Breathing After BioLab

The Opposite Effect

After several months of visiting urgent care, I mentioned to my doctor that I would get sick every time I went out to pick up groceries, shop for clothes, or handle other errands. She told me, "I need you to stop going out." I kept repeating her words to myself on the way home, feeling helpless. At that point, the only option I saw was to leave the area entirely.

While searching for housing in neighboring counties, my symptoms worsened just before Christmas—I thought I might die. I had to look for a house, pack mine up, then unpack a whole house, all while I was deathly sick. I felt so weak I couldn't even sit up long enough to make a bowl of soup. After a trip to urgent care and taking more medication, I would start feeling better after about a week, only to experience weakness, exhaustion, stomach pain, and difficulty breathing again. I purchased a health care plan at the beginning of this year, which I could barely afford. If Congress lets the Affordable Care Act subsidies lapse, I’ll be uninsured again. Lately, I’ve been seeing a pulmonologist—it’s been a relentless cycle of doctor's appointments, X-rays, CT scans, and, most recently, an MRI.

I’m trying to focus on the bright spots. 

There are people like Cheryl Garcia of Conyers, who was also preparing to go to church the Sunday of the fire, but paused when she saw news reports. She had a metallic taste in her mouth, smelled chlorine in her home, and her husband complained that his eyes, throat, and nose were burning, and his chest felt tight after being outside. Garcia, who is a retired nurse practitioner, developed vocal cord dysphonia and underwent eight weeks of speech therapy twice a week. She and her husband had all the vents cleaned, the crawl space in the basement encapsulated, and their roof replaced. And they pray—a lot. She’s also fighting for accountability from local officials and industry.

“I have pretty much forced myself onto the local emergency planning committee, which was not active before BioLab, and I made a lot of noise about that,” she said. “They are now meeting monthly. And as a citizen, I am there every month to hold them accountable, and hopefully that will prevent something like this from happening again.” 

There is a disaster waiting to happen in every community on the margins, from the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, to the petrochemical plant explosion in Roseland, Louisiana, to the ammunition factory explosion in Tennessee, to the recent ammonia leak near Yazoo City, Mississippi, where a plume of yellow smoke spread through the air. 

It's easy to become isolated—many of us were literally encouraged to stay home and isolate. In many ways, we are still emerging from the shadow of that plume.