Moldy Misery

As most of you know by now, we have been dealing with our fair share of sicknesses over the past year and a half. The boys and I have had constant respiratory upset with the boys coughing pretty severely for a while now. Carter and I had developed asthma (the reason for the ER visit) and Carter was no longer able to run around and play without coughing and wheezing. Both Carter and Camden were on antibiotics back and forth for months with ear infections and Carter was starting to complain about headaches. We were all tired (no, lethargic) and terribly cranky....we just didn't feel good, at all!!! My friends were starting to notice that Carter was no longer a happy-go-lucky boy, and was looking pale and acting quite sickly and poor Camden seemed to come home from the hospital sick.

Now, as you can imagine, having your two babies so sick, for so long has been so devastating. We kept asking ourselves, "Why on earth are they so unhealthy?". We figured they were going from one cold to the next, but why was Dan never sick!?!?

After constant coughing, runny/stuffy noses, breathlessness and countless trips to the doctor for strange fevers, coughs and alleged allergies, I insisted that we test the air quality in our house. I had long suspected mold/mildew being a culprit. I had noticed that when the kids and I left the house, I never had to wipe their noses and their coughs would get better. Luckily, Dan has a patient who is an environmentalist who came out to the house and sent away air samples to a lab. The air inside your home should house no more than 50-80% of the mold levels seen outside the home depending on the season. With the dry, cold season upon us, we shouldn't see more than 50%. The levels outside our front porch were found to be 250 of Aspergillus Penicillium so we expected to see no more than 125 inside. Well, the count found by the lab was 2,100.

WE FOUND IT!!! We figured out what has been making us all so darn sick. But, the problem was...where was it coming from? The environmentalist feared that it was harboring in our walls and ceilings which would require invasive searching. After tearing up some flooring and finding nothing, Dan, being a super-smart guy, thought to look in our AC unit on the coils and found quite a bit of mold growth. So, for the whole time the mold had been there, everytime the air or heat turned on, mold spores were pouring into the house.

The AC guy came out to our house the next day and cleaned the coils, we aired out the house and purchased several air purifiers. Like someone flipping a switch, all of our symptoms were gone. Just like that. No more runny noses, NO MORE COUGH (the boys had coughed for a solid YEAR!) and no more asthma. Dan wasn't displaying any symptoms because he wasn't in the house all day long. It was a bit of a viscious cycle for the boys and me though, because we never felt well, we never left the house!

I am still suffering from headaches and sinus issues, but the mold actually grows inside your body, so it will take a while for us all to be feeling 100%. We are so relieved to finally have the boys feeling better. Carter is acting like a three year old again and Camden is giggling more and they are both enjoying life now!!!

The only bad news is we need to replace all the flooring in our house (because of the mold spores) and our HVAC system needs to be replaced as well.