Escaping Smoke And Toxic Mold

Sometimes I think about my life (and now my family’s collective life) and think this is too ridiculous to be real.

If you were to sit down with me for a few hours and have me tell you my life story you’d likely say I was making it up. How could so much bad happen to one person and not completely destroy them?

That’s a story for another day. Today I’m going to talk about mold.

The History Of Mold And Me

Mold and I have quite a history, or at least that’s what I suspect. When my parents bought their house all the way back in 1998, we moved from Massachusetts where we had been renting a townhouse since before I was born to New Hampshire.

Once we moved, my mental health TANKED very quickly. I know it didn’t help that I had left all my friends from kindergarten and first grade behind, on top of the fact that the dynamic of my family was dysfunctional.

But there was something more to it. It took me until my late 20s to start digging a little bit deeper when a peer suggested looking into Lyme disease.

I ended up being treated for a few months by a naturopath. She first had my blood tested and it came back positive for Lyme through a titer test. I was also positive for bartonella and babesia Lyme coinfections. We started treatment with herbal medicines, supplements, and chiropractic work.

After a few months of Herxheimer reactions, which are caused by the die off of parasites involved in Lyme and its coinfections, I started to feel drastically better. This was when my dad decided to cut off my treatment since he thought it was a waste of money and complete bullshit.

So I stopped the treatment but managed to hang on to the chiropractor. My symptoms slowly came back, which brings us to the mold situation.

Mold and parasites go hand in hand. Parasites eat mold and mycotoxins that come from mold. Mold toxicity messes with the immune system in a way that makes you more prone to parasitic infection.

I have reason to suspect that my parents house has toxic mold, based on leaks that have not been properly addressed in the past and the physical symptoms both myself and my mom have had (she and I were home the most over the 20 or so years I lived there).

Our Move… And More Mold?

My husband and I moved our family to the Midwest in March of 2023. When we got here he didn’t have a job, I had no insurance, and we had no place to live. We rented an AirBnB for a month with our tax return.

He got a job within 2 weeks of being here and we quickly found an apartment, signed a lease and moved in about a week later. I quickly set up insurance since I was 20-something weeks pregnant at the time and had to resume prenatals as quickly as possible.

Now to the apartment. Our apartment was, in a word… crappy. It wasn’t nice, wasn’t well maintained, and at the time I’m writing this, isn’t even livable.

I started to feel really off in the apartment over the 9 months we lived there. First I chalked it up to being pregnant. After I delivered our second daughter, I chalked it up to being postpartum and recovering from my c-section. As I got better and was able to think a little more, I realized when I left the apartment I felt much more clear-headed, and when I was home all day with the windows shut I almost started to feel drunk.

We were dealing with toxic mold. I have reason to believe it was in the walls and under the floors. I also can 100 percent confirm it was constantly growing under our sinks.

Let’s just get this disclaimer out of the way: I’m not a doctor, and this is not medical advice. I’m simply sharing my own experience. From what I read, toxic mold and really mess up the health of people who are sensitive to it. About a quarter of the population seems to be sensitive to mold and unable to pass it out of their bodies efficiently.

Given my experience with Lyme and parasites, I think I’m one of those mold-sensitive people. Back to the story, though.

The Real Reason We Moved Out Early

A few weeks ago, we left our apartment. We rented an AirBnB for the short-term while we try to find somewhere else to live. That’s all still in process, but I feel so much better than I did at the apartment.

What’s funny is the straw that broke the camel’s back was not the mold situation, it was second-hand smoke.

We lived in a smoke-friendly community (big mistake) and we had been dealing with our laundry being infused with second-hand smoke since we got there. Maintenance was supposed to clean the dryer vents about 6 months ago and never bothered.

We could deal with that since we weren’t going to renew our lease in March anyway. We only had three more months to go when the smoke suddenly got much worse. I don’t know if our downstairs neighbors started smoking different cigarettes, or if it was just the fact that they were now too lazy to go outside to smoke.

In a matter of days our apartment smelled like an ash tray. It absolutely reeked. My daughters and I felt out of it all day (my daughters were 2 years old and 6 months old at the time). I called the office to ask if they could do anything and the office lady’s tone immediately changed.

She said sorry but it’s a smoke-friendly community and residents can smoke in their homes all they want. I understand that, but what about when it is harming the health of other residents? I didn’t say that since I knew there was no point, and these types of places don’t care about anyone’s health anyway.

That night I had a breakdown when my husband got home. I refused to stay in the apartment another night. And that was the night we left for the AirBnB.

The Aftermath

We’ve gone back a handful of times to grab more clothes and other things we need. I’ve washed everything with Borax as a booster for the smoke and to kill mold spores.

Every time we go back we feel really out of it within 20 minutes so we try to keep myself and our kids in the car while Gabe runs in quickly to grab what we need.

I still can hardly believe this happened. We’re still paying rent on a place that reeks and is unlivable. Once we sign our next lease we’ll go back and pack up what we want to keep and dump what we don’t (which is most of it).

And luckily the lease is up soon and we can leave that place where it belongs, in the past.

Originally published at https://marthajohansson.com on January 21, 2024.