I live in a condo in downtown Austin, which most of the time is awesome. The view is amazing; I’m close to a bunch of restaurants and bars; I can walk to Antone’s – a really cool intimate blues club – to see amazing and under-appreciated musicians perform. The building I live in is undergoing maintenance and yesterday, that caused a significant problem. They were spraying unknown chemicals on the exterior of the building right by my balcony, and more importantly, right by the vent that vents my entire condo.
I left for work smelling it. But when I came home from the office, it was overpowering. To the point of my throat closing up, my eyes burning and watering, a massive crushing headache forming, and a wave of intense nausea. I had to stagger out into the hallway, where I practically collapsed on the floor.
I called the general manager of the condo building who, of course, was already gone for the day. Long story short, I lost my temper – which happens on the same frequency as solar eclipses – and told them that if they didn’t pay for a hotel room where I could sleep without inhaling whatever the hell it was, I was going to call EMS to have them bring out the HazMat crew and then first thing in the morning, pay a visit to one of the myriad of attorneys that live in the building.
And of course, I then lay awake in my hotel room stressing about leaving my cat in that environment. She wedged herself under the bed and refused to come out. And she’s not ever happy about being picked up in the best of circumstances so reluctantly I left her there (and then beat myself up for being the worst kitty mom ever). I’m so worried that my kitty is going to have lasting effects from this (this morning she was eating but seemed really lethargic and did not want to be too close to me). I got very little sleep because I was seething. How it is legal to expose people to chemicals like that without even advance warning? Particularly since they admitted to me that they were concerned about the fumes of whatever the hell they were using but figured they would go ahead with a test – yay me, getting to be the guinea pig.
And of course, I’m really concerned about how my body might react to having this in my immediate environment. Let’s be real, my body already can make cancer. I don’t need any assistance through additional chemical exposure to make more. I’m over here trying to be healthy-ish and prevent more scars. And here my home has been basically contaminated by something I am still fighting to get the MSDS to see exactly what that was. Every soft surface in my condo has absorbed that smell (meaning I have a ton of laundry I have to do in my future – after I figure out how to get the smell out of my dryer since that vents directly where all this crap was sprayed). I’m so incredibly frustrated by this entire situation. And this is exactly what I didn’t need since I’m already freaked about my upcoming dermatologist appointment…