Mold remediation round 3

The last two week were busy!  Since our house was not toxic-mold free, Curtis Wright came back up to treat our home.  (There’s a guy who really DOES stand behind his work!)  To make sure that we uncovered all the mold we could this time, we cleaned out our garage to get access to the walls and planned to remove sheetrock in Emily’s room and in the living room and kitchen.  We planned to combine mold remediation with weatherization of cold areas.  

Kevin enjoying the day.

The prior weekend, we set up a portable shelter and moved all of our “treasures” from the garage and house outside into the “shed”.  It was a long weekend but we got most of it done.  Thanks Julie for the help!  We spent the rest of the week trying to get things ready to move out.  The McCreadys offered as some rooms for a week or so at their house for which we are very grateful.  Did we get it all done?  Well, let’s just say that Friday was a hectic day.

Bees nest in wall.

I moved the shelves, toolboxes, and all the goods left in the garage into the middle so we could get to the walls where some water damage had occurred.  The garage went from overflowing to nearly empty. Then, Kevin and I assumed the role of “Safety Ninja” and removed the sheetrock from Emily’s room.  It took us a few hours of hard work and clean up.  Well, Kevin said What work?  Some friends, the Reitano’s helped me remove the sheetrock in the living room and Kitchen in the evening (we were here until about 11:30).  Things went pretty good except that the sheetrock in the kitchen was glued AND stapled. Talk about overkill.  Check out the cool hornet nests we found in our wall.

Bathroom Mold

Anyway, after a long day Friday, I had sheetrock stripped from all but the garage.  Saturday morning, I got to the garage and stripped the lower 1 foot from the walls where there was water damage.  We found some mold there.  I also removed some sheetrock from behind the toilet in the kid’s bathroom and found some really great examples of mold.  Without tests, it is difficult to confirm but the photos look to be Stachybotrys.  I took the detailed ones on our fancy digital microscope at work.  Pretty cool!

Bathroom mold forest.

We are waiting to hear back on the mold tests but Leila and I feel very good about what has been done.  We found and removed a bit of mold and we think we may just have a clean house! Well, give or take a few drop clothes, couches, and dust piles.  Hoping to get the weatherization completed and walls up and taped this weekend.

I'm supposed to be working on the house but instead, I think I'll have some ice cream.

Reducing our weatherization effort due to stress

Well, we decided to reduce the amount of work we are going to do this coming week.  It was giving Leila too much stress and causing her to be very ill.  That is a side effect of chronic fatigue.  I don't yet understand how this happens but stress causes dramatic changes in Leila and Emily causing them to essentially be bedridden for a few hours to a day or more. There seems to be a physiological cascade that triggers intense fatigue, strong depression, nausea, and other symptoms.  We try to keep stress down in our home for Leila and Emily. 

So, we are going to just work on the living room and kitchen as both need weatherization, Emily's bedroom, and the garage.  That leaves Kevin's bedroom and the master bedroom for later.  We have a standing offer for the use of a few spare bedrooms at a friends house and we may take them up for a few nights.  Kevin and I can do all the work on this project and probably have most of the work done over the weekend in the house.  Putting Emily's room and the garage back together will take longer.  Maybe we can finally get this mold thing licked!

Checking out temporary housing options

We need to do some renovating/weatherization/mold remediation over the next few weeks and are thinking about a place to stay temporarily.  Went to see a house offered by some friends just down the road from our house.  Checked it out and Leila and I both got nauseous and I got a headache from the place.  When you have environmental and chemical sensitivities, a brief exposure, sometimes just a wiff, is all it takes to become completely ill.  The problem can come through multiple biological pathways but in general, your body becomes so defensive that any little irritant can trigger a full blown attack.

I think that  we almost have this mold issue beaten in our house.  Mold concentrations are now down very low but for someone as sensitive as we are, there can be zero toxic mold.  I believe that the remaining mold is in the garage and around windows, etc.  We also need to weatherize one of our outside walls.  So, I plan on removing the sheetrock and going at it.  Not too big a project but big for us given that we can't afford to have any excess dust created and have to avoid creating too big a disturbance.

You can pray for us!  We need a good crew of people to help us remodel and we need a temporary place to stay that would work with our difficult special needs.  Or that the really nice weather would continue so we could stay in our trailer.

The effects of mold in our house

Toxic mold is very dangerous in your home.  There are a number of sites discussing the damage mold can do to your body.  These range from simple headaches to death.  It is impossible to list all of the problems that mold toxins can cause if you are susceptible.  Health issues include digestive problems, fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue, mental confusion, breathing difficulties, diabetes, eye problems, weakness, nerve damage, and the list goes on!

For Leila and I, exposure has occurred over many years from childhood to the present.  Both of us have been determined to be genetically mold sensitive. In summary, symptoms for Leila start with chronic fatigue/fibromyalgia and go on to include mental confusion, loss of hearing and degradation of sight, body weakness, nerve damage (loss of feeling).  Leila is functioning better now but was incapacitated a few years ago.  For years, I (Arny) have suffered migraine-like headaches and severe stomach pains.  I've also experienced loss of mental clarity and my environmental and chemical sensitivities have increased.

Emily was incapacitated 2 years ago and had to drop out of North Pole High School.  She has been diagnosed with chronic fatigue/fibromyalgia, adrenal fatigue, depression caused be mold exposure, and struggles to find energy for daily activities.  However, Emily just recently played her first ever varsity tennis game and SHE WON! Yahoo!!! 

Kevin has diabetes, major intestinal issues, and severe stomach pain.  He also suffers from fatigue.  When Kevin avoids places with fragrances and dust, his stomach pains get better.  This year, he is homeschooling.

Erika and Karilyn are following the same path as Emily and we are trying to prevent them from getting worse.

Leila and Emily have gained some from Drs. Amy Williamson, Scott Luper, and Anne Lilley and Shilo from the Alaska Center for Natural Medicine.  Dr. Luper and Dr. Amy literally pulled Leila back from the edge of death.

Removing toxic mold from our home is the critical step in the right direction.  We are following that up with treatments under the guidance of Dr. Gray in Benson, AZ.  

Right now, stress is a BIG issue for Leila's health.  She has woken up very sick for the last four mornings and "crashed" (became temporarily physically incapacitated) Wednesday morning due to the stress.  The stress arises from trying to make our house habitable (not quite there) and manage the financial strain (you don't really want to know), emotional damage (depression and other scars), and spiritual distress arising from trying to handle our lives right now.

Considering the water damage done this summer (causing excess mold growth) and continuing aggravation of our "allergies" by lingering construction dust, we have been discussing selling our home to an investor but that would be at very large loss to us and would leave us with no resources to rent or buy another home.   So, we stay. If you want to see a REALLY BAD situation, check out this link: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2012845701_riverwalk09m.html

Fortunately, our mold situation is not as bad as that of the seattle times article (but it was underneath the trailer).

Welcome to Our Journey

Greetings to all who read this.  We have had many questions about from friends and family about our health and situation.  I hope that this blog may make it easy for those interested in keeping up with our challenging living situation.  Below is a brief summary about our summer.  I will expand on sections later but this gives a brief introduction into what our summer was like.  Pictures referred to in the blog will be moved over later but for now, are on my facebook account. This first post is long but sketches the challenges we've faced.

As a family, we have been sick for many years and getting worse. Leila and Emily were essentially incapacitated and the rest of us were experiencing declining health. Leila did an awesome job of researching our symptoms and matched them with mold toxicity. We had our house tested for mold in October 2009 and found slightly increased levels of dangerous molds. Unfortunately, the tests weren’t done right (controls failed) so we don’t know what the real levels were. However, we had a friend directed us to Curtis Wright of Envirotech LLC, Anchorage who remediates mold in houses. He reviewed the tests and identified our crawlspace as the major source of mold. We made arrangements to go to Benson AZ to see Dr. Michael Gray who specializes in mold exposure and environmental and chemical sensitivities. Members of our church volunteered to remodel our bathroom (it had mold) while we were gone and Curtis Wright was going to come up after we got the bathroom fixed to remediate the mold.

We flew to Phoenix June 16 and arrived in Fairbanks at 2 am July 7. We had a busy time visiting numerous doctors including an endocrinologist for Kevin’s diabetes, oral surgeon to remove Erika’s wisdom teeth, Arny went to Mayo clinic for chronic pain and many more. We saw Dr. Gray in Benson as well. (see my Arizona photo album.) We did have some fun. Leila’s sister and family paid for tickets on the train from Williams to the Grand Canyon the first weekend we were there and that was a blast. The kids enjoyed the pool at the apartment we stayed at (got lots of burns) and we were able to see 4th of July fireworks from the lawn of Wriggly Mansion! Clear blue skies the whole time! Arizona Mills, a mall in Phoenix area, was really cool. We completed approximately 28 doctor visits amongst all of us.

We arrived back in town to a difficult situation. A pipe was leaking in the bathroom after remodeling. Instead of flooding the house (whew!), the water went into the crawlspace resulting in a more serious mold growth problem (see the mold remediation photo album.) It turned out we had 3 different leaking pipes including a leaking drain we found after remediation. Yikes! Having environmental sensitivities and asthma in our family, the construction dust in the house was a disabling problem. So, our house was temporarily unlivable and we slept out in our popup trailer until Curtis Wright came up. It took >3 weeks but we were able to sand and finish the bathroom walls, paint, and clean up the bathroom and house before Curtis came up Aug 2-7. He took all the insulation out from underneath the trailer and re-insulated. He sprayed an antimold compounds under the trailer and throughout our house. Mold tests indicated that mold levels in the master bedroom were up to 26K spores per cubic meter (SERIOUSLY BAD LEVELS!) and Emily’s bedroom was up to 8k spores per cubic meter. Both rooms were identified as having stachybotrys, the toxic black mold. Post-remediation tests indicated that the mold was not gone so Curtis Wright came back up to Fairbanks Aug 21. Although mold levels were closer to background, we found stachybotrys mold in Emily’s bedroom walls and re-treated the house. Post treatment tests AGAIN showed unacceptable levels of Stachybotrys in one room so Curtis Wright is coming up again Sept 25. This time, we are going to rip out all the sheetrock in Emily’s room, strip the lower level sheetrock in the garage, and sheetrock along the southern outerwall of the home. Wow! Curtis Wright really stands behind his work. This has truly reached the point of being a crisis for us.

On top of the mold problem, Emily and I developed viral pneumonia late August! At least we think it was viral. It is never good when the doctors get excited about your case because it is so strange. They thought it might be “valley fever”, a fungal infection common in the desert but that was negative. Emily had double pneumonia and I had it in one lung, just before I had to go to Valdez for work and just before school started for Emily. Many of us were sick from the virus but only Emily and I developed full pneumonia. We are doing better but it is tough. There have been some tough weeks following where we’ve had to accomplish certain tasks even though we can hardly breathe and have no energy. Emily is hoping to play some tennis this fall and I am wishing I had the energy needed to complete the work ahead!

We are grateful for those who helped us by providing air miles to get to Phoenix, financial assistance to help with bills, and the help we received remodeling the bathroom. Thanks to everyone! Thanks to Curtis Wright for helping us!