What I didn’t have on my bingo card for this week was that the at-home mold test results would come back and not be where we need them to be. After spending approximately $30,000 so far this year on mold testing and remediation alone, it is looking like we will probably be doing more mold remediation in our home. We knew that this was a possibility, but we truly didn’t think it would actually happen in this way.
Mold remediation is expensive regardless of the circumstances, but it is even more expensive in our particular case because none of the professionals can find a clear and obvious source of mold. We have been told many times by various mold professionals that our home is built well and very clean. They can’t find an obvious problem.
In any other circumstance, this would be great to hear. However, for someone like me whose body has been exposed to mold for many years in a variety of settings and who has pathogens that thrive in a body weakened by mold toxicity, it would be super helpful to have a clear source of mold in order to have a clear path to resolution. It would also be way less expensive than continuing to guess at what needs to be done. All of the mold professionals we have encountered have been perplexed by our situation, and that just means more confusion and stress for us.
What has been expressed to us several times by multiple people is that it is imperative that we make sure my living environment is handled with extra care. What may not affect someone else at all can alternately have a huge impact on my ability to heal. My doctor believes that this is a super important aspect of my journey and why my MCAS symptoms are frequently activated (see Let’s Talk About MCAS for more info).
The only option besides doing more mold remediation in our home is to buy a new home. There are a lot of reasons why buying a new home could be problematic. First, we would need to buy a brand new home, and we cannot afford most new homes in our area. The money we would spend to buy a new home is being allocated to my medical care and treatment protocols instead of a new home. Next, the materials used to build new homes these days can actually cause people like me to have more problems. I have been told that I would likely be sensitive to the chemicals in the building materials. Also, there is no guarantee that a new home would have less mold spores than our current home. My doctor has had patients with very new homes have very bad mold problems. (Do you remember the Men’s Health article that I posted the link to in my Backstory #15 post about someone in a similar situation? That situation differs from ours in some ways, but it is definitely worth reading again if you are interested in having a better understanding of our situation.)
So, we are left with gathering more information from the professionals and trying to figure out what our next steps are. At what point is it not worth spending more money on this house and actually risking buying a new house?
There are so many more details that are too complicated to write in a blog post, but trust me when I say that there is no right answer here. We have gotten so many opinions from the best mold professionals in our area. There is no clear path. There is no way of knowing if any of this will even help.
To be honest, we are still processing this news. We are beyond exhausted. We are in the trenches. We are sad. We feel defeated. The stakes are high. And, money doesn’t grow on trees.
What we do know is that we still have each other. We are in this together. We will sit together in the trenches and feel our feelings, and then we will keep fighting to keep me alive until we can’t fight anymore.
Brutal. Bingo card surprises. No clear path to resolution. High stakes decisions. Exhaustion. Sitting in the trenches.
Beautiful. Sitting together in the trenches as a team. Feeling our feelings. Fighting to keep me alive.
Just another day of . . . This Brutiful Life: The Brutal & Beautiful Moments of My Life.
This Brutiful Life 