MY SCARY HALLOWEEN HOME INVASION!

Explore the toxin (which may be lurking in your home) that is chasing my husband and me out of our home!

It’s probably not what you’re thinking… A person wearing dark clothing and a ski mask did not enter my home to harm me or get away with my valuables. But something equally unexpected and scary happened!

Two weeks ago now, my husband and I took a road trip to beautiful Colorado. When we arrived back home and opened the door to our house, what greeted us was a behemoth mold monster! When I say a “mold monster” greeted us, --what I mean to say is that, a pungent mold smell assaulted our senses and nearly chased us out of our home in the dark of the night.

While we live in an older house (built in the 20’s), and have dealt before, with some mold issues lurking in our porch, as well as the lower level of our house, this time mold had invaded our entire house! And it wasn’t just a slight musty smell that could be easily cleared out by opening up a few windows. Uh-uh. It was a sharp mold that hung heavily in the air and warned us that we might need to vacate our home altogether.

What, pray-tell, had happened to our house in the span of a week’s time, to cause this horrific situation, we wondered? Well, after checking in with our neighbor who had collected our mail for us while we were away, ---city workers had flushed a number of water hydrants while we were gone, ---which ran down the property easement that runs adjacent to our backyard and flooded not only our yard, but our home’s foundation walls.

Years ago, interestingly enough, my husband Tom had met with city planners to complain about the drainage easement which made our home somewhat vulnerable whenever it rained heavily or winter snows melted. City workers came out and tried to fix the issue, but didn’t do a very good job of remedying the problem.

A few months ago, new home construction was initiated next door to us. When the home builders recently got around to doing the landscaping on the new homeowner’s lot, the drainage issue was made way worse! Only when we returned from our trip (after the damage was already done to our home), did the city planners come out once again, to do the job right, with my husband’s keen guidance and watchful eye!

So maybe you’re wondering: Are Candia and her husband going to sue the city? Quite frankly, I’d like to. But my husband feels it’d be too time consuming and costly. After hearing him out, I agree that it may not be our best course of action. Our best course of action (I decided for both of us…) was to move out of our house, a.s.a.p. Well, that decision didn’t sit entirely well with my dear husband, for at least a couple of good reasons.

For one thing, it meant we’d need to leave behind our beautiful lakeside lot and let go of a house that he’s sentimentally attached to. For another thing, it meant that he’d need to initiate a house remediation project while entering into the dark, cold months of winter. In order to make our home saleable we’d have to update our roof, remove asbestos insulation from the attic, remove the porch (the most cancerous causing mold appendage), and clean and seal the basement walls.

I’ve been suggesting to my husband for quite some time, that any new potential buyer would likely bulldoze our home and build a new one in its place, but he seems to think (as a real estate appraiser who has appraised thousands of homes over the years), that someone would appreciate our home after it is cleaned up and fixed up.

Possibilities aside, I know that I will never return to the place that we’ve called home, for nearly the last 30 years. Yes, I will miss its charm, but I won’t miss its mold spores.

Truth be told, mold has been an enemy of mine since my childhood. I can recall as if it were just yesterday, all of the times I would sit in my desk at school and twitch and fidget, and suffer terribly annoying allergy-like symptoms because (unbeknownst to me), there were mold spores blowing from the air ducts into the classroom. Mold issues in schools, you might be aware, have been getting more and more press in recent years!

What makes this whole situation so difficult for me and my husband is the fact that I suffer from the symptoms of environmental illness, and he doesn’t. I can smell a toxin of any kind, ten miles away, and he has to be convinced that it even exists. During the past week, while trying to survive in our mold-ridden house, my husband has experienced ZERO symptoms of mold sickness. I, on the other hand, have experienced at least ten of the symptoms featured on the list below, that I’ve learned are the most common ill-effects of being exposed to mold.

Most Common Symptoms of Mold Sickness

Fatigue and weakness

Headache, light sensitivity

Poor memory, brain fog, difficulty concentrating

Morning stiffness, joint pain

Unusual skin sensations

Sinus congestion or chronic cough

Appetite swings, body temperature regulation

Increased thirst, red eyes, blurred vision

Night sweats, mood swings

Abdominal pain, diarrhea, bloating

Tearing, burning eyes

Metallic taste in mouth. static shocks

Ringing or itching in the ears

Vertigo, feeling lightheaded

Rather than “part ways” over our situation, my husband made a big sacrifice for us. He found a rental house for us to live in for the next seven months that is located right up the street from us. By moving there, we will be able to hold onto our moldy house and deal with its health issues within a reasonable time frame, until it meets industry standards for resale. (Interestingly enough, our former neighbor has already expressed interest in buying our home and helping to fix it!!)

With any luck, we will be able to sell the back portion of the lot that our home currently sits on. We actually have a double lot, which was just approved by our city planners for new home construction. It’s likely that we could use the money from the sale of that house to either build a new eco-friendly house, or even relocate to a different house.

The house we are going to rent beginning November 1st is far from perfect and it’s definitely NOT my style. We’ve already nicknamed it “Grandmas’s House”, --but I’m going to do “my artistic best” to make it attractive work for us. For starters, it needs a thorough Native American style smudging. It also needs a good cleaning, and the toilets and kitchen stove need replacing. (I’m already lamenting the fact that it has a small kitchen!) But, the neighborhood is “where it’s at” (with friendly kids living nearby, too…) and the house has lots of storage, ---something I’ve been craving in my life, for a long, long time.

Have you ever had to deal with a mold issue in your home? Do you suspect that you might be dealing with mold or the symptoms of environmental illness? If so, there are a number of “mold doctors” (mold detectors) you can find online. According to my research, every single house has mold of some sort. Most people think of the shower and the basement as the primary sources of mold. But mold can also live in the carpet and drapes. It can live in cupboards and window sills, and air ducts to name just a few places.

3 Common Types of Mold (Might these be Lurking In YOUR Home?)

There are three main types of mold that are commonly found in most houses. Check out the disgusting looking petri dishes below, which give you a snapshot of the nasty spores that threaten to make us sick!

Allergenic molds: are on the low end of the danger scale. They only cause problems for those with asthma and a predisposed allergy to the specific mold. Children are more likely to have mold allergies than adults.

Pathogenic Molds: Pathogenic molds will cause some infection. This is a big problem for those with a suppressed immune system. An acute response resembling bacterial pneumonia is commonly found with those exposed to these types of mold.

Toxigenic Molds: As the name implies, these molds produce mycotoxins that can cause serious health effects. They have been tied to immunosuppression and cancer. The toxic chemicals found in these types of molds can be absorbed into the body when one inhales them, eats them, or even touches them.

Boosting Immunity In the Face of Mold

One thing that has enabled us to survive in our mold-infested house this past week is a heavy duty air purifier known as an ARAN unit, which changes oxygen molecules in the air into a purified form of oxygen which is said to attract toxins and neutralize them. Given the severity of our problem, I would say it has lowered the mold load to around 50 percent. (While my husband smells pure aranized air; I smell aranized air with a layer of mold sitting right beneath it.) If the furnace is on, I can smell an intensification of mold spores in the air (even with filters placed on the furnace itself, as well as every heat vent). So, needless to say, I’ve turned the furnace off and bundled myself up in warm sweaters.

Here’s what I’ve been consuming, to treat mold sickness:

* Lyposomal Vitamin C

* Systemic Enzymes (they break down and digest cell walls of bacteria, viruses, and yeasts)

* Oregano Oil (useful for killing mold)

* Manuka Honey (from New Zealand) I put some up my nose with a Q-Tip to heal the sinus infection that the mold has contributed to)

* Garlic (useful for killing mold and strengthening immunity)

* Astragulus Herb (it’s known to super charge the immune system) A mushroom based nutrition supplement formula (Host Defense Brand) which contains Reishi, Turkey Tail, Lion’s Mane, Chaga, and more.

* Methylated B Vitamins (I have trouble detoxifying if I don’t take these)

* Charcoal powder (charcoal absorbs toxins like a magnet and carries them out of the body)

* Hydroloized Silver (I’m ingesting 1 tsp. silver 2X per day)

* Essential oils (I'm inhaling oils such as Thieves)

* Saunas (We have a far infrared sauna, and it;s great for detoxing in general!)

I hope this article has been eye-opening to you. Please pass it onto others that you feel might benefit. And, please “reply” if you are interested in this subject, or if you just want to say hi, and wish me and my hubby well on our moving journey!

Candia Lea Cole

Founder, Eco-Learning Legacies

www.ecointelligenteating.com

www.eco-mentor.com

Source: Types of Mold: https://www.davidwolfe.com/mold-illness/Allergenic Molds: