Sickness be gone

The Boy Wonder has been battling what feels like the bug to end all bugs, since around January 25th. That day, I took him to our family doctor because we thought he had pink eye. A few days later, the pink eye seemed resolved, but he had a wicked sore throat and a fever. Another trip to the doc - yep, positive strep results.

We started penicillin for him that day, opting for the liquid instead of the shot because hubby has an extreme allergy and we wanted to make sure the Boy Wonder hadn't inherited it. (10 days of penicillin later, he showed no signs of the allergy. At least we have that going for us.)

Almost as soon as he finished the penicillin, the Boy Wonder developed a wet-sounding, chesty cough. Nothing major, we thought - maybe he caught a cold while his immune system was down with the strep. Except... two days later, he spiked another fever, this one 102, and knowing he'd just finished antibiotics, this Mom was a little freaked out. Back to see the family doc.

We got ANOTHER positive strep test (worth noting that B.W. has never had strep before this year, though he did have recurrent ear infections as a baby/toddler), and a prescription for Zithromax over five days, plus instructions to coddle and snuggle as needed. Couch time with my favorite boy? Yeah, twist my arm!

Except... the cough seemed to get worse instead of better, sounding deeper and deeper in his chest all the time. And on day three of the Zithromax, the Boy Wonder spiked a 101 temperature. Back to the family doc. Again.

This time, I was able to convince the doctor to listen to me - I knew something was going on, and I was pretty sure at this point it was not just plain old strep throat. Boy Wonder got a shot in the backside of stronger antibiotics (Zithromax combined with Rocephin) and a chest x-ray that confirmed pneumonia in his lower left lung - though probably viral, rather than bacterial, pneumonia, our doctor believed the strep weakened B.W.'s immune system and made him more susceptible to the eventual virus in his chest. He may even have gotten that from me. In the middle of his strep infection, I got a nasty sinus infection that knocked me flat. What are the odds I exposed him to the virus that caused my own infection?

Would ANY of this be the big deal it had become if we had never been exposed to the mold in the first place? I have no idea, but I certainly suspect both Boy Wonder and I have weaker immune systems now than we did before. I know I get sicker easier now and it tends to be more severe when I am sick. Fortunately, B.W. really hadn't had any big illness since the exposure - the occasional cold, but nothing more drastic than that. Until now.

We're both taking probiotics now to try to rebuild our immune system (especially since B.W. had so many antibiotics all at once there). But I honestly don't know what else we can do about our weaker immune systems. We can't live our lives in a bubble. Am I supposed to tell his friends, "Sorry, we can't play today - you might make us sick?"

I look back over what I've done for my own health in the past few years and realize it's pretty dang extensive. I tried chiropractic. I had my tonsils removed. I had acupuncture. Some of it's helped. None of it has completely fixed me. Boy Wonder was never quite as sick as I was initially with the exposure, but now I wonder what I have missed lying under the surface.

Here we go again...

If you've been following along since the beginning, you know there were a few different levels of our exposure - my symptoms being the most widespread, but our son's being just as troubling with an unidentified cough that didn't go away with any treatment for months (until we moved).

Now the hubby, out of nowhere, developed a cough this fall that won't go away, despite treatment with cough medicine, steroids, an asthma inhaler or antibiotics. Sound familiar? I thought so too.

We've been trying to figure out what on earth would cause a sudden chronic cough in the one member of our family that has been relatively healthy all along. Suddenly it hit me... the hubby, who works in education, changed school districts this fall. He's been in a new environment. What if one of his schools has a mold problem? How would we know?

I asked him (without telling him why) whether he feels like his cough is better or worse at home or at school. He told me it's always worse at school.

Now it gets more complicated - he used to be a classroom teacher, but is now working as a district-level employee, assigned to a couple of different schools and the district office, so how do we know (if it's mold) where the mold is? And since it's not our property, how do we go about getting testing done to find out? Will the school district play ball?

Back at square one?

I'm better than I was earlier this week, when I reported the co-working troglodyte who decided painting indoors in a poorly ventilated office was a great idea. But I'm not as good as I was the day before that... it's hard to say back to normal, as I haven't been back to normal in a very long time.

Where does that put my treatment plan? No idea. I go back this afternoon for more needling. Poke, poke, poke. It has really been helping my energy levels in general, although this feels like kind of a setback. I'll certainly ask my practitioner for some advice moving forward. I was thinking about seeking out a sauna to do a little more detox on my own.

To be honest... I'll just be happy not to wind up in Stanley's Death Park.

Make. It. Stop.

People who don't have chemical sensitivities can still relate to this - painting in an enclosed space is foul, whether you've been exposed to mold or not.

But my reaction seems to be extreme. My ears hurt. My chest is tight - almost like my lungs are crackly. That probably doesn't make any sense. And my head is spinning.

Why? Some jerk face is painting in the office this morning. We don't have windows that open. The acupuncture continues to help with stuff like my energy levels... I'm like a new human being for the most part. But then stuff like this happens and reminds me just how far I have to go. Bleh.

The experiment continues

So I went back on Friday for my second round of acupuncture (do you call it a round? A treatment? A... poking?), and I found it to be every bit as relaxing as the first visit. I think I dozed off a little bit - but my feet kept twitching just as I would nod off, which kind of woke me back up as I was worried about jarring the needles or hurting myself somehow.

I do feel like I had slightly more energy between the first session and the second. It wasn't a rush of energy by any means - just didn't feel quite as bone-tired as I did the day before the first treatment. I'm certainly still tired. It's just not as bad? Maybe. I want to give it more time to evaluate. My Saturday mornings typically come like this - I wake up, I do things for a little while, and then the exhaustion catches up with me mid-morning and I lay back down. This Saturday, after both sessions, was no exception.

I also came home with an herbal supplement called imperial tonic that I am to take twice a day. I only took my first dose this morning so I can't reliably comment yet on whether it is helping. Stay tuned!

A brave new experiment

So, I've always thought of Chinese medicine as quackery, I'm a little ashamed to admit. It just sounded like snake oil to me. I pictured Mr. Miyagi waving his hands over my abdomen and chanting while incense burned in a shady backroom.

I was wrong.

Three years after the initial exposure to the mold (although before we knew what was making us sick), I finally got brave enough to try something I had heard a long time ago might help my persistent chronic fatigue issues - acupuncture.

I had my first appointment today, in a well-lit, clean office attended by a blue-eyed Pennsylvania transplant wearing a lab coat.

It took me a long time to get over my initial reaction to the idea of acupuncture in general - helped along by talking to some other seemingly normal people I trust who have also taken the plunge.

What was it like? I could sort of feel a few of the needles just barely as they went in, but only for a second. When he finished putting all of them in where he wanted them, I felt as though suddenly my muscles weighed a ton and I wanted nothing more than to close my eyes and burrow into a cocoon of sleep. Sort of like being put under anesthesia - your limbs literally get heavy, then your eyelids.

I didn't actually fall asleep - I was too acutely aware of my own anxiety for that - but it made me very relaxed, and I was able to breathe more deeply in that 20 minutes than I felt like I have in probably three years.

It's too early for me to tell if this is helping me or if it really is just kind of a placebo. But this long after the exposure, what have I got to lose?

Mold and new chemical reactions

So it turns out the Boy Wonder is allergic to roll-on deodorant. We discovered this earlier this week because the hubs suggested he was starting to smell rather like a then-13-year-old certain older brother of mine. (I only have one brother. You do the math.) We both agreed 8 was a bit young to start having serious B.O. issues, but shrugged and decided to buy him something easy to apply and unscented.

And... he's got hives. Under his arms. Which I can tell you from my personal experience with various post-mold hives experiences can't be fun. Any time I've wound up with them in a crease (like the insides of my elbows or knees) it's been an extra layer of misery.

I can't prove, of course, that these new allergies he and I have been developing over time are related to mold. But who on earth is allergic to unscented deodorant? I mean... it's already unscented.

I've noticed myself I'm a lot more sensitive to smells than I used to be - like painting when they remodeled at work, or when we had to have some new tires put on the van and one of the workers got axle grease inside on the floor mat - my head hurts even thinking about the smell.

Is this our new life now? Or eventually, do you adjust and stop having to worry about every new chemical encounter in the universe?