March 2013
We move into a 2300 square foot, two-story family house on 1.25 acres. It is affordable rent, ample size, has a play area for the kids, and a separate fenced yard for the dogs. The layout is roomy with four bedrooms, formal and informal dining, bonus room, family room, and a huge deck. We think we are in heaven!
April 2013
My oldest daughter is rushed to the emergency room on a late Saturday night with a severe headache that is diagnosed as a sphenoid sinus infection. We bring her home with antibiotics and nasal spray, thinking nothing of it. A late cold that got into her sinuses. The following Monday the hospital calls to say that her blood sample cultured something and she was septic, that we should follow up with Children's in Seattle. She is hospitalized for half a week at Children's Hospital in Seattle with intravenous antibiotics to treat the sepsis and sinus infection. They cannot identify what grew in her blood culture. We make no connection to the house whatsoever at this point.
July 2013
I believe that I have had a recurring eye infection for a month. I forgo wearing contacts for a week, and change them out. When that doesn't help or improve the situation at all, I make an appointment with my eye doctor who prescribes antibiotic drops. After 4 followups throughout the month of July, the doctor determines that the inflammation is not bacterial in nature, prescribes lubricating drops to soothe, and tells me to give it time. I stop wearing contacts and make up completely because the inflammation is so painful I don't want to aggravate it further. I make no connection to the house of course, I actually think it is something viral from our chickens, cats, dogs, or tortoise.
August 2013
My eyes continue to bother me greatly, but I think it is related to contact lens wear and eye makeup, and some sort of allergy or infection. Then one night as I'm helping the girls get ready for bed, I notice my younger daughter's eyes are red and inflamed. I ask her how they feel and she confesses how much they hurt and have been hurting for a while. I instantly check my other daughter's eyes which are also red, both in the whites of her eyes and her eyelids which are kind of puffy. She says that her eyes only hurt a little though but that her head hurts more.
I immediately schedule an appointment both with their pediatrician and my eye doctor. We see the eye doctor first. She says there is no infection in their eyes but she isn't sure what is causing the inflammation. She suspects allergies and refers us to an allergist to get tested. Next we visit the girls' pediatrician. She is baffled by how red and irritated their eyes look, noting that inflammation is in the eyeball itself, the lid margins, the eyelids and also notices that their nasal passages and throats are both very inflamed and red. Their doctor asks them questions I hadn't even thought to ask and discovers that both girls have been experiencing headaches, sore throats, and pain in their eyes.
I am distraught. As a mother, it is my job to protect my children and keep them safe and healthy. I cannot figure out how we are all sick with seemingly the same thing and yet no contagion can be discovered in tests. A light bulb goes off, if it isn't a bacteria or virus, there must be an environmental culprit we're all being exposed to. The doctor prescribes steroids in three forms: steroid eye drops, nasal spray, and oral.
We go home and I begin to research on the internet. Mold comes up in my searches often. I follow the links and it's like missing pieces falling into a puzzle. Every single one of our symptoms are described on these sites as being caused by mold. After consulting with my husband, we contact our landlords with our suspicions.
September 2013
Our landlords notify that they have no money. They are poor missionaries for their church and have no income of their own. They don't seem to grasp the severity of the situation and suggest that our symptoms must have other causes because they are sure their rental home is safe and clean. After all, there is no visible mold in the home. Upon their refusal to pay for an inspection we start to research doing one ourselves. I contact multiple companies and find out that the cost of mold testing is outrageous and prohibitive. Some inspectors even tell us that they won't come out unless the landlord approves it. Our landlords refuse. I finally find one company that will do a free preliminary inspection and will work out a full inspection on a payment plan. I schedule the inspection.
The inspector comes out, and immediately identifies on sight several problem areas. The dryer is vented into the attic, not the outdoors as it's supposed to. The crawl space has standing water and there is evidence of past water leaks with shoddy patching throughout the house. The worst place seems to be the master bedroom which has a waterline underneath it extending from the bathroom. The property is also surrounded by trees, meaning that it never gets full sun to get properly dried and aired out. In the damp Pacific Northwest, this is a problem.
I agree to move forward with a full inspection and pay the $800 deposit. The inspector brings in numerous tools: moisture meters, air collection chambers, infra-red cameras, and much more. After a detailed four hour inspection of the house, he lets me know that he will have the preliminary results for me within a week.
Every single day is torture. I sit on the couch in pain, my eyes throbbing like I'd dropped shampoo in them. My head aching and feeling full and swoozy, there is so much pressure I wonder if my brain is swelling. The girls complain of headaches and sore eyes but I make them stay outside and "play" as much as possible to avoid being in the moldy house. They go to school under protest, only because I want them out of the house as much as possible. My kindergartener cries; she is anxiety-ridden and doesn't want to be at school.
Her anxiety gets to be so great that I pull her out of school. It's just kindergarten and she is at the extreme young edge of the cutoff so pulling her out until next year seems prudent. My older daughter who is gifted and talented and has always thrived at school asks to be pulled out too. She has constant headaches and eye pain and doesn't enjoy her once favorite place anymore. Before the mold house she was a 2nd grader who read at a 7th grade level and did 5th grade math. She was in gifted programs and lived for school. Now she won't pick up a book because it hurts too much, she doesn't chatter anymore, and is lethargic.
I still want her out of the house, not realizing at this point how ubiquitous mold is in the damp, rainy Pacific Northwest, especially in an island surrounded by water. Her school is likely moldy as well as I later learn an overwhelming majority of buildings in this area are.
October 2013
I get the results back from our mold inspection. Our inspector is very concerned. "Run," he says, "don't walk, run!" He says the spore counts are extremely problematic in our home; exceeding the outdoor levels a hundred times over. He also says that the molds that were identified inside are highly problematic; the most concerning is the highest levels of stachybotrys he has ever seen. He says that it is a heavy and sticky mold that doesn't usually become airborne and often does not show up on mold tests because of its sticky and clingy nature. He tells me that because it is showing up in such high numbers on both air tests and mold plate tests that it must be in extraordinarily high numbers. The high concentrations explain why we became so sick in such a short amount of time. Many people take years to get to this point of damage. In four months we have decimated our health. At this point I still have hope though...
To be continued...
