An Indiana mother with environmental illness is at risk of losing her children in a custody battle with her estranged husband, who is claiming she is mentally ill due to her chemical sensitivity. Please read the below summary on the Change.org petition and sign today – she needs to get as many signatures as possible before this Friday. Please share widely, with your MCS friends and online communities, Facebook pages and groups, to help garner support for this MCS mom on behalf of all other mothers who will come after her, fighting for their right to mother their children.

From Change.org:

PETITIONING INDIANA GOVERNOR + INDIANA FAMILY COURT
Family court needs to be educated about emerging medical conditions. Custody should not be determined by a lack of knowledge on medical conditions or by improper procedures as a result of this.

Right now thousands of Americans are suffering from environmental illness. While this is an emerging problem, nothing is being done to help those already suffering. There are many illnesses that exist but some of them are Electrical Hypersensitivity, Chemical Hypersensitivity, Chronic Fatigue, and Lyme disease. Those of us suffering are not being helped by allopathic doctors and are generally being labeled as people suffering from psychosomatic illness. As a result, we can lose our homes, money, jobs, and family. We find we have no place in a society that ignores our suffering.

In my case, I am suffering from Reactive Airway and the triggers are chemicals and wireless radiation. It can be thought of as an allergy. My body simply does not tolerate these types of exposures well. I get severe head aches, burning in my skin and mucosa, heart palpations, neurological symptoms, burning in my spine, and shortness of breath–among other things. My chemical sensitivity started about 25 years ago. Electromagnetic sensitivity started about 2 years ago. It is debilitating in many ways. One of the ways is to be stigmatized for having a biological system that is more reactive to things than other people’s bodies are..

What is happening to me is that the courts are not recognizing this as a ligitimate illness and my spouse is capitalizing on their ignorance of this issue. He is painting me as a mental patient and even had a psychologist–who had seen me for 45 minutes say that I am suffering from a psychosomatic illness. Funny thing is my Harvard trained physician who specializes in Environmental Sensitivites documented that my biological symptoms are physiological–not psychological.The local psychologist was provided with my medical doctor’s evaluation and several research articles from well known journals indicating the extent of this medical issue and the newest research on this problem. He ignored them all. A prominant psychologist–who took the time to thoroughly research the issue and to base her findings on an actual evaluation of me and the circumstances–indicated that there is no psychological impairment what so ever.

Very long painful story short, my spouse is capitalizing on my medical condition, the ignorance of a local small time psychologist, and the lack of knowledge by the local family court system to take custody of my children from me. Every issue being used against me stems from this medical issue.

This violates our rights as provided by the ADA. Not providing accommodations or threatening to use a request for accommodations against someone is a Federal offense. This is managed by the Department of Justice. I have been told by previous counsel that the court was “pissed” about my request to have equal access to the court and that this would reflect negatively on my case!!! Basically, she said that it would cause a ruling against me. This is wrong on many, many levels.

Please sign this petition to help me save custody of my children by requesting Lake County Court Officers to research this issue and not pass judgement on my circumstance based on outdated information or a lack of proper research in this case. This case is being heard on Friday of this week. Please get as many signatures as possible as soon as possible. This case can set a very dangerous precedent for all people suffering from emerging environmental illness.

This is happening on Friday so I only have a few days. Please help with distributing this far and wide.

Thank you with all my heart.

Veronica Zrnchik

SIGN + SHARE THE PETITION BEFORE FRIDAY, APRIL 17, 2015