ORIGINAL COMMENT · UNEDITED TEXT
April 2014, I became very ill. I worked in a hospital and they rolled out electronic charting on a Monday before Easter. The roll out included dozens of wireless computers on wheeled work stations for staff, on every floor of a 10 floor hospital. Tuesday, near the end of the day I noticed a headache starting. Each day, while at work, the headache began with in a couple hours of starting my shift. On Thursday at the end of my shift, the headache was unbearable. I rarely had headaches before in my life. This was a headache that began early in my shift and continued until well into the evening, each day after the wireless device roll out. At the end of the work week, I spent 48 hours in bed with a horrible headache, I was unable to get up, walk a straight line, or eat. I was also nauseated. At the end of the 48 hours, I was well enough to make Easter brunch for about 20 people. After another horrific week of headaches due to work, I took some time off and visited Greenbank WV. Within 48 hours, all my symptoms of difficulty with memory, word finding, movement, and nausea resolved. In fact, after just 10 days in Greenbank, I felt 20 years younger. I never felt that great after a vacation in my life. I spent months being medically tested for several potential causes, all were negative. Eventually I was sent to a specialty Environmental Health Clinic, where I was diagnosed with 'Electrosensitivity'. The medical director explained to me how I can shield myself in the hospital setting in order to be able to continue working. It did help but not enough. The shielding clothing needed to be replaced, because over time it was not sufficiently protecting me to be cognitively able to work. I figured out ways to double layer the clothing for more effectiveness. Sometimes I would notice I was becoming terribly ill before the clothing typically lasted, so I would add another layer of clothing. By the time I decided to retire early, I was wearing 5 layers of shielding material on my body and my head, and replacing it every 8 weeks. I am a nurse practitioner and had the kind of job I would have like to work at until 71 years old. However, there I was at 55, forced to retire for my own health. Disability was never in my vocabulary prior to becoming ill with this form of chronic radiation sickness, called 'electrosensitivity. I can't continue my work as an affiliate assistant professor in the local university's Faculty of Medicine. I can't continue working in any health clinic with wireless devices. I have to be very quick buying groceries etc., because when I am exposed for more than 20 minutes, I can feel sick for weeks after that. I can't travel on public transportation (planes, trains, buses), because they all have wireless routers. I can't even receive health care at a hospital because after 20 minutes, I feel horribly nauseated and have trouble thinking. The hospital has routers on the ceilings every 3-15 feet, and in every patient care room and office. I was once a very social person, who taught many graduate students and post doctoral students. This chronic illness with all the same symptoms of 'acute radiation sickness', has disabled me as a member of modern society. I am most upset at the seemingly unchecked, rampant roll out of wireless features in so many devices. I became ill with just one or two wireless devices and an exposure of 22 years. Many people I have met with electrosensitivity became ill approximately 22 years after their first wireless device exposure. Now people have wireless earphones, wireless watches, wireless utility meters, wireless appliances, cars routers, security cameras, baby monitors; the list is seemingly endless. Most research looks at one device and the amount of exposure from it before it causes cancer in animals. These days, people have an accumulation of multiple wireless devices and no one is measuring that accumulation of radiation before people become horribly sick. There is a threshold of radiation exposure for every person. It may be slightly different for everyone. Eventually, at this rate of exposure for everyone, we will all reach/cross that threshold of exposure, and won't be able to work, think, move properly, and have neuroendocrine disorders, or maybe even develop cancer like some of the laboratory animals did (NTP 2018, Rammazini 2018). The world health organization classified wireless technology as a 2B carcinogen in 2011. I don't want more humans to feel as sick as I do in the modern world. Unfortunately, "FEELING IS BELIEVING". When that threshold is crossed, there is no going back to wellness with wireless devices.