HI Sunflower, this is where I find this rewarding, when I know that I can share something I've gone through and someone else can relate exactly to it and hope that it can somehow make them feel less "alone". I've found this myself by others on here.

I was never a "smoker" per se. But on the rare occassion, I used to have one or two with a friend and that was it. Or I'd go silly and have a binge smoke in a day and then not touch them for ages.

Now, once I got away with this with little symptoms, but of course, doing that this time around was disastrous. And though I dont smoke any other time, one binge has pretty much left the toxins in me and I simply continued to feel ill day after day after day and still am to this day. Like one dentist said after testing me, that I have a big problem wtih holding onto toxins and not letting go. When my body attempts to try and eliminate, it cannot seem to do so normally and goes into some kind of agony and I'll end up crying and salivating instead. So it's the only way it can attempt to rid itself, but this takes many months or more.

I have to try and accept that the added immune problem from the virus which is pretty severe, has made this tendency far worse and of course weakened me at the sametime. I have to learn to live around that and be moderate, but my nature has always been "all or nothing". i'm trying to change that part of me and apply self discipline. Not easy, but I have no choice unless I want to be worse off than I am normally.

Yes, I can only sympathise over how you feel as a Mum. Having not been one myself, I cannot empathise, but I have had "touches" of what i might be like when I am around my neice and nephew and when I am unwell, I am quite awful. I get very impatient, very tired and grumpy, very boring, no motivation and have no basic interest in them or to even have fun. And I feel awful inside, but I cannot seem to feel any other way. Occassionally it lifts and I have fun with them, but that is rare. I'm sure they must think i'm the grumpy auntie, but I think they know I"m not well.

So to be a Mum? I cannot imagine. I'd be very very difficult to live with for any child. I don't think you should be too hard on yourself with this sickness, it is volatile and can turn you into something you are not. Your son may be older than his years, but my brother was too (from continual sickness). He had brain operations in his youth, all through his childhood and then developed seizures from the scar tissue in the brain and now he's on medication for that.

He was older than his years then too, but weirdly enough it kind of turned around and when he became a young adult, he kind of when the other way!!!

I hope your son can understand that his Mum has a volatile toxic illness that can cause her to feel like this and act like that.

Like yourself, the Andy Cutler book? I wanted other people to read it and understand my illness more and pick up stuff from it and I dont think anybody did..... They didn't seem interested. I think my Mother was more, but nobody else wanted to read about it.

Good on you for giving up the cigarette habit! Not easy and apparently it is as addictive as cocaine if i'm not mistaken. My Mother too gave up many years ago, she had to, the effects from it were becoming intolerable and she had chest pains, coughing, all sorts of symptoms and giving up got rid of them. Same with my father, he developed a persistant problem in his throat and constant coughing and gave up and it went away.

I haven't seen good things from smokers in my family for the most part, though some seem to get away with it (at least for now).

Mercury gives the impression of mental illness many times as it did with me, but it is very much physical. It just impacts the brain like any other organ. Messes up the chemicals and causes weird thinking patterns and behaviours. anger, passiveness, no motivation, anxiety, abnormal fears, and the stuff you mentioned as well and many more. I know of a guy that works in the natural health field that told me he knew a nurse who worked in an Australian mental hospital and she admitted to him privately that they KNEW there were people in there with mercury poisoning, but didn't know how to treat them or what to do with them, so they'd simply drug them. Must have been something about them that gave it away. Plus she was trained to do her job and get on with it.

Makes me wonder when I consider how close I have been many times at being put away myself because of these symptoms...