If you read “Nightmare In Mold Town! The day our lives changed forever! Part1” then you will know 2019 was difficult. In fact, it was the worst year of my life! And that’s saying something, when you look at what’s happening in 2020.

If you didn’t read it, then to surmise:

In 2019, we discovered black mold in our house and found ourselves having to evacuate our home while it was remediated.

My husband got extremely sick – and it was just an awful and stressful time for all of us, our son and our 4 pets! Half our house was gutted. The back studio, parts of our kitchen, my husband’s office… it was soul wrenching.

Back To Normal? Not a chance!

In October 2019, our home was deemed livable again and, despite my husband’s worries – we moved back in.

I thought things would go back to normal. But – they didn’t!

Now, I should mention that Daren, my husband, the person most affected by this wretched mold had started seeing a specialist doctor who had some experience in mold illness. There was a brief moment in time when we thought Daren was getting better, but once we moved back home… Everything fell to pieces!

Reality Struck! There was still mold in our house!

Not very long after we had moved back, Daren started to feel worse and was adamant that there was still mold in our house. Whenever he took a shower in the master bathroom, he would feel horrendous and was absolutely certain it was moldy.

Since discovering the mold back in July, he seemed to have developed this superhuman ability to sniff out mold and dampness anywhere! Like a sniffer dog he could smell unwrapped and unlit cigarettes, even if he couldn’t see them.

Remediation Round 2. Another day, same old mold.

After calling the remediators back, they informed us that there was no dampness behind the wall in the shower and therefore no mold!

The reality was that whatever their prognostic, my husband’s health, and perhaps even more importantly, his mental health took a turn for the worst.

I witnessed him literally fade away in front of my eyes! And my son’s…

He was suffering so much and would routinely pass out on the couch as soon as he laid down. Insomnia became his night’s companion.   He had terrible pressure in his head, was anxiety ridden and much more.

It was really bad! It got so bad that every single object in the house, including our SON and ME, made him feel terrible! He said that it felt like being in a radioactive wasteland!

We called the mold guys back and lo and behold we discovered that there was in fact mold in our master bathroom.

I will never know the full extent of our family’s exposure to mold in terms of when it started. But for years, maybe more, my husband had worked in a moldy office, had played music in the moldy back studio, and had showered in a moldy shower.

Not to mention the mold in the kitchen that we had all been cooking, eating and cleaning in. Nor our clothes which we had washed in what turned out to be a moldy laundry room.  I think you get the picture – my husband’s life, and ours had turned into a nightmare… A moldy nightmare. 

Mold: The Devil Himself!

Now, I am no stranger to mold. One house that my sister and I lived in with our mum in the UK was so damp that there was mold growing on some of the walls. But this was different. It was as if it were alive, sneaking around our house like an intruder sent to cause havoc on our lives!

It had found the perfect target in my poor husband who because of his genetics was uniquely sensitized to its attacks. 

Like a hit-man the mold attacked the structure of our house, annihilated my husband’s health, caused immense amount of strain and pressure on me, and worse of all

– Stole my son’s innocence!

It was as if the devil himself had implanted himself in our house and was biding his time until he attacked with a force so strong that he literally destroyed our lives.

Or an advanced intelligent life force hiding and learning how it could take us down.   And it succeeded! Mold was the bane of our lives and – it still fucking is!

To this day, months later, in August 2020, in a different house (yes! We had to sell our moldy home and move) it is still out there, stalking my family and me, trying to drag us down and destroy our lives!

Anyway, rant over, lets back to it!

Remediation Round 3. The bell’s ringing: in one corner our home and our sanity, and in the other… mold!

The workers started remediation on our house AGAIN, and this time we didn’t have to move out as it was contained to the bathroom.

It was now late November and in spite of his best efforts to cope with the remediation, my husband found that he could no longer live at home.

And thus began his life with no fixed address, hopping from one hotel to another, a couple of days at the time because crazy as it may sound, his body had now become sort of a mold factory, infecting his own surroundings, including his car, his hotel room, his clothes etc.  By Xmas he had completely moved out and was living in hotels.

Having consulted a mold specialist who did his best to help my husband navigate this nightmare, the sad reality was that he was in fact just getting worse and worse.

So, he researched and found another institute in Florida that promised they could heal him. It is at this institute that it was discovered that Daren had mold growing inside of him. All the toxins in his body were literally seeping out of his pores and were polluting his environment. So, it turned out that it wasn’t just us making him sick, he was making himself sick.

Life as a single mom

With Daren not being able to stay at home, I found myself living the life of a single mom. Trying to juggle this brand new life that had all of a sudden become ours.

How do you explain what’s just happened, and continues to happen, to a 5 year old? It was gut wrenching and so sad!

When Daren first moved out, he would come visit us. He wouldn’t come in the house though; we would all sit outside and hang out for a little while until he was no longer able to tolerate the mold.

But it got to the point where even being within 30 feet of the house made him sick. And because my son and I were living in the house, the two of us were carrying this moldy “cloud” around us, something that would affect his health as much as any moldy area in the house.

We were making him sick! He said that the toxins that the mold released into the house were in our clothes and our hair.

In January of 2020, we decided that the best thing to do would be to sell the house as is and find somewhere else to live. Eventually we found a place to move to and in fact sold our home to our realtor, who of course knew of the existing mold situation. 

Needless to say, we lost half the value of the house in that sale, not withstanding the fortune we spent in the remediation circus and all of Daren’s medical bills. So, we lost the house and everything in it! 

Bye Bye Belongings!

This part is very hard for people to understand but, in order for us all to live together, we had to get rid of all of our worldly possessions. Single handedly I had to throw out, donate, or store every single item that had ever been in our home.

From photos to paperwork, from my son’s toys to our furniture, clothes, makeup, jewelry…

Absolutely everything!

We lost everything!

I also had to do this for all of my husband’s things too. It was extremely difficult and heartbreaking. My son was devastated, we all were.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know that material things are just that. But all of our precious memories like photographs and my son’s drawings, everything had to go. I managed to store the things that are most precious to us in a storage unit but to this day, months later, I am still unable to go there because I risk getting my husband even more sick.

So for now, they remain where they are and everything else has gone.

A New Home!

So, In March of 2020 my son and I moved into our new rented home. I thought this would be the end of our nightmare. Boy was I wrong!

To be continued…