Some of you know I tried a vegetarian diet for about six months in a bid to lower my cholesterol (it worked, actually, and I was pretty happy eating vegetarian. I had less success in cooking separate meals for my family and myself, as I was the only one avoiding meat, so eventually, I decided chicken and fish are OK. It's probably a story for another blog that isn't about mold.).
What you may not know is that I also tried a mold-starvation diet in the summer after we moved into our townhouse to try to regain my equilibrium, a stricter eating plan on which I temporarily shunned pretty much all dairy and anything processed, plus some other things you probably wouldn't have thought to avoid.
The idea was to starve the mold so it couldn't thrive in my body anymore - make myself a tougher host for it. So I consulted information for people with mold allergies, and found there were specific foods they should avoid.
On the "don't eat" list - cheeses, mushrooms, dairy, hot dogs, lunch meat, bread, cereal, soy sauce, sauerkraut, pickles, vinegar and potatoes - notice the pattern of anything with yeast in it, anything pickled or fermented.
I stuck to it for a while, but eventually found I wasn't as sensitive as I had been immediately after the move and could eat some of those things again, which was around the time I started eating vegetarian.
I've been less strict about foods in the last three or four months and am now wondering if that could account for some of the more recent fatigue and itching. I'm also wondering about the humidifier I was advised to run at night to keep my sinuses moist - is it possible that's making it worse? Or, have I just turned myself into a worry-wort because I had this horrible mold reaction thing happen to me, and now I see it everywhere, even where it isn't? My fatigue, itching and cold that won't leave me alone make me think it's probably not in my head.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
The back story
Where to begin? How do you boil down a journey of two years and change in just a few words?
Let me explain. No... there is too much. Let me sum up.
Three years ago, my family and I moved all the way across the country to pursue a bigger, better job for me. My husband and son were gracious enough to play along - it was actually a pay cut for the hubby, and for the Boy Wonder, a completely new school where he knew no one. But the recession hit harder and earlier where we were than it did where we were going, and the long story short of the decision to move was that it was better opportunities for me and meant I wouldn't face the layoffs that looked imminent at the old job.
We settled into an apartment that seemed like a good fit. It wasn't a terribly long commute for me, was reasonably convenient for the hubs and the Boy Wonder's school, and while rent wasn't cheap, it was affordable at least by local standards. The complex allowed pets which meant our beagle could come along for the ride. There was covered parking - the biggest plus of all in a much snowier climate than any of us were used to.
About three months after we moved in, I suffered a painful gallbladder attack. My gallbladder was removed in September of 2008.
Six months after we moved in, I started to notice a change in my energy levels. I was inexplicably tired all the time. There wasn't enough sleep in the universe to help me feel well-rested. I could nap all day. I could sleep all night. Wouldn't make a dent in my fatigue. I thought at first maybe the polycystic ovaries I'd known I had since long before my son was in the picture were flaring up - some kind of hormonal imbalance? Who knew? I scheduled a check-up just to make sure.
My hormones were fine. The fatigue kept getting worse. I struggled to stay awake at staff meetings and church. I was in real danger of nodding off between when I got up and when I went to work if I sat on the couch for more than a minute.
Eight months after we moved in, the Boy Wonder developed a cough that wouldn't go away. We took him to the pediatrician. Couldn't find anything genuinely wrong with him. They tried asthma medications, but they really didn't seem to help.
Hubby started breathing loudly in his sleep - sometimes snoring, sometimes gasping, snorting himself awake and then drifting back to sleep only to start the process all over again. He was diagnosed with sleep apnea and given a CPAP machine to use at night.
Around the same time, I started to realize I had other symptoms that might or might not have been connected to the fatigue, but were definitely not normal and definitely new to me: I was constantly itching. I was losing my hair at the temples. If I spent any time in the sun at all, I broke out in hives - and burned much more easily than I did before. Most troubling of all - at least to me - it felt like I was walking around with a fog around my brain. I couldn't think straight. I couldn't focus. My memory was awful.
Nine months after we moved in, I took all of the symptoms to my family doctor for help. I still didn't connect Boy Wonder's cough to the rest of it, so at this stage, it was only my symptoms we talked about. She decided I was depressed and needed to see a dermatologist. (I was already on anti-depressants, and it didn't feel like it had when I had my depressive episode a few years before. This was different. I was sure of it.) I was convinced our doctor had brushed me off without actually listening to my instincts, and I felt sure my instincts shouldn't be brushed off.
I decided I needed a second opinion, and I scheduled an appointment for a new doctor recommended by a coworker.
The weekend before the appointment with the new doctor, we closed on a home we were buying and started moving out of the apartment that had been our home for the past ten months. As the movers emptied my son's room of its furniture, they uncovered a sight that made me sick to my stomach: colonies of mold growing on the wall, hidden by where his bed had been, extending from the floorboard up to just under the top of the mattress height.
There was more mold - in our room, specifically next to my side of the bed, hidden by my nightstand, and again growing from the carpet up the wall.
I virtually ran out of the now empty apartment, having stopped only long enough to take a few photos with my phone to send to the hubby. I wouldn't go back for several days.
At the second opinion appointment, I described my symptoms and also told the new doctor about the mold I'd discovered. She asked whether anyone else had been sick at home, and I told her about Boy Wonder and his cough. She thought mold was the most likely explanation for my illness and my son's, but theorized the only way to know for sure would be to stay away from the apartment and see if we improved.
Later that week, hubby and I went back to the apartment to clean so we could turn in the keys and complain to the management. Within minutes of entering the building, I was itching and tired and hives appeared on my arms. Hubby sent me back outside while he cleaned without me.
Flash forward to now - Boy Wonder's cough is long since gone, as are my hives and - an unexpected benefit, hubby's sleep apnea. But my health is still affected. I get sick more easily and more often than I did before we lived in the apartment of death. It takes longer to heal. I get a horrible cough when I do get sick that feels a lot more like asthma than anything I'd ever experienced before the mold - a hacking cough that goes away when the sickness does, but requires breathing treatments when I'm sick. I am occasionally bothered by the itching and exhaustion - never to the same degree as it was at its worst, but enough that I can tell a difference.
So that's where we are. Fighting the good fight. Always on the hunt for things to make our overall health better and to continue to improve our condition post-exposure. Will I ever be completely back to normal? What's normal, anyway? I don't know. That's what bothers me the most.
Let me explain. No... there is too much. Let me sum up.
Three years ago, my family and I moved all the way across the country to pursue a bigger, better job for me. My husband and son were gracious enough to play along - it was actually a pay cut for the hubby, and for the Boy Wonder, a completely new school where he knew no one. But the recession hit harder and earlier where we were than it did where we were going, and the long story short of the decision to move was that it was better opportunities for me and meant I wouldn't face the layoffs that looked imminent at the old job.
We settled into an apartment that seemed like a good fit. It wasn't a terribly long commute for me, was reasonably convenient for the hubs and the Boy Wonder's school, and while rent wasn't cheap, it was affordable at least by local standards. The complex allowed pets which meant our beagle could come along for the ride. There was covered parking - the biggest plus of all in a much snowier climate than any of us were used to.
About three months after we moved in, I suffered a painful gallbladder attack. My gallbladder was removed in September of 2008.
Six months after we moved in, I started to notice a change in my energy levels. I was inexplicably tired all the time. There wasn't enough sleep in the universe to help me feel well-rested. I could nap all day. I could sleep all night. Wouldn't make a dent in my fatigue. I thought at first maybe the polycystic ovaries I'd known I had since long before my son was in the picture were flaring up - some kind of hormonal imbalance? Who knew? I scheduled a check-up just to make sure.
My hormones were fine. The fatigue kept getting worse. I struggled to stay awake at staff meetings and church. I was in real danger of nodding off between when I got up and when I went to work if I sat on the couch for more than a minute.
Eight months after we moved in, the Boy Wonder developed a cough that wouldn't go away. We took him to the pediatrician. Couldn't find anything genuinely wrong with him. They tried asthma medications, but they really didn't seem to help.
Hubby started breathing loudly in his sleep - sometimes snoring, sometimes gasping, snorting himself awake and then drifting back to sleep only to start the process all over again. He was diagnosed with sleep apnea and given a CPAP machine to use at night.
Around the same time, I started to realize I had other symptoms that might or might not have been connected to the fatigue, but were definitely not normal and definitely new to me: I was constantly itching. I was losing my hair at the temples. If I spent any time in the sun at all, I broke out in hives - and burned much more easily than I did before. Most troubling of all - at least to me - it felt like I was walking around with a fog around my brain. I couldn't think straight. I couldn't focus. My memory was awful.
Nine months after we moved in, I took all of the symptoms to my family doctor for help. I still didn't connect Boy Wonder's cough to the rest of it, so at this stage, it was only my symptoms we talked about. She decided I was depressed and needed to see a dermatologist. (I was already on anti-depressants, and it didn't feel like it had when I had my depressive episode a few years before. This was different. I was sure of it.) I was convinced our doctor had brushed me off without actually listening to my instincts, and I felt sure my instincts shouldn't be brushed off.
I decided I needed a second opinion, and I scheduled an appointment for a new doctor recommended by a coworker.
The weekend before the appointment with the new doctor, we closed on a home we were buying and started moving out of the apartment that had been our home for the past ten months. As the movers emptied my son's room of its furniture, they uncovered a sight that made me sick to my stomach: colonies of mold growing on the wall, hidden by where his bed had been, extending from the floorboard up to just under the top of the mattress height.
There was more mold - in our room, specifically next to my side of the bed, hidden by my nightstand, and again growing from the carpet up the wall.
I virtually ran out of the now empty apartment, having stopped only long enough to take a few photos with my phone to send to the hubby. I wouldn't go back for several days.
At the second opinion appointment, I described my symptoms and also told the new doctor about the mold I'd discovered. She asked whether anyone else had been sick at home, and I told her about Boy Wonder and his cough. She thought mold was the most likely explanation for my illness and my son's, but theorized the only way to know for sure would be to stay away from the apartment and see if we improved.
Later that week, hubby and I went back to the apartment to clean so we could turn in the keys and complain to the management. Within minutes of entering the building, I was itching and tired and hives appeared on my arms. Hubby sent me back outside while he cleaned without me.
Flash forward to now - Boy Wonder's cough is long since gone, as are my hives and - an unexpected benefit, hubby's sleep apnea. But my health is still affected. I get sick more easily and more often than I did before we lived in the apartment of death. It takes longer to heal. I get a horrible cough when I do get sick that feels a lot more like asthma than anything I'd ever experienced before the mold - a hacking cough that goes away when the sickness does, but requires breathing treatments when I'm sick. I am occasionally bothered by the itching and exhaustion - never to the same degree as it was at its worst, but enough that I can tell a difference.
So that's where we are. Fighting the good fight. Always on the hunt for things to make our overall health better and to continue to improve our condition post-exposure. Will I ever be completely back to normal? What's normal, anyway? I don't know. That's what bothers me the most.
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