Wilkie Wages War: June 25, 2006

Environmental Health Network leader Barbara Wilkie discovered in July 2005 that her chemical injury/multiple chemical sensitivities had suddenly manifested as stage 4 (later stage 5) kidney disease (kidney failure). Despite dire warnings of death within a year, she eschewed dialysis and Western Medicine drugs and took a route of alternative medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and strict dietary changes. She lived well for six years, far beyond the doctors’ predictions.  Barb died at home, surrounded by friends and family, on May 31, 2011.

During this time, Barb documented her journey. From diagnosis through June 2008, she created one huge website page packed with details, plus some side documents on diet and other topics.  We have divided these works into smaller pieces, by date or topic, to make it easier to read and find things.  For dates after June 2008, we have letters, online posts, and other documents.

Barb intended her work to be read and used. We hope this presentation will help you do just that.

Wilkie Wages War on Kidney Disease
(aka Renal Disease or Failure)

OR, AS I SEE IT: Life with yet another facet of living with MCS.
I want to live life while dying.

June 25, 2006 . . . I’ve had strong energy now for several weeks. I sleep about four hours at night
without having to head to the bathroom . . . it used to be two hours like clockwork, and I simply
figured it was part and parcel of MCS, noticing that my every two hours were guaranteed on
nights of the days I’d been hit by fragrance poisoning.

But, something else has popped up in my mind . . . something to surely set off nephrologists. I
wonder if MCS — at least in my case — could have been the result of the kidneys trying to process
those toxins that I was breathing in and absorbing. And because we who are generally healthy
are blessed with more kidney function than we really need, have symptoms that we ascribe to
MCS, but as it turns out, could also be symptoms like those I’m told to look for that are
associated with rapidly deteriorating kidney function. I guess raising questions like these assure
the fact that I’m considered to be an “Unfortunate woman with a very non-mechanistic view of
the cosmos …” (quoting a nephrologist’s opening comment).

But considering the fact that far too little is known about the WHYs behind kidney disease and
kidney failure, and too many people learn of it only after being hospitalized for some other disease,
it seems to me, it is high time some of my questions are considered. And more importantly, even
more questions should be raised. Please start with a look at the 100,000 chemicals released to
market without substantiation of safety, found in products commonly used for personal care, as well
as household and janitorial cleaning and maintenance projects. Products whose chemicals our
bodies inhale and absorb. Chemicals that are also found downstream where they are adversely
affecting aquatic and wildlife.

Talk about Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth . . . we are all living it and its ramifications whether
we and our doctors are bright enough to realize it or not.