What it's like

I've tried many times to explain to people who aren't sensitive to mold what it feels like to be so bone-tired you can't function. I think of all the symptoms I connected to our exposure, the one that really kicked my rear end was the fatigue.

So I was oddly relieved to find this woman's website, which detailed the fatigue in a way I hadn't been able to. She's got a gift for explaining it, writing, "the first clue came when I gave a seminar in Portland, Oregon, and realized that I felt better and slept better in a hotel than in my own home. I then understood that I was not ill with some chronic disease that had yet to be diagnosed; it was my house, not me. More and more, I appreciated that if I was out of the house for a few hours, I started to feel like a normal human being; however, I only had to be in the house for 10-20 minutes before I thought I needed to take a nap. Sometimes, I barely had time to put groceries into the refrigerator before the enervation overcame me. The naps were often hours long. When I got up, I was all right for a few minutes and then usually wanted to go back to bed."

I can so relate. (And reading about what happened to her pets just breaks my heart.)

I think the first inkling I had that something inside our old apartment was making us (the Boy Wonder and I, anyway) sick was a trip we took "home" to visit my dad, who lives on the other side of the country, in February 2009. We had been in the apartment since the summer before. All of us felt better while we were on vacation for that week. It's hard for me to speak for the Boy Wonder, because his only symptom he complained about was the cough, but I know for me, I was much much much worse after we got back home.

In fact, it was that visit that really prompted me to seek help. I hadn't realized how bad I felt until I felt better by leaving and then worse. I still didn't connect it to the apartment yet - that was a connection I made later, when I actually discovered the mold. I think at that point in the exposure, the brain fog was so severe, I couldn't possibly have put the pieces of the puzzle together. I just knew I was wiped out, and I didn't know why - but I was tired of being tired.