Last time I wrote about a Jewish woman who is living in her car and asked CJN readers for help. Of the 50,000 people who read this newspaper, I received nine responses, and therefore I am appealing this week to the other 49,991 readers.
We, who sleep under welcoming duvets and lower the temperature when it gets too warm in our houses, can only wonder about the loneliness and physical challenges this woman faces. Where does she go to the bathroom and how does she wash herself? How often does she needs to move the car because those parking ravens (officers) are writing her a ticket, and her forced destination once again becomes a low lit dead-end street?
It’s midnight and her parka, extra pair of socks, knitted hat and wool cover are not enough to warm her body, and she stares out the fogged up window and wonders how the hell she ever got here. Once she was warm. Once she was a volunteer at Baycrest.
What of her fear? Have you ever seen someone approaching your car in your rear-view mirror? Their image grows as they get closer, ominously. But they are usually walking by in the light of day; not at 3 a.m.
What of her loneliness? Go out to your driveway, sit in your sedan, close your eyes and pretend this is it. There is no coming indoors, because your car is your indoors. There is no family huddled by the mantel lighting the Chanukah menorah and no familial rapture as presents are opened. The bundles of things sharing the back seat are your only family.
She is alone and she is lonely.
The woman I am writing about is a Jew who suffers from multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), a condition that causes her deep physical and mental anguish when she is exposed to the smell of pesticides, chemicals, perfume, cleansers, hairspray, shampoo, room freshener, carpet deodorizers and deodorant.
She told me last week, “When I am exposed, I feel like a board has been thrust into my forehead. Over the next 12 to 24 hours, I will be in extreme pain, vomit violently and experience dizziness. It can be very dangerous.”
She needs to live in an environment where she can control the fragrances and smells – a bungalow, not an apartment.
Chanukah, the incandescent holiday, is here. I love the thought that the beauty of the Chanukah candle, the flame, is that it never diminishes despite the number of other lights, even a million, it illuminates. It is said the soul of humankind is similar; that no matter how much one shares, gives out, the soul does not get smaller. In this light, I ask you to consider there is a Jewish woman living in a car here in Toronto.
Nine CJN readers responded to her situation, some offering financial assistance for therapies and others referring her to websites. I read the responses to her, and she recorded the information into a hand-held recorder. It was Sunday, Nov. 25, and cold outside. She couldn’t hold a pen. It was too chilly for me to shovel snow.
I am convinced somebody reading this has an empty house for a Jewish woman with MCS, who is living in her car. I am certain somewhere in our community of 200,000 Jews there is a developer, a snowbird or a cottage owner who has the means to help a Jewish woman living in her car. I know this to be true.
It is Chanukah. Remember Jewish law does not allow the light of a streetlamp to be used as a menorah.
“To know and not to do is not to know.” (Chinese Proverb)
We can't allow this! Save children!
A starving Sudanese stalked by a vulture, by Kevin Carter (1994 Pulitzer Prize winner)
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2 comments:
This is primarily a health-care issue that the Ministry of Health should be addressing. Governments were designed to look after the needs of its citizens, in some ways. They should have made sure that substances which are harmful to our health not be marketed and sold for profit. As we are discovering thru the tobacco, pet food and toy safety issues, there is no oversight to ensure that the products we are sold are safe. Personal care and cleaning products are full of unregulated substances that make a lot of us (2.9% doctor diagnosed) very very ill. We with MCS/ES need SAFE VOC-free housing in order to maintain some degree of health and ability to function, or risk debilitating and sometimes life threatening reactions to the chemicals. It is not just things that smell that have the damaging chemicals. Think formaldehyde, laminate floors, carbon monoxide... The medical method of dealing with this illness/disability is by avoidance of the offending substances.
This year the Canadian Human Rights Commission released a policy and report about "Environmental Sensitivities" ... and Sensitivities is a misnomer. This is not mere inconvenience to our health and well-being, which by the way is caused mostly by chemicals OF convenience, but a major life-altering and serious health issue.
No-one would choose to live in a car if any other options were feasible. My heart goes out to this woman, and the others who find themselves in the same circumstances due to chemical injuries.
I am also in an almost homeless state because of MCS/ES. I live in Toronto in a soon to be demolished house with a leaking roof, and lots of issues that contribute to my poor health. I also have been looking for a bungalow where I can control what goes into the air I must breathe to survive. I cannot go outside because I collapse from what all the dryer vents spew into the air. We really need clean air, both indoors and outdoors, and this is next to impossible to find these days, especially in a city. It certainly does seem like a portion of society is deemed disposeable, when we get sick from convenience chemicals. Safe housing will one day have to be built for everyone, as the chemicals in personal care and laundry products disable a bigger % of our population. Right now the people who could help, likely don't want to change their lives of convenience. Many people consider it inconvenient to change just a laundry product to maintain a safe friendship with someone who suffers from MCS/ES. What will make anyone want to provide safe housing if changing laundry detergents is too much? This could require people to change the premise of their entire belief system, that someone else is looking after our health and safety in consumer products - the so called foundation of our economy. If the products of our economy are killing us, and the health-care system will not or cannot make us healthy, then what good is the current economic model? Who does it serve?
If we don't look after each other, who will?
Hello:
I live in NYC and have MCS. It would be nice if someone in the Jewish community somewhere would start a housing community for people with MCS. Other religions are doing it. Safe housing for someone with MCS can make a difference between a productive life, contributing to others (I work with children who are learning disabled, I teach, I write) and a life of pain and disability. If anyone would like to contact me regarding this idea, please do so at mbinah@aol.com Thank you.
I am currently looking for safe housing.
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