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Get your attention?

I hope so, I have been waiting a while to write this entry because I wanted to get in my head what I wanted to say because it is important, you could say it is almost a new personal mission I am on now.

If you stop reading this, stop reading after this very important set of statements…

If you do not have Carbon Monoxide (CO)[1] detectors, buy some. If you do have CO detectors, how old are they? If they are over 4 or 5 years old, check to see how long they are good for. CO detectors are NOT like smoke detectors, there isn’t a beam of light or something else that gets blocked and causes the sensor to go off, there is a chemical test done to see if CO is in large enough quantities or has built up enough in small quantities to become a source of concern. This chemical detection is not set up to work forever. It has a fixed lifetime and you need to be aware of it. I also recommend getting a gauge type CO detector versus dummy light detector. That will tell you if there is any CO present over (usually) 30ppm not just alert on high levels of CO. Any detectable CO is, in my book, a source of concern, something is leaking something that shouldn’t be leaked, figure it out.

Ok so now I have sort of given away what happened… Some of you knew this previously because I told some people in other channels. This is a good thing because one of my other friends may be suffering from a similar problem and has to go to the Dr. and get checked now. She has slept with her bedroom window open for two nights in a row since talking to me and long running headaches that have plagued her have gone away.

So how did I almost die??? I was for some unknown period of time, probably months, poisoned by my furnace in my new house with Carbon Monoxide.

Let me go back… for several months I was feeling increasingly “crappy”. Run down, tired, blood pressure up, coughing, nose running, pinkish, warm, sleeping poorly, etc. A general malaise about me. Long running daily low grade to sometimes really bad headache. Also I noticed my vision wasn’t as good as it used to be, I didn’t care to burn the candle at both ends as much. Wasn’t irked when things didn’t get done, let the house get messier than usual, couldn’t get motivated beyond doing the work for my job I had to do or face being fired or talking to and/or seeing a couple of close friends. Basically a lot of things that normally generated in me a lot of anxiety and drive stopped doing that and my drive overall dried up and I just didn’t seem to get anything done but worse didn’t care.  

I marked this all off to explainable normal things like everyone else seemed to be really sick this year and my general issue with winter and just being tired overall from busting my butt so hard from the summer and getting old and also there were considerable changes in my life so it all added up to “yeah this is probably normal how I feel right now…”.

I first started noticing it seemed weird when I realized I kept putting off working on joeware stuff, stuff that I usually can’t go a couple of weeks without touching, I love writing code, I enjoy greatly coming up with an idea and then seeing it come to life. It is a great sense of accomplishment, I have always been a creative guy and that has been my primary creative outlet for years. I did a lot of artwork as a kid but I wasn’t that great at it; not that I couldn’t do it well, but I was sort of a perfectionist with it and it would never seem done and then I would end up ruining whatever I was working on from tweaking it too much… Computer and programming is perfect, you have Ctrl-Z (i.e. Undo) and backups. Anyway I noticed I kept putting off joeware stuff and wasn’t bothered by it… It was the not being bothered by it that started to bother me if that makes any sense…

Now to the next part of the story… I tend to keep my heat turned down low. I have propane (LP – Liquid Petroleum to some of you) and yes it is a bit on the more expensive side compared to Natural Gas. But that isn’t really why I keep the heat down… I don’t really need it that warm, I am a warm person normally and keeping it cool tends to keep me moving. I turn it up for others. So I keep my heat at around 61/62/63 or so (yes that is F not C). The house with its insulation and my computer equipment can normally maintain the temp around 60 so the furnace doesn’t have to run that much which is good and possibly saved my life.

One day I had a friend coming over so I turned the heat up to 70 so it would be comfy for someone other than me. The furnace ran and ran but never got above 64. I looked at the flames through the view port and saw that half of them were yellow instead of blue. This is bad, it means the combustion isn’t right. I checked the filter, it was good so I know I had good air flow there. Checked the exhaust vent on the side of the house and it was blowing ok so it wasn’t blocked though I noticed it was carboned up which is another symptom of poor burning. So I called the furnace guy out.

He came out, walked in and told me to open the windows immediately and shut my furnace off and said it couldn’t be turned on again until it was fixed. He could smell the exhaust gases as soon as he walked into the house. I couldn’t smell them because I was always there, my friends that came over that mentioned anything just said the house had a peculiar odor. I don’t blame any of them because they really shouldn’t know what exhaust gas from a propane furnace smells like. So all the Windows got opened, I made a decision of getting a new heat exchanger (the old one was cracked) or a new furnace and since the furnace was 10 years old and I really didn’t know its history of use/abuse just decided to replace it. And actually replacing the furnace is quicker to do than changing a heat exchanger if you are familiar with furnaces at all.

The furnace guy couldn’t tell me when the exchanger cracked but he said it could have been months and asked me how long I had felt like I had the flu or had headaches and I said… pretty much since October/November… Keep in mind, I work from home, I don’t leave much and if I do it isn’t for long. Definitely not long enough to purge my blood of the CO fully each time. It is likely though that it only got really bad the middle to the end of February or so which aligns with when my headaches really took a major turn to the bad.

Well about 10 hours after the furnace was changed out, I already started noticing a difference in me. Colors literally started getting brighter and “popping”, sounds were clearer, my vision in general started getting sharper. My headache which I had had daily for months was gone. Not diminished, gone. My mind started clearing up more and more with less confusion and “jitteriness” and I started looking around the house thinking, wtf, I have got nothing done on it this winter…

Two days after I had the furnace changed out, I was driving to Chicago for DEC. Some of the folks there noticed and mentioned to me that I was not quite myself. A little lethargic, worn down, listless, etc. I felt very rough.

Now several weeks later and several hours in Dr offices and hospitals for tests and such, mentally I am really feeling quite good. Physically I am still very worn down. I often hurt/ache as if someone beat me and have odd muscle twitches and cramps and sometimes my fingers/toes tingle uncomfortably. No real energy for extended physical exertion, etc etc. I also have the fun of going through hot/cold flashes which is always a good time. 😉 It sucks because I feel run down even though I am sleeping more than I ever sleep normally on the Dr’s orders. I am hoping it is mostly due to an antibiotic the Dr. put me on for a sinus/chest infection that he said I had (probably due to breathing toxins). I haven’t gotten results from many of the tests yet but it appears that my heart was not damaged or not damaged in a way detectable on an EKG though the jury is out on any brain damage as that can show up several months after the exposure and can include memory loss as well as actual damage to the ability to think the same way etc. The Poison Control people are calling me every week to confirm I am still ok. On the positive side I had a physical too which I have been putting off for some time. My mom and close friends will be happy to know that my cholesterol is absolutely great (Dr. asked if we could trade numbers in fact), blood pressure is lower than it ever has been since I started seeing this Dr some 12 or so years ago, blood sugar is good. Oxygen levels seemed ok. I have like 15 or 20 blood tests that still need to come back so we will see what those show.

My get well regiment has been go outside and breath deeply for a few minutes every hour, drinking lots and lots and lots of water, sleep 10-12 or more hours a night. The first two are to clear out toxins, the sleep is because the Dr said you don’t sleep well when being hit with CO and I was basically running on energy reserves all the time and I need to give my body healing time. I can say I don’t recall ever sleeping so deeply as I have been. When I do wake up I feel like I am coming up out of a coma and am extremely groggy. I do hope though to get back to my 4-6 hours of sleep a night and having to force myself to do even that instead of staying up all night working on things. I get a lot more work done that way. 🙂

So after this all happened I started letting some of my friends know what happened… The number one response was “Wow, are you ok???” and then almost invariably followed up with “You should have had CO detectors!!!” though one friend really opened up with both barrels, my friend Eliane who said (something like) “I always considered you to be a smart guy, why didn’t you have CO detectors…”… Well I did have CO detectors, three of them in fact. One was in the actual room WITH the furnace that was belching out CO. None ever made a peep other than when I pushed the test button every couple of months. That is when I started reading on the internet how they worked and found that they are a chemical reaction based system and they need to be changed occasionally based on manufacturers guidelines… I NEVER recalled hearing that before and I am one of those silly people who often doesn’t look at the instructions in the package. That won’t be happening again with safety devices I can tell you. So that is why my CO detectors were in the range of 10 years old, probably 3-8 years older than they should have been. Pressing the test button only tests the alarm, not the ability to detect CO. I mean if you think about it, that makes sense right? How can it test the ability to detect CO unless you present it with a certified amount of CO and see if it responds properly. So I now have three new gauge style CO detectors and intend to buy one new one every St Patties day so I always have one that is less than a year old in the house. At some point a couple of years down the road it will be me replacing one of the older CO detectors when I buy the new one.

Anyway, even though this is a little more on the personal side than I tend to share with people I wanted to share it because it is extremely important and the number of people I have spoken with already seems to indicate I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t aware that CO detectors aren’t a one time purchase. CO is something that really needs to be taken very seriously. The symptoms can easily be mistaken for the flu, stress, or any number of things you normally have that are fine and one additional symptom is to sap you of your drive or caring so this is something to be very aware of and to think about and protect your families from.

So on St. Patties day, or if you prefer, on Daylight Savings Time changeover, change the batteries in your CO and Smoke Detectors and make sure you replace any CO detectors that are too old. 

Here are a list of some Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Symptoms… love the first one…

• Non-specific symptoms
• Flu-like symptoms
• Headaches
• Tiredness
• Emotional problems
• Hallucinations
• Panic attacks
• Sleep disturbance
• Dizziness
• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Sexual dysfunction
• Flushing
• Confusion
• Weakness
• Poor color
• Convulsions
• Respiratory problems
• Wheezing
• Rapid breathing
• Persistent cough
• Chronic heart disease
• Angina
• Concentration problems
• Personality change
• Lack/loss of interest
• Lack/loss of drive
• Clumsiness
• Severe muscle pains
• Trembling
• Vision problems
• Loss of hearing

Oh by the way, for my friends that smoke… Carbon Monoxide is a big component of cigarette smoke. It can more than double the levels of CarboxyHemoglobin in your blood which impacts oxygen uptake and absorption. Something to think about the next time you stick one of those stinky ass things in your mouth… 😉

    joe

[1] I have been asked in some of my other emails… why do you shorten Carbon Monoxide to CO… Shouldn’t it be CM? No. CO is shorthand for one atom of Carbon and one atom of Oxygen… So CO isn’t shorthand for Carbon Monoxide like PnP is shorthand for Plug and Play, it is shorthand for Carbon Monoxide like H20 is shorthand for water (2 Hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atoms).