(Photo of the new in, not yet trimmed, while the old has been pulled away from the exposed yellowy part.)

Carpeting, chemical, reaction, cardiologist, nitroglycerin. Those are some of the searches I used before I finally found the old blog post wherein said doctor diagnosed my inexplicable, to me, intense reaction walking in the door at church after they replaced the carpeting. It happened again, every single week, gradually lessened by their propping the door open near us and repeatedly trying to air out the building during the week with fans for me and for an older woman having a milder case of the same problem. She felt a lot better talking about it after finding out she wasn’t alone.

So I’m typing all those searched words so that next time I’ll find the name faster.

Amyl nitrite. That was it. He said it gets into the blood stream when you breathe it in and duplicates the effects of nitroglycerin for those who are sensitive to it–and the fact that it recurred the moment I walked in those doors, every single time, later clinched it for him.

Rapidly collapsing blood pressure and heart rate alarms sounding people running to my hospital room talking rapidly to each other thinking I couldn’t hear them they stopped the tilt table test at 63/21 bp I appeared blacked out utterly unable to respond–but I could still hear.

One young doctor was blatantly rude.

They assigned him to watch over me during recovery. I figured I was part of his unfinished medical training and repeated back to him, nicely, word for word what he’d said and watched him squirm. I wanted him to see his patients as both people and equal to himself and I knew he wouldn’t forget being told as diplomatically as possible to please not go to hell, okay, sir.

The first of the replacement fascia went on the house today and there was some of the damaged old propped up against the house as I went to get the mail and thank the guys for their hard work today.

I came back inside and kind of held my belly on the couch, thinking, man, where did that come from? Pain and nausea, thanks, Crohn’s.

A little later I went back out there before the light was gone to try to take some pictures, and a few steps from the door on the way back in it hit me: I smelled it and I felt it and I got inside and shut the door and went halfway down as my blood pressure swooned.

I went and looked for the name of the stuff here, and then searched for what it might be in out there.

Solvents. A whole lot of things, but that was one of them and whatever it was they used, they were going to be having to use a lot of it.

Nausea can be one of the first warnings. Thank you Dr. Google.

This is temporary and I want the job done right because it lasted 65 years the first time and I am highly reluctant to say a word to them.

And yet. If I were to collapse in front of them they’d need to know why.

They’ve only finished installing it on one side of the house so far, and they have to do it all the way around.

Edited Friday morning to add: thank you everybody; I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with it last night. I read your comments, sent Chris off a note, and within minutes his manager was at my door apologizing for that and saying they are substituting the problematical item out, no problem. Phew!