Its been a while...

It has been quite a while since we have written or updated or really gave into what all has been happening.

A lot has happened in the past 9 months. We have moved into a new rental. While it is not ideal, it is at least alright for now. We are hoping that if it happens, we will be able to possibly buy a house and not move into another rental. Possibly even get one built. Who knows. That is a long time on the horizon.

While looking through the mess, we are finding tiny blessings in the darkness. We have been through almost all seasons now after dealing with this. We started out in winter, but in a safe haven. We stayed at my parents for about 4 months. While I was still very sick, Ireland and Jesse were on the mend. (or so we thought). I however, was still having a rough go. As the weather started to change into spring, I was able to get the inflammation in my chest and lungs to go down and finally be able to recuperate a little. My parents did a lot of helping with Ireland while I could not always be present. we moved into the new place early spring and tried to start over. However much you always say "I need to declutter".. trust me.. mold is not the way to do it. I looked around when we first moved in, wondering what had happened. The entire place was now empty. All of our furniture was gone. All of our things, ruined. All of our possessions either old or new, gone. My daughters room was pretty much trashed. She had a few hard surface toys that could be saved, but majority gone. Cherished photo albums and books, destroyed. Our clothes.. gone. We had a washing machine that could handle full loads- however, it only washed a total of 2 pairs of adult jeans and 10 shirts total on a 4 day rotating basis. My effects from pneumonia seemed to finally pass as the weather got warmer, but it didn't help with my breathing. Two fold...

The summer was pretty hard. Asthma is a new found territory for us. The 3 of us are beyond to even know how to handle it. Taking it 1 day and lesson at a time, we work through it. Maryland summer's with the humidity is pretty brutal. And going in and out of an air conditioned house into heat and humidity, does a number on lungs and the respiratory track. It was pretty rough. While Jesse did not show signs in later winter or spring of asthma...it did rear its ugly head come summertime. He felt the full effects. The onset of breathing issues rammed against him full on without notice. I ended up having to share my inhaler with him because he had no relief. He would become so distraught, because at times, he didnt even know he was having an asthma attack (none of us are really getting it yet when it gradually onsets) and all of a sudden he was leaning forward trying to breathe. While we have some of it controlled through abuterol when the moment comes, we don't have it all controlled completely yet. Yet, our family did remember. We STILL had our family. We love each other and know that if we stick together we can make it.

Fall has come and gone. During that time we made visits to the pulmonolgist for Ireland along with pediatrician visits. SO MUCH LOST TIME AT DOCTORS. Sigh. Lots of getting off work, missing time, etc just to go after possible helps against everything that came from the mold environment that we were in. She went from one cortieosteriod to the next. Flovent to Ventolin to Flovent to now Symbicort. The big guns were brought out because of the recurrent ant use over the summer of albuterol. See, albuterol is just to have as a rescue. You should not have to use it more than 1x a week or 2-3x's per MONTH unless you are in the stages of a respiratory track infection. However, her lungs have not bounced back as quickly as we thought.they would. BUT she is still improving. Almost a year later and she is still on the up and up. Just taking longer than anticipated.

Myself, as of last week, the weather got COLD. As in old man winter has decided he wanted to show up early. SO with his bluster, he has also brought the issue of cold to warm air, and vice versa. NOT a good combo. So, last week, I had to shuttle myself to the doctors and was once again put on steroids and an antibiotic, as my upper area was not functioning right. LUCKILY it was caught in time so it did not go into pneumonia. But let me tell you- again to the asthma deal, I did not ever think that a person with asthma and a cold did not mix well. I did not realize how much more a cold can affect someone with asthma vs the normal person without a lung issue. What upsets me the most I think, is that my daily life has changed. Where I was once running around like a chicken, or enjoying going on walks and hikes on trails, I now sit here and go "how the hell am I having an asthma attack and its less than 50% humidity in the house and....".... and and and.. the list goes on. We had to get a dehumidifier for the house- because we have to keep a percentage in the house lower than 50% to make the air breathable. Who does that on a normal basis? Seriously.

SO- with thanksgiving upon us, I will end on the issue of complaint and really try and focus on what matters. We are together. We have heat and food in our bellys. We have overcome a lot and have been able to rebuild either ourselves or through people who love us. We are blessed with friends who take it upon themselves to do things without even thinking about it. We literally had someone come and blow leaves off of our lawn- because they didnt want mold to be around. Seriously? That is awesome. We have our families who back us 100 times over. We have an awesome lawyer who knows her stuff, and will fight for us. We have many blessings that have happened and I am sure will continue to happen. Are we back on our feet yet? No. It has been quite the toll on the checkbook and doctors.. but- we are okay.

We are okay...

The circle is never ending...

um.. okay. Stuff just got real. ...We now have gotten word that we have to throw away almost all of our clothes, because the washing of these items cannot be properly contained. According to the doctor: "this really really bad organism" cannot be cleaned properly. 

That no amount of washing will get this particular organism out of our clothes. 

What?

Our minds are a blur.

So... we are slowly getting rid of what we can and slowly buying what we can. 

Thankfully- its warmer- so our sweatshirts and such, that we had to get rid of, are not needed.. 

However, it is now, that we (the parents) only own 2 pairs of jeans each and maybe enough shirts to count on 1 hand.

Not that we ever want to compare ourselves to someone who has been through devastation of a natural disaster of a fire, because we haven't, and would never know what that is like.... but seriously..  This is getting to be a little much.

In pictures...

This was the closet in our 1/2 bath where there was severe water damage

This is the mold that came back after the first cleaning about 4 weeks after

This is what was in our daughters room.

This was our laundry room. There are just no words.

This is where we apparently splashed laundry liquid, this is about a 9' ceiling

This is the back of one of the bi-fold doors that went to our laundry room

This is the other laundry room bi-fold door

As you can see just from the pictures above, this is what was within our apartment. Everything from aspergillus / penicillium, cladosporium to stachybotrys. Yes, those are the technical terms, however, they are just some of the 7 listed on the report that came back from the inspector. 

Spore counts anywhere from upper 1300's to almost 9000. This was just counting our room, our 1/2 bath, our master bath and our daughters room. He did not run a report in the laundry room, as it was clearly visible on the walls still. 

So.. that is what we were living with.. yeah.. tell me about it.

The Full Story

This is about my family of three: Jesse (that is myself), Summer (my wife) and my daughter, Ireland. Our family was exposed to toxic mold while living in an apartment building. The Landlord did not take care of it properly. If a person chooses to do the right thing from the beginning, it is making sure they are taking care of their fellow man... that is the existence of a human being. Unfortunately, we did not reap that humanity. My family got very sick from it, we lost over 90% of our stuff because not only does mold get into everything, but it is a silent killer. We got out, however, a lifetime of damage has been done physically, mentally and we were hit hard financially. My wife is still sick; she has swollen lymph nodes all over her left upper side of her body, still does not breathe correctly and has changed completely from her old self. My daughter has now been diagnosed with various things and has breathing issues and lymph nodes of her own. We do not take your donations lightly, and will put all proceeds towards the lawyers’ fees and making sure that he cannot rent this apartment to someone else without properly fixing it!

After getting sick in September with what we thought was just a simple illness, our nightmare came to a head. We were living in what we thought was a safe environment for our family..yet we were living within a toxic situation that was unknown to us. Mold is a silent killer. The everyday house hold normally just produces over the counter treatable allergies, however, the dangerous stuff is what will turn your world upside down.
We lived in the apartment for 5 years. Three of those 5 years into living there, were slowly starting to hurt us, without our own knowledge. Our daughter started having major problems with constant ear infections, strep throat infections and croup; almost on a monthly basis. We were not sure what was going on, however the constant doctor trips were starting to worry us. When our daughters 6th birthday hit, she had croup again. This was the 3rd time in 4 months. Our allergies were constant, even during the winter, but we attributed it to a simple cold. Fast forward a year later, when our daughter had croup a total of 9 times, being hospitalized for it, we thought something was up. We were going to bring it up at her annual school physical, and then Summer, fell sick.
It started to go downhill September 2013. Mid-September, we found mold crawling up the corner of our east bedroom wall. Not just a small mildew patch, but a black and green fuzzy substance that was about two and a half feet up the wall. This only came about because Summer decided to rearrange our room. Upon pulling our iron based bed frame away from the wall, that is what we found. We called our landlord to report it, he told us to spray it with bleach and that would take care of it. A) treating mold with bleach is not a viable option, as it aggravates the spores (we found this out a lot later after an environmental inspector informed us) and B) We should not have mold like this in our household. However, we did as he said and hoped it would take care of it. Two weeks later, Summer started to have breathing issues. We attributed it to the pollen and grass cutting, yet, our daughter was sick again, with croup. While the information was not clicking yet, it was being noticed. My wife’s “allergies” did not get better. She was to the point now that she was gasping for air. Summer has never had asthma, breathing issues or anything wrong with her lungs or bronchial area in her life. She has done multiple long distance walks for charity, loves to go hiking and chase after our daughter, Ireland. So this actually started to worry me. She went to her primary doctor to find out what to do, they told her it was allergies and gave her nasonex and told her to take claratin. However, around 12 hours later she was breathing as if she was drowning. When she left the house, she got somewhat better, but would get worse upon return. Still, not putting two and two together, the day after Halloween, I told her to go to the Dr. again. She called and told them she could not breathe, that she was gasping for air. They told her to go straight to our local medical center and get a chest x-ray stat; they would be waiting for her arrival. She called me in tears, scared, as she had never dealt with anything like this before. I remember her telling me, “people who have asthma attacks, I don’t know how they do this! This is terrible and would not wish this on my worst enemy”. Twenty minutes later I get a phone call that her left lung has a lot of fluid in it and they have DX’d her with pneumonia. She was a nervous wreck, but took heart to what they said about rest, taking the medication and rest.  A week passed and she was not getting better. She was still the same, but now put on numerous inhalers and medication.  After a few more weeks, there was no real change. She was given a stronger anti-biotic and another inhaler to compliment the rescue ones.
My wife, anyone that knows her, she doesn’t sit down. Constantly on the go for others or our family. Always moving!! She doesn’t take the word “No” very well when it comes to making sure people are taken care of. She still ran our household and performed her duties as a Girl Scout leader and volunteer at our daughter’s school all while sleeping in the living room as she could not breathe properly in the bed.  During the couple of weeks, she mentioned to me that the laundry area had strange spots showing up on the wall. After her Dr’s appointment with the pulmonologist, who suggested if there was any leaks or water damage, it would be every reason for mold brewing, I went and looked, not only was there spots everywhere, but there were various colored “dripped” areas on the drywall. This prompted us to both search the rest of the apartment. We found that in our bedroom, the mold that had been cleaned off was coming back. We then went to inspect our daughter’s room. We pulled her bed away from the wall, and my wife physically screamed. Crawling up the wall, was the same substance that was in our bedroom, but larger. It was also present on the east and north baseboards. Again, it could not be seen upon just walking into her room as the head board and foot board are solid wood.  So, with it flush against the wall, it could not be seen.  Trust me however; this is not something that could be unseen. This explained SO MUCH. Why my daughter was currently sick, why my wife wasn’t getting better. Many a nights she slept with Ireland, as our daughter was (and still is) extremely worried about her mom. They were just breathing that in… constantly. 
We called the Landlord, and he said the same thing: Spray it with bleach.  I told him no, I wanted it to be looked at and something done, as it was in other areas of the house and coming back in our bedroom. It took him a week and a half to tell me that he would come over and do a walk-though. Yet he did not come himself. He sent someone in his place who was apparently the “handyman of the apartments”. Either way, the “games” began.  The he said/she said battle of what was going began from the Landlord telling us a completely different story than what happened that night (yet we have other people who can attest, that were there that night), to the drips in various colors and heights were negligence of us splashing laundry soap and softener on the walls; albeit 9ft high. To our beds being against the wall causes no air flow, to because we had cranks on the windows of the apartment and the cold air outside brings moisture into the house and that was causes mold. Also, that cat tuffs of cat hair on the carpet can also cause mold. Everything was our fault. No option to fix it, just spray it with bleach and cop it to you did this from some issue listed above.  We moved out, albeit still paying rent, November 24, 2013. I called and told my wife to pack some stuff and take our daughter and go to her parents’ house.  For weeks, we went round and round to get him to fix it. Finally, I told him that I wanted it taken care of so that we could move back in before Christmas. He had a company come and replace dry wall under our daughters window. Not remediation, but just cut out drywall and take that at face value. Not taking care of the laundry room, our bedroom or even the correct spots in our daughter’s bedroom.  I went to inspect the work he told me was completed and saw that it was not taken care of properly. I took pictures and told him again, it was not properly taken care of. This is when he became abusive and started calling my place of employment  and even showed up there and started yelling at me and cursing at me telling me he did take care of the problem. I told him I wanted a certified receipt from the company stating it was properly re-mediated. He wouldn’t provide it; said he only had receipt of payment. I told him I would not move back in, until I reviewed that report.

Within the weeks to follow, my daughter had croup again, my wife was still not better and multiple visits to the apartment after being gone, I started to show signs of issue when I went in. I would come out covered in rashes on my legs and hands when I left. I was not the only one. My wife’s co leader for the troop, was in the apartment all of 10 minutes and started to have breathing issues and became so flushed she had to leave when going in and retrieving something for my daughter. This is how bad it was just from being in the apartment a short time. So something was obviously brewing within the walls. When he still, after meeting him there with an apparent inspector, along with my in-laws and my father, would not fix the issue, I told him that I would not be moving back in until a professional company took care of the issue. A week later, we got a letter in the mail that stated he was not going to renew our lease and we had a little over 35 days to remove our belongings. While we had a small army to help us, we had an environmental inspector come in, to prove our notions, along with a remediation company come in to see if our stuff could be saved.  The outcome: the inspector found “unmeasurable amounts of mold and mold spores within the air quality and it was uninhabitable without remediation” and the report showed 7 different molds present within our living space. The remediation company quoted $10,900.00 to fix the apartment so that someone could live there. He also advised that anything that was not a hard surface would not be safe to keep. That meant our mattresses, box springs; couches, pillows, groceries, stuffed animals, books, blankets, etc had to be tossed. All of it. What we could save would have to be washed properly with a solution and put into storage. 

For months, we lived out of our duffle bag on Summer’s parents couch and floor.  In the meantime, trying to find a lawyer, who had knowledge of mold issues who could help us. This was not an easy task. Yet, after weeks of interviewing various lawyers who said they would not take the case because of who our landlord was, we found one who is amazing. She has a background in myotoxins and environmental law. She has a background with mold cases and knows her stuff. But, after having to pay for the supplies to clean, storage units, dump fees, laundry mats to wash our clothes with mold detergents, medical and so much more, how were we to afford this too? So here we are.  We are pretty short on funds and seriously want to bring light to what an issue mold is….but cannot fully afford the lawyer costs without help.