I went to a small protest during the start of the No Kings stuff a few months ago.
I didn’t do much; other people were getting up to stuff, and i was just there as a warm body/support/whatever i guess. I happened to be near somebody the police shot a crowd control weapon at. The gas only got me a little bit - initially it was maybe a minute or two of eye/face irritation and then it was fine.
but in the following days, my tear ducts swelled up, my hands and feet swelled up such that i had massive skin dieoff, and i thought i was fucking dying with how sick i felt
Now it seems to be cyclical. Right now my eyes are swolen and red again. My hands are swolen again. My joints hurt. This is the third time since being exposed that this has happened, and I had never experienced anything like that before going to this protest
I genuinely don’t know what to do to deal with this, it’s hugely disruptive. Does it go away? I t hought people on hexbear might have some insight, because right now i mostly have to just suck it up - take anti-inflammatories, tylenol, etc. and dabbing pain relieving ointments around the outside of my eye
these motherfuckers will poison you just for protesting.
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I’m so sorry, Comrade. Fuck those imperialist running dogs.
What have you tried on your eyes so far? Any milk of magnesia?
right now i mostly use pain relieving neosporin along the ou tside of the eye, where the swelling tends to be, in tiny, and i do mean tiny, amounts. Other than that i do regular washing of the eyes, and that’s really it. i’m pretty broke and have mostly had to find solutions with what’s on hand. if milk of magnesia might help i’ll look into it though
Is it possible some of it rubbed off and is still in your environment? On your bag, a couch cushion where you sat upon returning, the laundry basket you dropped your clothes into, a hat, a hairbrush, your car? I am not sure any of those chemicals would last for months but makes sense to be extra very careful to clean everything up. And if you have symptoms, try to think if there is any object that connects that could be carrying irritant.
The longer it goes on the less likely that’s the correct explanation. If it’s certainly just going on inside your body then ideally you’d go to see someone to check checked out because it’s a chemical problem of some sort. The only vague guess I have is some sort of cycled immune response like how some people with asthma get triggered by a cold. Even after the cold is cured your body is stuck in a loop trying to fight against it, and just ends up fighting itself. You think you have a cold going on forever but it’s just your body beating itself up. (Story of my life srsly.) So you need to have a steroid puffer to chill it out. (But puffers only work on the lungs so that wouldn’t help here.)
The only thing I can think of if you want to exhaust all the over the counter options would be trying an anti histamine (allergy medication). I don’t think it’s actually the right thing but if you have some laying around give it a shot. A more specific prescription med could help your body to get out of the rut. If I was you I would take pictures on my phone of the most severe visible symptoms. Swelling, skin problems, redness. In case you have “bad luck” to feel OK on the day your appointment comes. They might not take you seriously and you get blown off. So be prepared to show unsubtle pics of your misery.
I wouldn’t exclude the possibility of a different cause. You know your life and I do not but try to think of there is anything that you could be intermittently exposed to. Maybe your lover occasionally slathers themselves in some lotion you don’t even know about. Downstairs neighbour has a weird hobby and fumes are getting in to your bedroom. Cat goes and rolls around in an industrial waste dumping ground then comes home to curl up on your face.
Sorry you feel like shit. It’ll probably not last for decades.
The basics are:
i was extremely conscientious of the exposure and removing any kind of irritant contamination from my c lothes. i stripped immediately on getting home, washed everything, washed everything i touched incidentally. Anything washable was washed. any surface was scrubbed.
i would wonder if it’s something else as far as cause, but nothing else makes sense, and the symptoms consistently just imitate post-exposure symptoms
My sibling had recurrent poison ivy because they touched a light switch. Just gonna toss that out there - it could be residue on something real random
Well if you are certain to have eliminated new exposures, the cause might not be too important if there is a drug to interrupt it. Because the actual instigator is gone and no longer relevant.
Like some people get asthma after a cold, but you can get it from smoke too. If it’s 5 days after your cold is cured, or the smoke is cleared, the treatment is the same in either case because the problem is the immune system.
In your case it would be useful to know for next time you go to a protest of course. Especially if you find something that treats it.
Have your own clothes washing machine and clothes dryer or do you use a laundromat?
If you’ve got your own laundry machines… maybe bath towels got contaminated somehow?
Mixed contaminated clothes with bath towels in the washing machine? Or washed towels afterwards for a chance at residue transfering between washes?
A significant portion of a regular sized clothes washing machine is never actually submerged, it might get a bit of water spashed on it but there won’t be any soapy water or agitating laundry touching the surfaces scrubbing anything nefarious away.
Shit might have transfered to to the dryer too… but after a few months of regular weekly+ clothes drying at high heat I’d imagine that it would have broken down by now.
One possibility is that you’re having a self-sustaining inflammatory cycle of some kind (like the joint pain) and the CS was just the initial trigger. Obviously it’s better to talk to a doctor about treatments, but you may want to look into some generally anti-inflammatory options in the meantime. Drinking lots of water, taking NSAIDs, an anti-histamine in case it’s allergy-related, (very) light exercise to keep lymph moving, eating some safe and boring foods for a few days (veggies, pulses). On a doctor’s advice/prescription, possibly a steroid.
I will also second the recommendation to remove any possibility that you’re still being exposed in some way. Clothes, shoes, and things you touched that day. CS is not very water soluble so for clothes I would consider hand washing (with gloves), maybe starting with oil to dissolve volatile compounds and then detergent to wash away the oil and whatevet is now bound in it.
Sorry you’re going through this - ACAB - I can’t think of resources besides the CDC one - and I’m sure you’ve done a ton of digging as well - but I’ll see if I can find anything
basic info from the CDC https://www.cdc.gov/chemical-emergencies/chemical-fact-sheets/riot-control-agents.html
Read it quick before RFK Jr takes it down and replaces it with a page that says you should pour sarin into your ears to clean out the wax.
How frequently is this reoccurring? Are there any preceding incidents or activities before the flare-ups happen? You have to look at this like its an illness and trace back the events to what you were doing/eating/drinking/etc. before it started.
Do you have any allergies to any of the ingredients in the spray that you know of?
all of the symptoms I am experiencing emerge in the immediate time following my participation in the protest and the exposure to the gas.
I have had irritated eyes before, but we are speaking of something like, an eye that’s itchy for a day and it gets a little red maybe, but i rinse it and try not to scratch and it clears up. This is totally different, with the ducts and area around the eyes turning red, swelling up in the extreme, and just constantly leaking/crusting/etc. - Not a single time in my life before this stuff has this happened, and incidentally the closest thing to this I had been exposed to prior was consumer grade pepper spray a woman used on a harasser on a bus i was on.
I usually notice this stuff after going bed. It seems like I go to bed, and wake up to my hands and feet swelling up. The hand swelling fucks with my sense of touch really badly, i’m autistic with a lot of sensitivity, and the sensations drive me insane. I’m not even doing anything right now for example, but im experiencing a sensation as if i was running my hands along car upholstery, which is one of the worst sensations you can expose me to. It feels so wrong, and that’s just the ambient state.
But yeah, the trigger seems to be while i’m asleep. It usually starts with hand swelling, and then a rapid flare-up of my eyes, and the feet usually follow after that.
my joints become really painful in the inflamed areas. My fingers burn when i try to articulate them right now.
As far as allergies, i have had an allergic reaction to the smoke of burning mesquite wood - this is literally the only allergy I know I have for sure.
Is it every night after you sleep or only sporadically?
Have you changed your sheets and washed your pillows since the incident? Easiest explanation is that there is some residue lingering in your bed somewhere and you’re basically festering it it over night.
Might be worth trying to find out what’s in the pepper spray the pigs used and see if it has any triggers. This absolutely sounds like an auto-immune reaction, especially the joints hurting part. That is not normal for exposure to pepper spray and certainly not for this extended of a time period.
it seems to come and go in a cycle. it’s not every night, but for the last couple of months i go through a period of several days where i swell up, have this reaction, then it stops/goes away for a bit
I haven’t done what somebody else suggested, which is oiling my clothes and sheets before washing in detergent, but all of my clothes and sheets have been washed many times over at this point since the event, and I was paranoid and went super hard on cleaning surfaces after the exposure
The infrequency of this seems very odd to me. I think this might be something other than the teargas at this point. Have you tried sleeping somewhere other than the bed for a change in environment A/B test? How about something as simple as a benadryl or allergy pill when the flare’s come on to see if it helps alleviate the symptoms.
I don’t know anything about oiling your clothes before washing as that’s definitely outside of my purview. Unless you were going to add vinegar as well, then I could recommend some seasoning to really kick up your salad laundry.
When I have inflammation, such as mosquito bites, the spots always itch the worst in the morning. I suspect it’s related to circadian rhythm aspects of the immune system.
Agree with other posters to try to see a doctor if you have a regular one, or walk in clinic if you don’t have a primary care or need more flexible appointment hours. They should be able to judge if a steroid would help, and get you a prescription of the right form(s) (pill/cream/eye drop/other).
If seeing a medical person very soon is not possible, cortisone cream is an over the counter steroid, as is fluticazone nasal spray (name brand FloNase). One or both might be worth a try.
Yeah they are using some real nasty new shit since 2020.
Back in my day around the Iraq War protests in the early 2000s it was only the regular cs gas. I was exposed to a whole lot of that and while I do have some lasting respiratory issues it was nothing like what you describe.
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