The DeFazio Flanagan Team Denise Flanagan Cell: 973.420.4590 dflan2015@gmail.com
Margaret DeFazio Cell: 201.738.7636 medefazio@gmail.com
No. 18 Vol. 5
My Life Publications • 1-800-691-7549
May 2022
211 South Street, Morristown, NJ 07960 • 973.285.4677 www.defazioflanaganteam.com
Morristown Mom Battles Medical System to Save Daughter So she investigated the symptoms, and found out Patricia wasn’t the lone one experiencing them, with many on the West Coast suffering. “I learned they were caused by the impact of different (environmental) elements on the immune system,” Andrade says this gave her the hope she needed to continue the fight for an answer. And the strength to travel with Patricia to Dallas and meet Dr. Rea, who specialized in MCS. It also meant she and her family were separated: her husband in New Jersey with their 12-year-old son, and Andrade had to quit her teaching job. In Texas, Patricia and Ana-Maria lived for a year in a porcelain mobile home, at an ecological camp for MCS patients under Rea’s care. They experimented with various alternative therapies… but mold and humidity so prevalent in Dallas, made it unsuccessful. Patricia’s condition became so severe she was considered a ‘universal reactor’ to each item she ate, wore and touched. She couldn’t count on her central line for feeding anymore, and was allergic to normal food. It was suggested she try ‘wild game.’ continued on page 6
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By Jillian Risberg he spent three years staring down daily challenges to save her daughter’s life as she battled Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS). That inspired Ana-Maria Andrade, Ph.D. to self-publish a new memoir: Together Against the Wind. A Mother Remembers. “To give hope to families of other victims of this devastating and rare disease, and inspire them not to abandon the fight to help their loved ones,” says Andrade, who calls penning the book cathartic. She is grateful (to the universe) when she sees her 42-year-old daughter happily married and the mother of three beautiful girls. “Patricia is back to her usual self: full of energy, ready to respond to challenges, and above all, healthy,” she says. But it was a long and arduous road to get there. “My experiences those years opened the door to an otherwise unknown area… allergies,” she says it allowed her to put herself in the shoes of society’s misunderstood outcasts. “Becoming a part of this world presented me with a clearer view of the demoralizing state in which patients with MCS exist, oftentimes for life.” Their first year in New Jersey was the most difficult — her daughter’s symptoms, diagnosed as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia, had no known cause. It was 1995 when Andrade tried to create a chemical-free environment, she swapped her daughter’s bed sheets, pillowcases and blankets with organic cotton bedding. “I stripped her room of even the smallest decoration,” she says while also eliminating stuffed animals that could harbor dust in her bedroom and applied the same techniques to the rest of the house. Despite the detailed decontamination, Patricia failed to improve. To make the situation worse was doctors’ dismissive attitude towards them. “They all thought my daughter’s symptoms were psychosomatic, and I was crazy for believing in her made-up symp-
toms,” says Andrade. “My mother’s instinct guided me to do everything I could to save my daughter.” According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, MCS is a controversial issue as to whether it is a clinical diagnosis or not. They say many in the medical community lean towards the symptoms being physical manifestations of psychiatric illness rather than a primary medical illness. “Even hospitals as famous as Hopkins don’t have all the answers,” Andrade says she’s in communication with several associations in Europe and South America where there are many with MCS. “They call it the ‘invisible illness’ or ‘rare Illness.’ Environmentally ill people in those countries survive best they can, on their own, because of the same lack of support I have found in the USA. “
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