http://pledgie.org/campaigns/1509 <p>Imagine yourself walking into a bathroom and suddenly feeling like you can&#8217;t think or concentrate. Or getting ready to meet someone at their workplace and feeling like you can&#8217;t stay focused or track their conversation. What if you used to read for hours and be so focused on the words on the pages that you lost track of time and now barely make a few minutes. And finally, your heart begins to race and you feel weird when cleaning the house or cleaning the carpet.</p>&#x000A;<p>This is a sign of being chemically burdened.</p>&#x000A;<p>I never knew that 1 acute exposure along with spraying of a toxic chemical would forever change my life.</p>&#x000A;<p>Back in 2004 I was working for a pest control company when a back sprayer I was putting on had a lid that was not on tightly. A large amount spilled out while I was putting it on and the contents went on the back of my shirt and soaked it consequently allowing the pesticides into my body through dermal contact.</p>&#x000A;<p>I asked my coworker training me &#8220;shouldn&#8217;t I report this&#8221; and he said &#8220;don&#8217;t report it, you&#8217;ll get us fired&#8221;. He just said change your shirt. The procedure would have called for 20 minutes of cleaning the skin first.</p>&#x000A;<p>I ended up quitting the job due to major chemical sensitivity not thinking of filing workers comp &#8211; I just wanted to get out of there.</p>&#x000A;<p>I KNEW something was wrong. A little time passes and my drive and motivation slowly diminish to nothing. I started to not have any bleeep drive or desire.</p>&#x000A;<p>I was diagnosed with hormonal problems of low testosterone in March 2006. Shortly thereafter they found a 3cm lesion on my liver. An EKG showed an abnormality and I was sent to a cardiologist. I was diagnosed with an abnormality in the motion of the heart wall. I was having weird burning sensations in my head and was always going to the doctor just not feeling right.</p>&#x000A;<p>The doc did a brain MRI which was normal and sent to a neurologist who only gave me one visit and dismissed anything could be related to pesticides.</p>&#x000A;<p>I started to notice I couldn&#8217;t use cleaners anymore or be around air fresheners or other chemicals. I would get brain fog that lasted for hours.</p>&#x000A;<p>I made calls to various experts. I even did my own research and found this pesticide along with others are hormone disruptors and cause other effects. The chemical I was exposed to, Fipronil has shown to cause excitation in the central nervous system, leading to damage in nerve cells related to the over-expression of glutamate transmitters in mice. This is evidence of excitotoxicity.</p>&#x000A;<p>In other studies where the animals survived, fipronil:</p>&#x000A;<p>Disrupted endocrine activity</p>&#x000A;<p>Reduced cognition, caused hearing impairment and hair loss</p>&#x000A;<p>Caused thyroid cancer</p>&#x000A;<p>Damaged liver cells</p>&#x000A;<p>Well, there is a link between the pesticides and the liver lesion, low testosterone and other symptoms in my body.</p>&#x000A;<p>I did not know the seriousness and long term effects of this. I am in a BATTLE! How much pesticides entered in my body? I don&#8217;t know.</p>&#x000A;<p>I would take the info back to my doctor only to find no answers or &#8220;you just have anxiety or depression causing this&#8221;. The fact is they didn&#8217;t know what to do or how to help me.<br />&#x000A; <br />&#x000A;I would try to see if a new doctor would listen to me and the doctor basically said they can&#8217;t do anything for me. <br />&#x000A; <br />&#x000A;Most medical doctors don&#8217;t know what to do. She admitted she was clueless on what to do. She never has dealt with someone exposed to an acute pesticide spill.<br />&#x000A; <br />&#x000A;So I started my own research to find out what happened to me and what can I do to recover. I spoke with several specialists from around the US including Sherry Rogers, MD a well-known author, educator, and an international specialist in Environmental Medicine. I picked up her book, Detoxify or Die and it gave proven examples on what to do to get better.</p>&#x000A;<p>I also spoke to the world famous Environmental Health Center in Dallas and another center called the Quantum Healing Institute in Tyler Texas which is a facility that practices orthodox medicine as well as natural, alternative medicine.</p>&#x000A;<p>Chemical exposure, either acute or low level chronic exposure, can cause a depletion of your chemical enzyme detoxification system causing chemical metabolism to be inefficient. This can allow chemicals to circulate in the blood, sometimes to remain in the body. An unfortunate effect of pesticides is they are lipophilic which means they like to store in the fatty areas of the body including the brain.</p>&#x000A;<p>Our bodies were not designed to metabolize chemicals <br />&#x000A; <br />&#x000A;My insurance will not pay for alternative therapies. There are specialized blood tests and even fat biopsies that can show what is still stored in my body.</p>&#x000A;<p>My goal is to raise money to do the following:</p>&#x000A;&#x000A; <ul>&#x000A; <li>Visit with Dr de Wet of Quantum Healing Institute in Tyler Texas. The Center has radical therapies to detoxify the body and help people.<br />&#x000A;<a href="http://www.dewetwellness.com/index.htm">http://www.dewetwellness.com/index.htm</a></li>&#x000A; </ul>&#x000A; <ul>&#x000A; <li>Purchase a Far Infrared Sauna.</li>&#x000A; </ul><p>It’s VERY HUMBLING to ask for HELP. Who like to feel weak and helpless? Don&#8217;t you like to feel self-sufficient, able to meet your own needs and not trouble others? Well I don&#8217;t have the option to act or pretend that I have it all together and that life is grand.If you can, PLEASE DONATE. Above all else PRAY! God is the great physician and He holds the answers to what I have been dealing with.</p>&#x000A;<p>I just want to feel better and get on an exciting path in my life. I know that even though this happened that &#8220;All Things Can Work Together For Good&#8221;</p>&#x000A;<p>Pat Duvall</p> en-us <p>UPDATE! Someone donated roundtrip airfare for me to go to Texas. So I am getting closer and closer to the goal!!!</p> DJPatD@pledgie.com Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:46:02 -0800 http://pledgie.org/campaigns/1509#comment_443 http://pledgie.org/campaigns/1509#comment_443 <p>YEAH! I was able to pick up a FIR Sauna that powered up but didn&#8217;t work completely. I am awaiting someone to troubleshoot it and fix it.<br />&#x000A;The onwers originally wanted $700 and I gave $100 as a holding deposit til it is repaired and deduct the amount from total price less my time and troucle to get it running!</p> DJPatD@pledgie.com Thu, 29 Jan 2009 10:56:51 -0800 http://pledgie.org/campaigns/1509#comment_465 http://pledgie.org/campaigns/1509#comment_465