e.m.claytor

“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.

If we fix on the old, we get stuck. When we hang on to any form, we are in danger of putrefaction.

Hell is life drying up.”

Joseph Campbell

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It is weird at this point to begin writing about the mold saga.  There’s so much that has passed.  And there’s so much that’s still ongoing.  I feel strangely suspended in time.

After we found the mold, life changed overnight.  Literally.  We began staying with my parents and only going back to the house to pick up some things that we needed.  By the first weekend, we had decided we would be moving out as soon as possible.  This was certainly not something we had prepared to do.  Even though I had just decided to begin applying to PhD programs, we had no expectation of moving for at least a year out. 

Amazingly, Daniel had just moved his business that had been located in our house into another location.  It was a little unbelievable how perfectly timed that had been.

So we got to work moving.  I went to work during the week, and on the weekends, we planned to work as many hours as we could handle moving our things out.  It was during that first weekend, we realized this was not going to be an easy thing to do. 

After being out of the house for a week, I had begun to improve and my energy levels increased. I was beyond excited to think that I would have stamina to get things done. 

Within 30 minutes of being back in the mold house that first weekend, my ears were popping, my hand was trembling, dizziness set in and my entire left side went weak. Then the migraine started. 

Daniel had a similar reaction.  He began sneezing. His face started itching.  And he started getting a migraine as well.

I failed to mention in the previous chapter of the mold saga that Daniel was not unaffected by the mold.  We just didn’t connect the dots with his issues until much later.  He pretty much kept a patch of eczema on his face and hands the entire time we lived in the house.  He had episodic migraines and a lot of widespread pain and fatigue and stomach issues.  However, for both of us, we kind of chalked it all up to aging or weather or whatever else seemed logical to blame at the time.  I will note that since we’ve been out of that house, those issues have cleared up for him (as long as we don’t come into contact with mold). 

So here we are trying to start moving – not even knowing where we were going to take everything – and we’re both having a serious reaction to being in the house within 30 minutes.  I got so bad within that first hour that I had to leave.  I couldn’t breathe.  I couldn’t think. My brain went completely haywire, and I was right back to struggling to think and reason.  

This was not going to be an easy process. 

We went to Wal-Mart.  We bought respirators and masks.  We bought Benadryl – and took so much Benadryl during that time I started simply calling it “Benny” for short. 

After the first day of trying to move, Daniel brought some clothes back to my parents’ house to wash, and after he got in the shower, he started sneezing immediately when he touched them.  I told him I’d get them and take them to the washing machine, and before I could get the armful of clothes to the laundry room, I fell to the floor.  Instant vertigo and pain in the top of my head on the left side in the same place I always felt the migraine pain.  I was nauseous and so dizzy I couldn’t stand up, and I had full tremor on the left side.  That’s when I realized – all of our things were contaminated. 

I started researching mold exposure and what to do to about possessions that had been in a house with toxic mold.  It wasn’t promising.  Everything I read said that anything porous would have to go – curtains, rugs, sofas, beds, clothes, books.  BOOKS.  This was the most horrifying part.  My library that I had curated for over 14 years and treasured – I couldn’t imagine not salvaging it.  

Surely sunlight would take care of it, I thought.  I just needed to get everything outside and sun it – that would definitely kill any mold spores. 

So the next weekend, we bought Rubbermaid totes and started pulling out everything we wanted to keep into the yard.  Masks on. Benadryl ready.  Time to work.

I started pulling books off the shelves and dragging out my favorites – all the ones I desperately wanted to keep.  Stack by stack I walked outside and laid them out on blankets and patio furniture letting them soak up the late summer sunshine.  I watched my weather app like a hawk to make sure a summer storm wasn’t going to pop up, and I left them out for hours while I sorted through other things in the house.

The longer we stayed in the house – even with masks on – the sicker we got, so we had to limit the amount of time we could spend each day working. 

After a few hours of sunning the books, I walked in to get the totes to put them in.  In those few short minutes, a rainstorm hit without warning.  I screamed at Daniel to help me get all the books thrown in totes.  We scrambled and hauled and threw books to shelter, but many of them were soaked.  And I knew enough about mold to realize any moisture was a death sentence. 

To be clear – there was no mold growing on any of our things.  Everything looked fine. Smelled fine.  It was all very clean.  But the mold growing under the house produces spores which are undetectable – but they basically lie dormant and get into anything porous.  And if the moisture is right – then it can begin to grow.

At this point I broke down.  I cried — in a 3M mask on my front porch looking at a pile of ruined books that I loved. 

My home was gone.  My health was shaky.  All of our things made us sick.  And all I wanted to keep in the world were my books. 

I knew at this point that I should take that as a sign not to hold on to the books.  For all my trying to save them, they were likely not worth saving – especially if they would only continue to make me sick and contaminate any other place we took them. 

There were so many emotions during this time, I couldn’t even feel them all.  I felt numb.  It was such a bizarre crisis that it didn’t even register as one. 

The rest of the move continued pretty much the same way.  We had to get rid of 90% of everything we owned because it all made us so sick.  Even after washing my clothes repeatedly in vinegar and borax and sunning them – I could still get close to them and nearly pass out.  I had lost everything.  Art I made.  Books I treasured.  All of our Christmas items that had been stored in the basement.  I had so few clothes that I had to borrow pieces from my mom just to have something to wear to work. 

Daniel and I had many car conversations in the front yard of the house before going in.  We finally reached a place where we said “Let the past die.”  It was time to purge our old lives to make room for new life.  Anytime we tried to hang on to something, it was like something beyond us pushed it away.  

Out with the mold, in with the new.  That was my mantra.  Let’s get rid of the past.  And we did.  For an entire month, we masked up, cleaned up and worked our exhausted, mold-affected butts off.  We sweated a lot – because August – and come to find out, that was a great way to flush mold from our systems.  And the entire time, I was just amazed at the energy I had gained simply by being out of that environment.  But every weekend while we were moving, all those debilitating symptoms returned.

Writing about it is easy now.  Part of me wishes I had documented the emotions in the moment because they were so intense, so raw and so unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.  Daniel said it would have been better had the house burned with everything in it – at least that way we wouldn’t have had to go through everything, and we could have been compensated for all of our loss.  Because mold is certainly not covered under insurance. 

I’ve never been one to hoard or place much emphasis on possessions.  I love my art and my books, but I’m not terribly attached to much else.  However, getting rid of nearly all you own is an odd, emotional process.  We felt so much like we had been done wrong, like we were victims – but there was nowhere to direct our anger.  No one to blame.

I went through old memories. Old journals.  Face to face purging the past in the present to make room for a new future.  I threw away things I thought I’d hold on to forever.  I threw away things I didn’t know I still had.  Memories of a me that is no longer.  Memories of the future I had once dreamed of.  I released it all.  And by the end of it, letting go became easier. 

What was worth keeping?  My health. That was what mattered at this point.  No thing was so valuable that it was worth risking my health over.  Daniel and I have each other.  We’ve been through the mold together.  We’ve purged our old life and cut ties with the past.  We have almost nothing left – but we have a new opportunity for a future. 

Literally and metaphorically – I’ve learned that you can’t heal in a toxic environment.  You can’t carry toxic things with you and expect to be well. 

We are still not well.  But we are healing.  Mold is unfortunately in a lot of buildings. I don’t dare walk into an antique store at this point.  There are places I walk in and immediately walk out of because I have an instant reaction.  I can smell mold on the street in front of a downtown building.  And unfortunately, the exposure to mold has also caused me to be intolerant to most chemicals and fragrances.  If there’s a strong cleaner or air freshener, it will likely trigger a reaction.  Avoidance has become a real part of life for now. 

Emotionally, I’m weary.  I can have a great day then I can be exposed to a moldy building and feel my body going back to all those symptoms, and I feel like I can’t handle it one more time.  I don’t want to live in a bubble, but I don’t want to feel tremors, numbness, weakness and electrical shocks in my body anymore.  I don’t want to have vertigo so badly that I can’t stand up.  I don’t want to have instant brain scrambling the minute I walk into an elevator with someone wearing strong perfume.  I don’t want to feel the depression and anxiety that hit out of the blue when I’ve unexpectedly been in a building with mold.  And I don’t want to fear those things.  I don’t want this variable to play into our decision for where to eat – well, I know we can’t eat here anymore because I got sick last time. 

Everyone jokes that we’ve become walking mold detectors.  And that’s true.  Our bodies are likely so sensitive to it that we have a full blown reaction when we’re near it – it’s warning us to get away. It is not at all the glamorous super power I wanted to have.  I also have an unbelievable sense of smell – it’s actually quite impressive.  But again – most likely it’s to protect me from what my body knows is dangerous to me.  

I’m thankful we’ve found the cause of our health issues.  I’m thankful every single day that I’m not living in a toxic environment.  I’m thankful my body alerts me instantly to toxins and I can get out.  I’m thankful that we could disconnect from our possessions and leave the past behind.  I’m thankful for parents who have taken care of us in a crisis when we had no clue where to turn or what to do.  I’m thankful for so much in this situation. 

But I am tired.  I am tired that this is not the end of the story. I am tired of the ongoing symptoms that are continuing to crop up.  I am SO tired of being re-exposed and getting set back in the healing process.  I am incredibly tired of thinking about it and trying to figure out what the next step is. I am tired of being in doctor’s offices for complications of mold exposure.  

I am tired.  But I am not defeated. And I certainly have made room for a brand new, mold-free life.

There’s at least one more chapter of the mold saga – maybe more as it is apparently ongoing. Stay tuned.