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The Diary



This web-page was last updated: 26.05.05

There are presently 18 Diary entries displayed on this webpage

Copyright © 2000-2005 Gordon D McHendry: All rights reserved

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"We swallow greedily
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but we sip little by little
at a truth we find bitter."

Denis Diderot


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The Diary
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Introduction

Satori-5 webmaster Gordon D McHendry on a rare good day in 2000...



Welcome to my diary page

     This Satori-5 Diary should fulfil a longstanding need for a fast and easy way of getting up to the minute personal information into the public domain on my "unbelievable" and - I kid you not - potentially lethal struggle with the ME/CFS, MCS/TILT, and HRS illnesses right here in the UK today.

     There have been many times when the combination of these illnesses has been so bad that I have honestly not expected to make it through the next hour let alone the whole night. There is no exageration in that statement; no hysterical imaginings. Yet no matter how many times I asked - and sometimes even pleaded - for help none was ever forthcomming from either the medical profession or the social services. The peculiar combination of staggering arrogance and willful ignorance from which they all seem to collectively suffer is, believe me, potentially lethal [see the numerous supporting materials in the "On-Site Articles" page - via the homepage Quick Menu - if my testimony here is not sufficient for you].

     The low personal survival estimates I was forced to make during those "unbelievable" times were arrived at using that hard-won pre-para yardstick previous explained and discussed elsewhere in Satori-5. Measuring any physical state using such a rock-solid yardstick leaves no room for flights of fancy or exageration. These "low personal survival estimates" were simply the hard-nosed, realistic, physical appraisals of a man who not only successfully negotiated and passed the notoriously difficult British Military Pre-Para Selection Tests - but who even excelled in some of them along the way. Believe me folks, you really do learn a whole lot during that particularly arduous journey about human physical, emotional, and mental limits. Unlike my detractor's and their cavalier and sweeping dismissals, please bear these things in mind when evaluating the likely extent of my claims. When I say "potentially lethal" - I do mean exactly that.

     For me the mere idea now of my possible ME/MCS/HRS induced death being easily and conveniently swept under the medical carpert with an official end-organ failure of some kind [switching symptom for cause] by an incredibly arrogant medical profession that manifestly prefers to stigmatise sufferers rather than confront it own medical ignorance and impotence, just pisses me right off no end - to put it mildly. This website in general, and this diary in particular, should help make any such attempt at "carpet sweeping" in my own case - should it come to that - if not downright impossible [as is hoped] then at least substantially more difficult.

     Additionally, this diary will provide me with a means to counterbalance much of the unaviodable seriousness of this websites material. It will allow me the opportunity of showing something of the lighter and sometimes funny side of chronic illness. Of hopefully showing something too of the wonderful "quickening" that can take place in the development and evolution of ones inner life as a direct result of the sufferings and losses inflicted on ones outer life by the ravages of serious illness.

     Of course I wont manage daily entries - nor do I even wish to try and make them. In that respect I suppose the entries that follow will read more like a journal than a diary. Cropping up only as and when I feel I have something worthwhile to say and actually have the health resources with which to say it. Now that the winter is coming on again there will be even more times now when I am forced to wonder if I can possibly make it through another freezing winters night - so there should be no shortage of events to write about, even if all I can manage are a few essential lines.

     The consolation for me this winter however it that this time round the hard structural and design work of this Diary webpage is already done. The full and working structure is already in place and now uploaded into this wonderous global information pool we call the Internet. With the hard under-the-bonnet work now finally behind me - via tons of short-burst efforts - making short public entries here in Satori-5 is now possible even if I am very ill at the time [when the need is often greatest]. Just the mere ability to do that is strangely comforting - even though I know it wont actually make the slightest bit of physical difference to those long, dark, night-time journeys.

Namaste
Namaste

Yours Sincerely

Gordon D McHendry



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Thursday: 18th September 2003
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Entry D-01

Hi

     This online diary launches today - on my 50th birthday.  Half a century aleady!  Life, huh.  Blink once and you miss it.  Take my advice - don't blink!

     Another 100 mile round-trip tomorrow to reach the nearest NHS dentist for yet another tooth extraction.  As usual the only reason I will probably make it there and back tomorrow is thanks to two things:  1) I am a tough son-of-a bitch and,  2) rocket fuel - or as it is more commonly known at a dilution of 30% to 35% - "Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide".  I will drink 15 to 20 drops of this, in distilled water, on an empty stomach.  Both these things should once again get me there and, after a rest half way, get me back again - before I collapse a complete wreck.

     On a brighter note I recently won my third DLA benefit renewal - but only after once again going through the appeal tribunal process - including the social security commissioners in Edinburgh as well this time.  A long and very difficult 15 month haul but justice was finally done in the end - via the skin of my teeth due to zero support by my [now ex] GP.  A big thanks to all who helped with letters of support.  Good karma earned there for sure :)

     Time to hit that shed-bed.  Big day tomorrow.  And I've still got a few treat pages of Ken Wilber's paradigm shifting "Boomeritis" to read. Roll on widespread "Second Tier Consciousness" - especially among the medical profession :)



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Friday: 19th September 2003
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Entry D-02

Hi

     Another tooth bites the dust.  Pounding headache.  As usual totally wiped out by the dentist trip.  Ridiculous that the nearest NHS dentist is over 50 miles away.  Thank you Mr Blair.  No end of money available for war-mongering but in Wales they have to sleep in the street overnight just to try and get registered with an NHS dentist.  Guesss who won't be voting 'New Labour' at the next election then?

     On the way to the dentist today I was again struck by the notion that speed doesn't seem quite so fast these days.  30 years ago 70mph was really fast.  Just isn't now.  Oh I know its probably just that I have got used to it over the years and so it just doesn't seem so fast to me now.  But I wonder if there might be more to it than that.  Could it be that speed is actually slowing down - because time is somehow speeding up?

God - that's made my head worse.



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Friday: 9th October 2003
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Entry D-03

Hi

     Getting real cold at night again. Fortunately I haven't had to sleep bare-chested for a few weeks now. This is due to the discovery of an American detergent that is made entirely of natural ingredients. For the first time in years now I can do my laundry with more than just hot water. Using this new stuff I have even been able to reclaim a few items of clothing that were previously toxic to me and at night, on the shed-bed, I can now wear a cotton t-shirt right through till morning. Can't tell you just what a huge difference that makes. I am still as ill as hell by then but the night itself is now considerably less intolerable than it was - at least until it starts to REALLY freeze.

     Had to post a recorded delivery letter to my local surgery today sacking my GP - for backstabbing two-facedness. I had been trying for months without success to get copies of some letters to and from consultants to present at my recent DLA appeal. I even threatened legal action at one point to get access to them. When I finally did get them they made it abundantly clear that while he was presenting an entirely friendly, positive, and encouraging face to me personally - he was actually doing the exact opposite about me to the consultants.

     Suddenly all sorts of difficulties I have had over the years with third parties - that have had to interface with me via this GP at some point - began to make sense. It was a sickening realisation. The learning value of ten long and very difficult medical-years was instantly negated. All of it just evaporated into thin air as if everything that had gone before on that long and difficult journey had counted for nothing. And all my hopes throughout that time that this GP was really learning something worthwhile - albeit very slowly and at my very considerable expense healthwise - about the "new modern plague" illnesses that have been, and still are, destroying my health - evaporated painfully to death with them. Congratulations Doc; I'm not easilly suckered but for a while there you really had me believing in you.

"GP with GSOH wanted by unattached HeartSink Patient - for fun times and cosy home-visits"



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Tuesday: 21st October 2003
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Entry D-04

Hi

     Snowed all last night.  Can't remember when we last had such a heavy fall of snow in October?  As expected this made for a long, freezing, and extra poisonous night.

     Had been slogging away at Satori-5's News Alert No-02 in my usual series of fits and starts for the previous few increasingly difficult days and nights. I was substantailly ill throughout the last third of it and had to dig real deep again as usual to make it over the line. By the time I finally finished it and got it all safely uploaded onto my webserver a heavy snowfall was really the last thing I needed for draging myself over to that hard, bare, shed-bed for what I still optimistically refer to as "bedtime". I was not a happy chappy. But then I knew what was coming.

     The short-sleaved t-shirts I had reclaimed a few weeks ago using the new American natural detergent [introduced above] stopped working for me last week after a further laundering. Infuriatingly, this just keeps happening and while I have a theory or two that would account for it I have been unable to prove any of them to my complete satisfaction so far; but I'm still working on that. Anyway, these problems resulted in my having to 'sleep' with only a sleaveless cotton vest on the upper body - with a sweatshirt pulled over the shoulders like a small blanket. This simply was not anywhere near enough for falling snow temperatures.

     Forced by the sheer cold, even with the small electric fire switched on full, into wearing toxic clothing the night soon became one of strong ME/MCS sypmtoms interspersed with short periods of horrible, nightmarish sleep and the regular discarding of each extra clothing item until I ended up back with just the original wearable vest and sweatshirt cover. But the freezing cold soon forced me into wearing the sweatshirt - which then slowly poisoned me over the next few hours until, night finally over, I dragged myself out of the shed and into the cold fresh air of the garden where the snow was still lying shallow in various cold corners.

     Such a bad MCS night invariably produces a bad ME day and that has been the case today. All day and most of the night has gone into simply enduring the horrible combination of severe ME/MCS sypmptoms while waiting, hopefully, to recover once again at some point. Always at the back of your mind are the thoughts: "How much longer can my body go on doing this?" and "Will I actually manage to recover again this time?".

     By late evening though I had finally recovered enough to tackle this entry [and make a few design changes too]. And now its almost time to do the whole freezing shed thing all over again. I had thought that winter was a bit further away than this but it seems to have come early this year.

The unendurable begins now and only some kind of miracle can stop it.



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Sunday: 9th November 2003
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Entry D-05

Hi

     My son was ill with a nasty belly-bug recently. I thought I had dodged it completely but, in the end, I caught a short bout of it. What most people don't understand about ME/MCS [and this includes most doctors] is that any kind of additional viral/bacterial infection makes the ME/MCS symptoms much worse. And if the symptoms are pretty severe to start with then the additional burden of both this "multiplying-effect" - and the typical infection symptoms to boot - can be absolutley devastating. Add on to that the considerable unpleasantness of having to sleep in a garden shed, in winter, with no mattress, pillow, and virtually no bedding - and you might get some idea of what a night or two of that is like under those circumstances. Unfortunately for me - I don't have to imagine.

     Mercifully though the nasty belly-bug only lasted for a night or two [flattened my son for almost a week]. This was down to religeous use of my trusty Clark Zapper, 35% food-grade hydrogen peroxide, and my always-on-tap homemade colloidal silver. Don't know where I'd be without them - but the words "creek" and "paddle" spring immediately to mind.

     Then porn-merchants contaminated the Satori-5 guest book forcing me to take it offline, find a new one, and port all the old guestbook entry data over to it. There was a substantial bit of additional work involved involved in this, while pretty ill by anybody's standand, so it was all a bit of a morale blow. It is just so hard producing the efforts required to keep Satori-5 moving forward at all, however slowly, without having to go a good way back [repeatedly] and redo all sorts of stuff. But the guestbook is all back up and running again - and, as a kind of compensation, much better now than it was before.

     On the positive side of things though was a big morale boost from America. A young couple over there - with considerable personal experience of MCS - packed up a box of synthetic-chemical free clothing - as a gift - and posted if off to me here in sunny Scotland! You can, if you wish, read more about this exceptional act of caring and generosity, towards a complete stranger on the other side of the big pond, in the "Thank You's" supplement. Suffice to say here that it did wonders for my spirits.



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Wednesday 31st December 2003
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Entry D-06

Hi

     Freezing outside. Strong winds, sleet and snow. Only a few hours of 2003 left now. I can't say I shall be sorry to see it go. Temperatures were several degress below zero last night and a deeply unpleasant minus 12 the night before that. I could only survive the cold in the shed by unavoidably poisoning myself with a few extra layers of clothing that I knew to be toxic to me - albiet the least so. The night was still very cold even with these extra layers due to the strong winds negating most the heat from the small electric fire and the chemical-injury symptoms were unusually bad all through each night. By morning the sheer intensity of the MCS symptoms were life-threateningly dangerous. Heart rate and rhythm, balance, coordination, memory, breathing, ability to think, were all very badly affected. I don't know how much longer I can keep this up.

     Having fired my GP a few months back for willful ignorance, dangerous incompetence, and back-stabbing betrayal with regard to his handling of my ME/MCS illnesses - particularly when privately interacting with third parties - I am still presently without one. I tried to get the local health board to allocate me a new one that was prepared to treat both the ME and MCS illnesses with respect as real physiological illnesses but they said they couldn't do this? The only thing they could suggest was that I try some of the medical practices outside of Hunlty to see if any of them would be prepared to take me on. Fat chance - but I haven't been well enough to try regardless and reckon that it is quite ridiculous, under the circumstancies, for them to expect me too. What the solution is to all this is completely beyond me. Answers on a postcard please...

     Lost another two teeth since my last entry. They look ok on the outside - and x-rays on both of these ones showed nothing - yet the pain in them was any other case of toothache that I have had - distinct and substantial. Even more important than that issue though was the profound effect they were constantly having on the ME/MCS illnesses, so I really had no choice but to get rid of them - even if only to rule them out of the ongoing, longterm problem. All a bit depressing - but needs must as the devil drives. And worse yet - I still have another two teeth starting to give similar toothache-like symptoms! None of this makes much sense to me. Anyone have any positive ideas?

     Well, its been a hard old year and now it is almost gone. Fighting benefit appeals - and my GP - has taken up far too much of my limited energies this year so I have not been able to make a fraction of the progress on Satori-5 that I would have liked [and expected]. Having said that I have made some very substantial changes for the better and believe that I am now bang on course for realising Satori-5 full potential over the next year - if I can just somehow get through this damn winter that is without having to throw myself on the mercies of the national press before I am fully ready. Throughout recreation has been virtually non-existent

     In saying goodbye to 2003 I would just like to say a big thank-you to the thousands of visitors to Satori-5 throughout the year - especially that small but kind percentage who take that little extra bit of time and trouble to share a thought or offer their support via the Satori-5 guest-book. Always greatly appreciated folks. You make a big difference. God bless.

     I would also like to say a huge thank you to my favourite writer: the American sage/philosopher Ken Wilber for all he has given me via his extraordinary books - especially this year [yet again]. I am deeply indebted to him - as should the whole world be for the incredible service he has rendered it over the years. If you have read any of his earlier works then you need his recent post-modern novel "Boomeritis" too - it could quite easilly transform your whole life. Same for the outstanding and paradigm shifting "Integral Psychology". If you haven't read any of Ken Wilber's earlier works then do yourself a big favour and read at least "No Boundary" and "The Atman Project". If you have even the slightest interest in either the evolution Consciousness or Spirituality [ultimately the same thing] then really, you simply can't afford not too.

Happy New Year Everyone

and my very best wishes to you for 2004



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Tuesday 20th January 2004
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Entry D-07

Hi

     Even with the uncharacteristicly mild mild winter weather this past two months of night-life in the garden shed has been very difficult. Of particular difficulty were the batch of minus-zero night time temperatures - as low as minus-12 at one point. Then the bare wooden base-base slats I have to sleep on because of severe MCS/TILT slowly began to make me ill too. After a few months of use the slats slowly discolour due to prolonged contact with my bare skin. As this discolouration worsens so to do my chemical intolerance symptoms. I can only assume that the slow release of toxins via my skin are aborbed by the untreated white wood and slowly build up there until they reach a level that triggers the MCS illness. Replacement slats then cause an intolerance problems too for a week or so after installing making the whole shed-bed time situation a much bigger ordeal than normal.

     To compound these intolerance and temperature difficulties my old two-bar electric fire went 50% belly up when one of the bars burnt out in the middle of a freezing night; lighting up the shed as if an arc welder was at work in it, poisoning the atmosphere with the burn-out gasses, and leaving me more poisoned and much colder than usual for the remainder of that very long and very difficult night. Offgassing of a replacement electric fire - this time now with glass bar elements - is now in progress as a replacement for the old "clay" type one that burnt out are just not available locally.

     Despite these really bad periods I must admit that overall things have not been half as bad as I expected. The unusually mild weather deserves the most thanks for this - I don't think I could possibly have made it this far without that - but additionally there have been a few other life-saving circumstances too that deserve a mention here.

     At one point I thought I had made a really major breakthrough in improving the quality of the chemically contaminated night-air I have to breath. Santa had brought me one of those new-technology Elrana Ionisers [the portable model] and I was very keen to see if it made any impact on my nightly poison sessions that normal folk call by sweet names like "bedtime" and "sleep". First night of use I eagerly stuck it into the shed a few hours before shed-bed time. On retiring for the night I immediately noticed that the air in the shed was distinctly fresher and I thought "brilliant! Could I possibly have cracked it here?". I climbed onto the shed-bed, put in the usual very uncomfortable night - BUT - by morning, I wasn't half as poisoned as I usually am. And that felt great!

     Next night though wasn't half as good and the night after that I had to put it off an hour after lights out as a new and strange version of my usual intolerance symptoms rocketed to alarming levels. Great disappointment as another big bubble of hope went pop. However, as one door closes another door opens. A few days later I rediscovered vodka!

     I had saw a email message in either ME Chat or Chemical Illnet [can't remember now which] about laundry problems and the possible value of Vodka [as a solvent] for removing chemicals. I thought "What a great idea" and wondered why I had never thought of that myself [duh]. Soon I had picked out some real problem items of clothing and steeped them overnight in a strong vodka/water solution. I followed this with several fresh water rinses and a final full wash in a natural liquid detergent product called Botanic Gold. When these items were finally dried I could smell almost nothing at all from any of them - yet they had constantly stank before that regardless of how many washes I gave them. More importantly though I found I could actually wear them all day long without being made ill by them - or so it seemed.

     To finally make some real progress in this department was such a thrill despite the fact that I couldn't sleep in any of them. Greatly encouraged by this small progress I re-ran the experiment with some cotton vests and t-shirts I used to be able to sleep in [but could now only wear through the day] and found I could then get through the whole night wearing them - although they did make me feel a fair bit iller than usual by morning. But they were - and are - helping me survive temperature wise - at least for now, and I count that a major blessing.

     I might just make it through this winter yet - especially with the help of the prayers voluteered by a growing number of kind and caring Satori-5 visitors [thank you and God bless]. The big battle now is to somehow try and withstand the relentless chemical poisoning my brain and body are subjected to by my severe MCS hostile environment...



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Monday 9th February 2004
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Entry D-08

Hi

     Offgassing of the new glass-bar electric fire is now well underway - at least for the first two of its three element bars [0.5kw per bar]. By that I mean that I don't have to turn it off within an hour or two due to offgassing making me badly ill. By get-up time though I am so ill anyway that is is hard to work out just how all the contributing factors interact. I'm warmer now - and that is something - but I'm even iller now too as a result of that.

     My spirits have been lifted a lot recently by the excellent and courageous work of Profesor Malcolm Hooper:

"Engaging with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME)"

"Engaging with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS)"

"The Mental Health Movement: The Persecution of Patients?"

     Hard copies of these must-read works can be obtained directly from the following address:

Malcolm Hooper
Emeritus Professor of Medicinal Chemistry
Department of Life Sciences
University of Sunderland
SR2 7EE
UK

     The latter two can be read online here at Satori-5 by visiting Satori-5's growing "On-Site Articles" page. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on any of those articles. Just email me using the webmaster link - and if you would have no objections to me sharing your thoughts publicly for the benefit of all Satori-5's visitors please say so in your email.

     Been trying for the last few weeks to work my way through some 70 photocopied documents from my medical files. God, what an eductation! Apart from the numerous errors, exagerations, and even out-and-out lies discovered in there [prelimb to a full series of official complaints] there were also a few genuine gems - like the one from a consultant immunologist who, after doing a whole series of blood tests, was able to confirm in a letter to my GP [dated 7/7/00] that I had tested positive for Epstein-Barr Virus and that "This may have relevance in terms of the development of his ME-type symptoms.". Yet this was never once mentioned in any of my GP's pathetic reponses to my numerous requests to him for his written support at repeated DLA welfare benefit appeals. So utterly poor was his support that despite having had a confirmed diagnosis of ME by at least three separate consultant specialists my third DLA appeal members withdrew my mobility component on the grounds that I didn't actually suffer from ME at all - "but only thought that I did". That I managed - with such a dismal level of GP support - to have that appeal decision overturned by the Social Security Commissioners in Edinburgh and go on to win my benefits back [by the skin of my teeth] at the re-hearing of my appeal is something of a miracle.

     A whole string of these medical letters will be joining the substantial batch already in place in the "Medical Letters" supplement in due course. As will the whole story of my various official complaints just as they unfolded - with all the good, the bad, and the ugly that was in them.



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Wednesday 3rd March 2004
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Entry D-09

Hi

      2.15 am. Exausted. Freezing outside again. Minus 14 last night - and it was a real bitch. Needed my two small electric fires on - 4 heating bars in total [I dread the bill] - all night long and even though it was making me very ill I couldn't put them off. I stay up if I can to 4am or 5am before going over to the shed - especially when it is so cold - to avoid as many darkness hours as possilbe as these are generally much colder than the daylight temperatures. This helps. But when you feel really ill and exhausted and all you want to do is crawl into a warm cosy bed and have a early night - then staying up to the small hours of the morning isn't easy, particularly when you know that you still have a "bed" like mine to look forward too at the end of it...

      On the positive side, having read Dr Sherry A. Rogers "Detoxify or Die", I decided to give her detox supplements a try. I couldn't afford all of them but when the order finally arrived I immediatedly started with the magnesium, glutathione, and selenium combitation and, to my considerable surprise, noticed a distinct improvement throughout my very next night in the shed. The next night was better still, and the next. By about the 4th night I was able to pull a sheet [that normally made me ill if used above the chest] over my shoulders and keep it there all night long with only a very low symptom burden to show for it - even by get up time! I was overjoyed. Never had I had such a result overnight from anything I had tried in the past. For me this was a major breakthrough. But would it last?

      The answer, sadly, was no. Not entirely no. At least not so far. But the startling benefit has considerably reduced with continued use of that sheet high up on my body and the recent freeze forcing me to burn all four heating bars at once for long periods. I am still benefitting - in fact surviving this far without that "breakthough" would have been dire and perhaps not even possible. All this has been made much worse by the constant pain in my right side which, since I first started complaining of it to my GP about 18 months ago [or more] and had the complaint repeatedly dissmissed as muscular, seems now to have produced a lump. And not just pain-wise but also by having my usual levels of severe ME/MCS symptoms very substantially increased to the extent where, feeling terrible, I simply cannot keep my eyes open and have to "sleep" for short periods on my living room sofa which always makes me much worse within an hours use of it. Overall, the feeling of the past few weeks is one of "not going to make it" without some kind of drastic change in circumstances. Hence the final plan...

      My whole system is being overwhelmed by synthetic chemicals [see the Prof Hooper article on MCS in the "Hot Articles" supplement is you do not understand the physical mechanism by which this happens in MCS sufferers]. My body cannot detox them as fast as they are comming in. They stockpile in us over the decades until some MCS triggering event topples our ability to physically handle the situation. The only way out it seems to me is to somehow remove the toxins faster than they are comming in and also to start reducing the longterm stockpile. Enter the Far-Infrared Sauna. According to Dr Rogers FIR Sauna's can do exactly that - and the research quoted to support this is pretty impressive. So, with the help of my son halfing me with the expense - and a two year bankloan for the other half - I have ordered one made especially with MCS sufferes in mind [specially selected wood - only water based glues, etc] and expect delivery tomorrow - well, later today actually. Have put all my eggs in one basket here as I am on my last legs. With all bridges now burnt behind me it is now do or die time...Wish me luck. Will post how it all goes on Satori-5 further down the line if still able.



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Sunday 18th April 2004
Dawning of a New Day            2nd Diary Graphic            Dawning of a New Day
Entry D-10

Hi

      I was just beginning to think that I was somehow, once again, getting away with it; then, last Monday my health, or rather what is now left of it, finally began to collapse into another gruelling crisis. In the early hours of the morning all the glands in my left leg started swelling again from my groin to the inside of my calf. I had been fighting this for over six months [had a large, painful black lump on the sole of my left foot at one point] but by morning I was now so weak I could hardly stand up. All the usual ME symptoms, pain, fatigue, brain-fog, etc had increased substantially in severity and an almost permanent feeling of nausea had removed all sense of appetite. The typically long night had been particulary dire and by get-up time I knew I was probably in real trouble again.

      I started fighting back harder than usual. I doubled my intake of H202 and colloidal silver. I upped my Clark Zapper session from one to two. All day Tuesday however, and all night too, was one of those flat out dreadful affairs where even the simple act of standing up has you wondering if you will actually pass out because of it.

      [break: too ill to continue]

      When things are this bad most normal people - and most ME/CFS sufferers too - will rightfully take to their beds for a bit and probably call their GP out. What do you do though when you don't have either? What do you do when all you have is a bare wooden pallet that you have not long crawled gratefully out of aching, in a very major way, from head to foot? If you are thinking "Well it's easy really - I'd head for my comfy living room sofa and get my head down there." then you'd be a lucky person indeed because mine is MCS toxic [flame retardant chemicals] and poisons me badly within an hour [unless I clamp my nose shut - more on this soon].

      Call out an emergency GP perhaps? Even if it might be the one you have recent fired for back-stabbing betrayal of tust [much more on this later too in the documents section]? Or, perhaps if you are bit luckier, you get one of the others GP's from the same local practice pool who have seemingly bought so collectively and so deeply into the sweeping, indiscriminating, amorphous-blob, "Wessley School Bullshit View" of ME/MCS that getting any kind of REAL help from them at all is an ordeal in itself?

      So then, you can feel your body temperature starting to rise; all the glands in your left leg are swollen and painful to the touch; you are starting to feel discomfort under your left armpit now too and generally feeling head-to-toe dreadful on top of your usual severe ME/MCS burden. Everything in you is screaming to lie down NOW - or pass-out. Unless you can somehow do something to intervene in this new escalating health crisis you know from repeated past and brutal experience that everything is only going to get rapidly and very substantilly worse now. What are you going to do?

[break: too ill to continue]

[ Ps/ Sorry to friends and contacts for current delays in answering emails, etc. Will get back to you soon as I can... ]



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Friday 23rd April 2004
Dawning of a New Day            2nd Diary Graphic            Dawning of a New Day
Entry D-11

Hi

      Monday was a dreadful day. My son was overnighting at his girlfriends house and for me it was just a case of battoning down the hatches and trying to ride out the storm best I could - while fighting it with all the tools at my disposal. Tuesday was a little better - but, disappointingly, nothing to write home about. By Wednesday though I thought I had cracked it. A friend visited, which was a nice distraction for a while, and I was able to cope with that reasonably well - but didn't want to mention my difficulties.

      By late Wednesday night [I think - the dates are a blur now] I had recovered a good bit more and thought I was definitely pulling clear again. Just to be sure though I didn't skimp on the extra H202, colloidal sliver, or Clark zapper sessions. Then, as if to underline my growing confidence, I got a short, but very distinct, burst of that rarest of feelings; wellbeing. This was about 30 minutes after a late FIR sauna too that I didn't really feel quite up to.

      I remember thinking "Hello, what's this then...?", and wondering if I was now about to experience the start of some serious FIR sauna induced improvement in my ME/MCS lot? But sadly no, it was not to be; in fact quite the opposite. Within the short space of two very early morning hours that rare feeling of wellbeing was paradoxically replaced by my worst night for a long time. By 4am Thursday morning I am shivering and shaking uncontrollably on my shed-bed pallet; even with both small electric fires on and burning a total of 4 element bars. Again there was the head to toe pain of various kinds with the sore-skin thing thrown in for good measure.

      I could not get warm enough to stop shivering no matter what I did. The normal levels of discomfort of lying on bare wood with no pillow shot up to ordeal levels so strong that it could only be tolerated at all by constantly changing position. My whole central nervous system seemed to go into a state of overload with unusually fast brain-racing, palpitations, and strange visual disturbances. A strong thirst plagued me too but I was just too weak to struggle out of the shed and over to the house to get some water. As the hours ticked slowly by, racked with thirst I started drifting in and out of exhausted, nightmare ridden sleep. Finally at one point [I don't know the time] I woke breifly to turn over with a dead-numb arm, shoulder and hand and noticed with relief that at least I was no longer shaking. By get up time a few very uncomfortable hours later the shivering was indeed gone - but I was feeling hot now and very ill indeed.

      Getting from shed to house without passing out was a trimumph of mind-over-matter. Thank you yet again 15th Para. All I could do was collapse into my big tilt'n'swivel computer chair by the living room windows, rest, breath the relatively fresh air, and wait out the overwhelming fatigue, the nausea, the loud ringing and spinning in the head. Again I upped the H202 and colloidal silver and, during the course of the day and night, I Clark zapped five times, drunk plenty of fluids and had regular batches of asprin - but I couldn't turn the situation around. Best I could do seemingly was keep my temperature marginally under 101 degrees and stop the mystery infection from swamping me altogether. By shed-bed time I was still very ill and very weak and getting back over to the shed again was even more of a triumph of mind-over-matter that it had been earlier; probably because I knew only too well the kind of night I was in for.

      Thursday night/Friday morning the shivering wasn't half as bad but shed-bed time was still a pretty dire experience. Back in the house by Friday is was crystal clear to me that, once again, my survival range of self medications wasn't going to be enough again; I would also need the dreaded penicillin anti-biotics. And this was a problem. The local surgery had left a note at the chemist for me when I picked up my last batch of "repeat-prescription" penicillin to say that I must make an appointment before the prescription would be re-prescribed. Not having a GP at the moment however makes that a bit more difficult than usual. I still had 4 days supply of them tucked away for emergencies and knew for certain by midday on Friday that I would have to start using them - in addition to the other measures - to bring the mystery infection and leg-gland swelling under control. By 1am Saturday morning - after four spaced out batches of 1 gram of penicillin [4x250mg] - the unrelenting misery finally began to ease.

      All the swellings in my left leg and left armpit gradually disappeared over the weekend - as did the last of my penicillin. Brain and body still feels like a bowl of cold porridge but at least I now have a doctors appointment for the 28th with a new[ish] GP from my local practice. The tenderness in the leg-gland areas is now back but no real swelling so far, and I am feeling progressively weaker and more physically wretched as each day passes. Being back to walking wounded status I was able to go to the local police station with my son today to report some very threatening mobile text messages and also get my guestbook back online using a new professional hosting service after being let down by my second "free guest-book" provider. Now, if I can just somehow catch up with all my emails...[sorry everybody].



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Monday 19ty July 2004
Dawning of a New Day            2nd Diary Graphic            Dawning of a New Day
Entry D-12

Hi

      Phew!   Long time since my last entry. The last two months have been a strange time. Physically, my health has been much worse. The main culprits here are: 1) the recurring and seemingly neverending "mystery infection" that just keeps making the ME, MCS and HRS much worse, 2) the new temp GP refusing to renew my penicillin prescription for the usual large amount and instead only giving me a miserable 3 days supply for my prescription fee, 3) the compulsory exterior painting of the house by contractors [doors, windows, guttering] and, 4) the coldest July since records began. In combingation, these 4 things have had a profoundly negative impact on what is usually my best time of year. This is supposed to be the time when I recover from the horrors of winter, but for the past 6 weeks or so I just haven't been well enough, even by my usual low-standard meaning of that term, to do any Satori-5 work AT ALL - and still make it through each very difficult day and night. Physically - it's been real hard.

      Strangely though, on an inner, spiritual level things have been the exact opposite - rather exceptional really in the most positive of ways. Unable to read much [over 10 weeks to finish Jane Colby's "ME: The New PLague"] or do anything physical beyond bare survival things, I did what I usually do at those very difficult times - I soul-search - I meditate - I wrestle with the great existential issues of life :) For me part of this was the consolodation of many of the countless gifts that the great philosopher/sage Ken Wilber has given me in his many outstanding and inspiring books over many years. This consolidation was largely achieved via his new 10 CD Audio Learning course "Kosmic Consciousness" - AND -revelatory written material relating to Wilber's own ME-like health problems [REDD], sent to me, with great synchronicity, by a new and very supportive e-mail friend [thanks again lass]. And the other part of it was another series of audio CD's - this time by the extraordinary spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle - ie; "The Power of Now" and "Stillness Speaks".

      Together, with the fruits of a very difficult health situation, the accumilated wisdoms of both Wilber and Tolle acted on me like a powerful catalyst for a whole bunch of stuff that had been lying just beneath the surface, simmering, for quite some time now - and which was just bursting at the seams to be let loose. When the inevitable erruption happened it was that kind of explosive-electric experience when all sorts of longstanding mental, emotional, and spiritually charged loose-ends, important but seemingly incompatible existential bits and pieces, and batches of interior and exterior dead-ends seem suddenly to just come inexplicably together in the most startlingly effortless of ways - generating a kind of fusion that lights up everything in a wonderous, harmonious, and "of-course-why-didn't-I-see-it-all- before" kind of new way. And you just KNOW that NOTHING is EVER going to be quite the same again - because the very core-paradigm of your hithertofore existence has just been beautifully shifted in the most fundamental and positive of ways.

      I am, however, still pretty rough now - but I have finally restored periods of relative relief on an almost daily basis - even without the benefit of helpful antibiotics [thanks Doc]. I have managed this by the religious use of colloidal silver [first thing in the morning and last thing at night], the Clark Zapper, the Harmonic Pulser [based on Lahovsky's work], 3 dessert spoonfuls of unhydroginated, organic coco-nut oil [in 3 equally spaced out doses], 3 teaspoons of Blackstrap Mollasses [in 3 equally spaced out doses] and mega-doses of buffered vitamin-C [2 grams taken at hourly intervals until bowel tolerence is reached]. Last, but by no means least, in this partial recovery, has been deep "no-mind" awareness meditation sessions focused on the body. With this I have managed to reduce even the most miserable of symptoms to absolute zero - for a time - sometimes lasting for a few hours. This rather unconventional, emergency-protocol has got me back to a level where I have also recently been able to resume the occasional FIR Sauna session [or two], but its all still a bit of a roller-coaster of a ride at present, where the high bits for me would be considered as definite low bits by most people in the "normal" world - and the low bits for me? Well, they just repeatedly reek of finally loosing the race altogether - regardless. The human body is just not designed to take such a degree of ongoing, multi-level punishment. All is change. And in the end what is - IS. I am at peace with that - rain or shine.

Phew!   Like I said - its been a strange old few months of late :-)



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Sunday 15th August 2004
Dawning of a New Day            2nd Diary Graphic            Dawning of a New Day
Entry D-13

Hi

      Very weak so quick entry only. Tripple whammy. Got the leg-gland thing back again with a vengence [see entry 11], and then hit with a bad cold or flu as well - although aching everywhere so much anyway I probably wouldn't have noticed if it wasn't for the real nasty sore throat and nose running like a tap. Finally dragged myself into the shed for the night to discover that the shed was badly contaminated again [but that is another rather long story] by some kind of nasty chemical which I suspect [and hope] may be coming from a nearby neighbours shed when the wind blows in a certain direction. Anyway, the combined effect of all three of these things on my severe ME/MCS was truly dreadful.

      By the early hours of this morning my temperature was 102.4 and climbing [update: topped out at 103.1]. An excruciating headache had been running almost non-stop for two days. Glands in the left leg where swollen with the inner calf and groin being the worst [hot and visibly red]. I have never called out a doctor in the middle of the night in my life and resolved to try and make it through to normal daytime hours before calling one out. What a night it was - but by late morning my temperature was mercifully down to 100 and the leg-gland swellings were down again as well! I no longer felt like I was knocking on heavens door but I still felt pretty lousy. However, I didn't feel that there was now enough in the way of "verifyable symptoms" to justify calling out the doctor - and in a lot of ways that was a real pity.

      Big sorry again to all my email contacts for unanswered emails - will try and catch up soon.



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Sunday 10th October 2004
Dawning of a New Day            2nd Diary Graphic            Dawning of a New Day
Entry D-14

Hi

      Here is an extract from the final entry in my shed-diary - dated Tues. 17.08.04:

      "Utter disaster. Was IMPOSSIBLE to stay in the shed last night. I was literally being poisoned to death in it. In desperation I even tried sleeping sitting up with the upper shed door wide open and my head hanging out of it - resting on the edge of the bottom shed door. Still impossible. And I was so f#####g head-to-toe-ill and exhausted by then that the "impossible-ness" of it all was almost beyond bearing."

      Not knowing what else to do I literally staggered out of the shed, down the small back garden path, and back into my house - even though I had never managed, even once, in six whole years, to spend one complete night in it despite various determined attempts to do so. My head was reeling. I felt drugged and poisoned. I felt I couldn't breathe properly - even though enough air was certainly going into my lungs. My heart was pounding and its rhythm was erratic. Every cell in my body screamed to lie down. But where?

      I hadn't a clue what I was going to do but I knew I had do something immediately or I would collapse; so, I reeled my way into my small living-room, quickly removed everything from my sturdy notebook PC desk as best I could - and slid desperately straight on it - flat out, with my swimming head only inches from the partially open living-room window and the small current of very welcome fresh air that was mercyfully flowing in from it. I am simply unable to adequately describe in words here just how physically, emotionally, and psychologically terrible I felt right then. I knew my shed, my tiny prison and semi-sactury, was now totally unusable and, worse, likely to remain that way for quite some time. Meantime, there was simply nowhere else for me to go but back into my MCS-hostile house.

      That first night "indoors" seemed an eternity in passing and every minute of it was, believe me, exceedingly difficult to say the very least. It is now the 10th of October [2004] and, to cut a rather long and very difficult story brutally short, I have been forced "indoors" ever since - purely as the lesser of two chemical evils.

      After a hellish first-week of relentless musical-chairs in that place where bedtime should be I finally arrived at a difficult and expensive - but presently survivable - method of spending the entire night indoors on my toxic sofa.

      The expense comes in the form of BoCare's Magnesium EAP-2 capsules [2x3 times per day] in combination with Glutathione capsules [1x3 times per day], and Selium capsules [1x2 times a day]. The difficult bit comes in in three distinct parts the first of which is the form of the actual sofa itself; a 3 section affair [of a 4 part corner unit]. This makes it relatively uncomfortable when compared to a normal bed - but a big step in the right direction when compared to sleeping with bare skin on bare wood in a garden shed.

      The second difficulty is the fact that the sofa has been treated at manufacture with toxic flame retardants which make me very ill by morning. The third difficulty comes from a small, home-made nose clip which I have to wear on and off throughout the night to be able to withstand both the general indoor air and the effect of the toxic flame retardant chemicals that my sofa [yours too - and especially your mattress] has on me all night long.

      This nose clip is comprised of the soft silicon pads from a set of commercially available swimming-pool nose grips added to a womans standard hair grip that has been hand shaped to give the most comfortable fit. Even so I find it impossible to actually sleep with it on. No sooner have I fallen asleep with my chemical barrier nose-clip on than I jolt awake with heart pounding and gasping for air. Why that should be I have no idea. Perhaps I am just a hard-wired nose breather when asleep. In any event I have to keep removing the nose-clip to actually sleep - then I wake up and hour or so later poisonously ill with all the chemical exposure and have to put the nose-clip back on again for a while - until the symptoms subside [usually about 15 mins or so]. And so it goes on - all night long.

      Much has happened since my last diary entry. Far too much to cram into this single entry - so - I will try to make another short entry or two over the next few days. Things are much more difficult now for reasons that I simply can't go into here at the moment; but I hope to cover that over the next entry or two.



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Wednesday 13th October 2004
Dawning of a New Day            2nd Diary Graphic            Dawning of a New Day
Entry D-15

Hi

      Still playing catch-up here. In an attempt to get myself off the living-room sofa - which is having an ever greater impact on my MCS with each repeated exposure - I finally took the plunge and purchased a rope hammock and stand that I could ill afford [but more on that later]. I had repeatedly tried to get an organic one but in the end this proved to be a mission impossible [do they exist anywhere?.] So, in the end, I had to settle for a somewhat bog-standard one.

      In opting for a rope hammock I had reasoned that this would allow for more air to circulate and so be less likely to be chemically problematic for me. Not so. The hammock had a powerful "new" smell that I had reckoned to possibly be some kind of weather-proofing chemical treatment. However, I was assured by the supplier that this smell was typical of the jute from which the hammock was made. Either way it was totally unusable - even after 1 whole week of airing.

      I refused the kind offer by the supplier to refund me and decided that I would have to keep it and set about trying to somehow neutralize the strong smell it was offgassing. It was a gamble I felt I now had no option but to make. After airing it for several more weeks the smell was no longer over-powering although, disappointingly, it was still rather strong.

      Stage 2 involved placing the hammock in the bath and pouring 1 full litre of cheap vodka [solvent] over the one half of the hammock that my head would hopefully sleep in and then adding just enough cold water to cover the whole hammock. Then I left it to soak overnight. Next day I multi-rinsed the drunken hammock back to sobriety before adding more fresh water and a generous quantity of BioGold natural detergent and left to steep overnight again. More multi-rinsing followed before hanging it up to drip-dry over the bath for a few hours. I then transferred it to the closet that houses my central heating water tank for airing and left it there for two days to fully dry off and hopefully fully de-pong too.

      Again, not so. There was still a slight but distinct smell from the hammock. I then erected the whole hammock in the living-room for a test drive and climbed in to watch the snooker on TV. After getting to the one hour mark in it I still felt ok and began to think that perhaps I had finally cracked the MCS bedtime problem. Another hour later however and MCS symptoms slowly started to kick in and I knew that I wasn't out of the woods just yet after all. Back it went into the air closet for another few days.

      Last night I tried to spend my first whole night in it; but had to give up after only 2 hours - and I had fell into an exhausted sleep for some of that or I reckon I would have been out of it even sooner. So, what now? More vodka steeping? More BioGold steeping? More airing? Will that do it? Or will the hammock be like the sofa - still making me ill 10 years later? And what to do meantime? Every night on the sofa is now worse than the one before as continued exposure continues to aggravate and escalate the indescribably unpleasant and dangerous MCS symptoms.

      Another major event of late has been the need to finally evict my 25 year old son from the nest. There were many reasons for this. Not wishing to cause him any unnecessary embarrassment I will leave the numerous, more personal issues unspoken and cite here only the fact that he repeatedly kept buying and using Lynx deodorant despite being made aware repeatedly that it was making me increasingly ill on an almost daily basis - on top of an already very heavy symptom burden. This alone, even had there not been a great many other issues as well, was totally unacceptable and, as a viable ongoing situation, simply unendurable.

      Bottom line for me is that I am now without a carer or any kind of domestic help and, additionally, have now got to somehow try to survive a substantial drop in income as well. Bang goes the Magnesium/Glutathione/Selenium detox combo, my life insurance, my computer magazine subscriptions, and numerous other little luxuries. And there was me thinking, once again, that surely life couldn't get any more difficult...but only, I must admit, in the outward sense.

      Paradoxically, as my "life" disintegrates on all fronts, everywhere about me, my inner life - my spirit - just seems to deepen and widen. Strangely, at my innermost core - I flourish. Despite all evidence to the contrary I swear to God it feels like something wonderful is beginning to flower in me. And, truly, I'd much rather it be this way around than the other.



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Sunday 14th November 2004
Dawning of a New Day            2nd Diary Graphic            Dawning of a New Day
Entry D-16

Hi

      Another month gone by already? It has all been a bit of a blur. Sleeping on the sofa finally became impossible due to the sheer severity of multi-level symptoms it generated. This forced me to re-try sleeping on a old guest-bed mattress that an old friend [sadly, now deceased] sent me few years ago. Impossible. Tried again with my neck and head sticking out beyond the mattress on sofa cushions wrapped in a wearable sweatshirt and found this survivable with lots of nose-clip use - but only for just over a week, then the combination of old mattress and sofa cushions were making me just too ill by morning to make their continued use possible. Back to the drawing board...

      I tried the hammock again and was forced by bizarre neurological symptoms to abandon the idea within only a few hours. So it was back to the mattress-on-the-floor setup again. This time I tried sealing each one of the 4 sofa cushions [found necessary to make the extending-head idea work] in plastic supermarket carrier bags with the sweatshirt on top. This improved things some but, again, only for a while. In the end the whole mattress on-the-floor idea was making me so ill by morning that I knew continued use would probably soon kill me in the night.

      I was in a real bad way by now so in the hope of buying some more time I tried ditching all the sofa cushions entirely and replacing them with my metal/wire bath tray turned upside-down with the tray bottom uppermost and my folded sweatshirt on the top to keep my face off the metal. It didn't work. After 3 hours I was so poisonously ill with deeply unpleasant but utterly indescribable symptoms that I had to get off the mattress immediately - and out of the spare room entirely. Back in the living-room in the middle of the night it took over an hour for the nausea and bizarre brain and body symptoms to subside. I finally fell asleep on my sofa using my hand as a pillow with my face sticking as far out over the edge of the sofa as I could get it. Several hours later - unable to stand the severe ME/MCS symptoms any longer - I had to get up and stick my head out the window for a while until I could feel the symptoms finally begin to decline.

      Still using the sofa for "sleep" now as I have no other viable option. I even tried wrapping two sofa cushions together in baking foil thinking that nothing problematic from the cushions would get through that lot and that the extra height the cushions would hold my face from the sofa would certainly help a bit with symptom reduction - but - no joy with that either. There is something about the foil itself that makes it use impossible MCS wise. So, now I use the back of my hands - in turns - as pillows. I smear the inside of my nose with organic co-co nut oil to try and dilute the effect of the problematic chemicals with a strong competing but totally harmless smell. I use the nose-clip as often as I can stand it. And I try to sleep as long as I can on my left side along the outer edge of the sofa because this way I can stick my nose and face out beyond the sofa edge and breath slightly less chemically contaminated air. It's all a bit of an ordeal but so far it get me through the night. By morning though you look and feel absolutely dreadful.

      All through this I had blood tests results that showed slight abnormalities in liver function, an "infection" index rise from 20 to 200, and problematic glucose levels; all of which had returned to "normal" on subsequent retesting. Additionally, my ex-son has betrayed his promise to set up a direct debit payment to meet his £60 per month catalogue debt on my agency account and is refusing to answer any of my telephone calls as a result. And, I was wiped out for days by a 6 hour waste-of-time visit to a hospital consultant which was arranged by a local GP who was in the process of leaving the practice at the time and who has since left.

      On the positive side I managed to fix a friends seriously ill PC. Should only have taken about a day but took me 4/5 days. And, when I have felt well enough to play, I've actually managed to win a few Internet first-person-shooter death-matches again. What is great about this kind of competition is that it is available online 7/24/365. Whenever I hit a relatively "good" spot health-wise, even if it only lasts half and hour or so, and even if it happens in the late evening or early hours of the morning, I can fire up my PC, log-on, I get stuck in there with other enthusiasts. It is one of the very few things that my poor health has not managed to take away from me completely. I used to be very good at it too many years ago [Doom, Quake, etc] and even though I usually pay dearly for it now afterwards - I STILL love it :-)



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Sunday 2nd January 2005
Dawning of a New Day            2nd Diary Graphic            Dawning of a New Day
Entry D-17

Hi

      Goodbye 2004. What a year. And what an exit. Under-sea earthquakes. Gigantic tsunamis. Possibly hundreds of thousands of people dead and millions more injured and homeless. Widespread suffering on a staggering scale. Our hearts go out to them and we put our hands deep into our more fortunate pockets and donate what we can; embarrassing the governments of the world by our generosity into drastically increasing their initial miserly pledges.

      On the positive side it would seem that those giant waves of destruction are being met, on all fronts, by giant waves of compassion, generosity and bravery that are transcending all social, ethnic, religious and national boundaries. Good - as always - emerging phoenix-like from the ashes of the bad. And did you know that, strangely, dolphins and whales had been beaching themselves en-masse elsewhere for months before the devastating under-sea earthquake struck? I can't help but wonder if both these terrible events were somehow related?

      News from the personal front since last entry:

      *  Despite a further overnight soaking in Miracle II soap I am still unable to spend more than an hour in my new jute hammock without developing severe MCS symptoms; I continue to air it with hope.

      *  Recently bought an old "Z" bed via the telephone for £30 including delivery in the desperate hope that I could use it and get off the toxic sofa that now has me is a real bad way every night and morning. It was a gamble - and it didn't pay off. There was a slightly scented smell to the mattress - which most people would probably find slightly pleasant - that made me substantially ill within 20 minutes of lying on it.

      *  Son turned up out of the blue on my doorstep just before Christmas with nowhere to go and no money to go there even if he had. This was my first and only contact with him since the day he left. Unable to turn him away to walk the streets I took him back in - and he is, as I type, happily playing away on the United Offensive computer game I got him for Christmas.

      *  Contacted Friends of the Earth Scotland about my situation asking if they could help me in any way or even just use my circumstances in some way or another in some kind of toxic-chemical campaign; no joy there at all. Eventually got a short, polite email pointing me in the direction of the World Wildlife Foundation's present chemical campaign. Nice one FOE Scotland - thanks for nothing. Will try the WWF shortly.

      *  On a much more pleasant note I have been offered help from two alternative health practitioners - at little or no cost - as a result of approaches made to them by two lady friends and I will be looking into these kind offers soon. Meantime my sincere thanks to all - especially the ladies concerned for thinking of me and taking the time and trouble to try and help. God bless.

      Presently reading Ken Wilber's "The Simple Feeling of Being: Embracing your True Nature" and as usual with his work I can feel my being expand with every page I read and ponder. When looking forward to this new coming year my crystal ball feels pregnant with both inner and outer possibilities. Change, change and more change is the gut feeling here and regardless of the content, when it comes, right now my arms are wide open to embrace it.



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Thursday 26th May 2005
Dawning of a New Day            2nd Diary Graphic            Dawning of a New Day
Entry D-18:  11.10pm

Hi

      It's been over four and a half months already since my last entry and there are several very good reasons for that. The main one was due to a series foul-mouthed, abusive and threatening guest-book entries, emails, and middle-of-the-night telephone calls from both my ex-wife and her boyfriend - mostly the latter. And my guest book entries seemed to be inciting them. So, not wishing to see them lose all their computer equipment due to confiscation by the police under an "Abuse of the Telecommunication Act",  I decided not to encourage their abuse in any way by continuing the diary entries as usual.

      I had finally got the police involved after it had became crystal clear that rather than dying out the abuse was actually increasing both in frequency, method, and abusiveness. I started logging and storing the Internet ID's of all the abusive emails and guest book entries that came my way from them. The telephone calls I recorded when possible - and simply logged the incoming telephone number when no voice message was left. Finally, when I had enough conclusive proof of abuse under said telecommunications act I took the collected evidence to the police and asked them to act on it.

      After looking at the evidence I gave them the local police then called at my home to view the evidence source first hand via Satori-5 and the BT answering service thus verifying the authenticity of the evidence and confirming that they would act on it. I made it clear from the outset that I did not wish my ex-wifes PC equipment to be confiscated unless absolutely essential. I told them that I thought a good warning would be sufficient to make the abuse stop as she probably loved her computer more than anything - or anyone - and they agreed to give this a try. After some difficulties in communications between the local police here and the local police at my wifes address and further difficulties in actually making contact with her and her boyfriend they finally got the message across - and to date there has been no further problem in that direction.

      I have been instructed by the police to retain all present and any future abusive contacts by them so that if necessary they can proceed again for actual confiscation under said act if need be. And I will certainly be doing this - as by then, if it becomes necessary, I will take additional private legal action too on top of the police action.

      Since my wife left I have been told by various parties of the kind of twisted and poisonous things she used to tell them about me behind my back. She was always like that - ensuring peoples silence on her lies by completely demonising me and I will have no more of that now. I have stored these slanderous stories away too for possible use in the future and would sincerely ask anyone out there reading this - whether you know me or not - to get in contact with me [in complete confidence] if you have ever been contacted by my wife or other party acting on her behalf and been told any kind of nasty stuff about me whatsoever. If you have you can be sure of this; that the tale you heard was either an out-and-out lie or, perhaps more likely, loosely founded on some truth [that is where the apparent sincerity comes from] which has then had such twisted and lying spin expertly woven into it as to render it a complete travesty of truth. So please - do contact me.

      Of course I could have done without all of the above nastiness. There have been several real bad health relapses over the last 6 months or so and I could really have done without that whole nasty business on top of it all. I reckon it's over now though - but if not then I will really deal with it big time - next time. Its amazing just how you [and particularly the police] can trace all sort of things these days, so, if need be, I'm up for it - whatever.  And no Mr Nice Guy next time.


Anyway - its diary entries as normal from here on in - regardless.



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Goodbye, take care and God bless


Namaste


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"And I saw a New Heaven and a New Earth..."
Revelation 21:1