My Mold Journey - Living in Toxic Mold - Part 1

Well, this is a weird and unexpected first blog post back into the land of Create N Plate.

Hello.

It’s been a while, and for good reason.

Let’s just get right into it.

A few weeks ago I found out that I was living in toxic mold.

This is the kind of thing that you truly hear about and think “DANG, that’s crazy!” and never think it would happen to you.

I never would have imagined that it would be something that I would be writing about or experiencing, but here we are.

2020
It all started last year.
We began looking for a house to buy in January 2020. Looking back on that time seems like it was another life. The COVID craziness happened and stopped our search for a few months. When real estate opened back up in PA, we were back at it. We searched and searched and searched for months. We had to move out of our rental and I was sleeping on a futon at my parents with all of my belongings packed in boxes. The real estate market was crazy. Things were selling in mere hours from being listed.
Finally, at the end of October, it happened. We found “the one.” I loved it at the time. It had a great upstairs with tons of windows and space, wood floors, and a deep bathtub - a must! We put in an offer and got the place. In the middle of December, we closed.

As we were cleaning we discovered the entire wall behind the refrigerator covered in mold. The entire wall!! I panicked and it was cleaned with bleach. I didn’t know it at the time, but I now know, DO NOT CLEAN MOLD WITH BEACH. Seriously, this is very important. Do not do it!

But, at the time we didn’t know what we didn’t know, so it happened.

I didn’t think too much about it afterwards because we didn’t see any mold so I thought that it was all good. Once again, we didn’t know what we didn't know, but boy was I wrong!

We moved everything in and that was that. I found myself hating the place. It was so strange because I loved the place when we looked at it and I was so excited to live there. And when it finally happened, I hated it.

Around the end of December I started feeling off. I was getting headaches, bad anxiety, and my stomach didn’t feel right. I didn’t know what was going on and I wondered if I had a parasite. Parasites are more active during the full moon and this was around full moon time so I was considering that as my potential issue.
The full moon came and went and I was continuing to feel worse and worse.

My Symptoms
I was getting EXTREME headaches. I’m not a headache person so this was the first sign that something was off. And then came the brain fog. It got to the point where I couldn’t focus on anything… at all. I would be trying to work and I would just stare at the computer, unable to process anything. It was like I knew that my brain wasn’t working, but I couldn’t make it work. Then I noticed that whenever the heat would come on, my lungs would be on fire. It got to the point where I couldn’t take deep breaths and I had to go outside to breathe. I was sleeping 1-2 hours a night. My entire body would be raging with anxiety and I couldn’t settle down no matter what I tried.

This was the point where I just knew that it was related to the mold and this is why I was hating the house that I once loved. My body/intuition knew that something was off whenever we moved into the place. I didn’t/don’t hate the house. I do hate what it’s done to me though.

I focused on nothing else except mold research for a few days. This became my life. I took Lily and Molly (my dog and cat) to my parents and I overnighted an ERMI test to the house. It arrived, I did it, and I overnighted it back to the lab. At this point I didn’t care about money or the crazy costs involved, I was desperate and I needed answers. When the results came back I was so disappointed, but not surprised, that I was right and there was toxic mold, and high levels of it, in the house.

I packed up a few clothes and I headed back to my parents futon, where I’ve been since.

I thought we’d have it resolved in a few weeks, at most.

That was 2 months ago.

What are we doing about the mold, you might ask?

Well, we don’t know yet.

All that I know and am focusing on at this point is my health, because that is all that I can focus on. I am desperate to feel better. I started working with a practitioner and she wasn’t right for me. I scheduled with someone else that I see soon, and I can’t wait. This has put my health problems into the darkest place that they’ve ever been and the crazy thing is that no one else has any adverse reactions to the house except me.

That’s a whole other story for another day, but whenever you’re experiencing health problems related to a location and no one else is experiencing them, that adds another layer of stress and confusion to an already very stressful experience.

And so, here I am with my sole focus being on healing. I will heal from this. I am healing from this. And once I’m at a good place, I will help others do the same.

This is my purpose and my path now. I know that and I feel that deep within.

This is just the beginning.