for a few hours I was messed up for a week. 

It seems like the more i heal the faster i feel it. I thought it'd be like i healed and it wears off and then eventually i dont react to anything but its been like the more normal i feel the quicker i notice how this chair or this shirt is killing me. 

Which is good because i dont poison myself as much when I poison myself now.

But the house is just as bad as it ever was it seems and probably the laundry machines are trash along with my furniture and bedding and at least half my clothes. 

Maybe all my clothes. I've left the hard furniture behind. Maybe that is trash too. I dont know. I don't know how to know. but i have successfully worn some pants that were in a closed drawer and never out in the air or in the washer/dryer. I'd rescue more clothes from the drawers but i dont remember what i wore or what i washed and the only way to know is to risk being poisoned. 

I left all my clothes and got new stuff for the apartment safe two winter coats and a hoodie id put in the car early on in this, and two or three pairs of pants from that bottom drawer when i moved to the apartment. My shoes seem to be OK.... i left some bedding that was in a space bag that i have no idea if its ok or not. I'd love to use that big winter blanket in my apartment but once again, the only way to know is by potentially poisoning myself and its the absolute worst when you're asleep to wake up on fire with your heart racing and your body shaking.  Plus i dont want to risk spreading it to anything in my safe apartment.

Every single thing i bring over is a risk, but so far just the clothes and the chair have poisoned me since I've been here. and possibly the one jacket i was wearing the whole time without thinking about it that i stopped wearing and i still dont know if its OK or not. 

This is no way to live, to be scared of everything. But at least its not like it was for me before when I was not eating or sleeping and being poisoned constantly 24/7 while I was working from home and staying home because of Covid.

All I've learned so far is that i don't know shit about anything except that as much as I hate that I had to move out, it was really the best idea because i would be so sick and so crazy if i was still there suffering and getting poisoned.

I have no idea how or when or if I can go back, or how or when or if I'll know it's safe if it ever is again.

I can't imagine that it won't wear off.... but then i couldn't imagine that it'd be 4 months later and I can't wear a shirt and pants i left in the living room for 3 days. 

Maybe i should turn up the heat and just pay the heating bill because heat is one of the few things that is supposed to make essential oils lose potency. Maybe I'll try that for my next experiment.

Meanwhile its winter and its snowing all the time and I don't want to be poisoned so I'm thinking its best to stay put in the apartment and try and be comfortable here since it's gonna be awhile, and try not to poison myself and see if i can't heal completely.