Re: This is truly mold hell

January 25, 2006

I think you meant " cortisone " , not " cortisol " . But thanks for digging this up. I

want to put it in the files section along with Bob's obit. Barely 5 months from

the time he discovered the problem and was warned.

erikmoldwarrior <erikmoldwarrior@...> wrote:

> [Original Message]

> From: Bob

> To:

Date: 8/8/2005 7:49:13 PM

Subject: Mold

Hi ,

I may have found the source of most of my mold problems in my

trailer. This was my mother's trailer and I don't really know much

about how they are built. You know they are set about three feet

off of the grown. I was concerned that my air ducts had come loose

from the floor and maybe mold spores from the ground were getting in

them so I crawled under my trailer Saturday. There was a lining of

insulation covering the entire bottom of the trailer and the air

ducts were not visable. It looks the ground side of the insulation

was a black plastic. It is all flat against the trailer but I notice

a part drooping real bad back toward where the a/c would be, so I

crawled over there. The outside was wet and when I took my hand and

pushed up on the drooping part, I could tell it was full of water.

The only thing I could figure it was water from the a/c withdrawing

moisture from the trailer's inside air. I got a knife and stuck

several holes and water poured out. I would guess there was 20+

gallons of water in there. when I smell mold, it is like the smell

of a match after you blow it out. I use to smell it in the trailer

but now it is much stronger. I am crawling back under tomorrow to

see what I can do to maybe cut the drooping part of insulation off.

Since water has been standing in there for probably over 10 years,

the trailer is 12 years old, would you suspect mold growing on the

part of insulation I cannot see. The air ducts are above the

insulation so I cannot tell yet if they are secure to the bottom of

the floor.

There is not much crawl space but I would think I am going to have

to have the old insulation removed and let things dry off then have

new insulation put up. what is your take on all of this?

Bob

---------------------------------------------------------

wrote:

You don't know what you are messing with!

I've seen people die from doing exactly the sort of thing you are

contemplating.

Nobody believes it until it is too late. Survivors like me try to

warn others and it is mind boggling to see people give themselves a

life destroying exposure after they have been told in the strongest

terms to contact people who've been through this experience.

Join Sickbuildings and tell your story there before you dare cut

another hole or crawl under that trailer.

I am completely serious about this.

-

Mold

,

I am not exxagerating that I felt like I almost died last night and

this morning. Last night the burning odor became much more intense

and I should have went to a motel but I didn't. I kept dreaming all

night like I was on LSD. I kept trying to get out of bed but I still

felt drugged. I finally was able to get to the shower and then went

out and laid down in my car for about three hours but now it is too

hot. I don't know what to do. I guess I really stirred the

mycotoxins up when I drained the water. I have the a/c off with the

windows open. I feel to bad to try and go anywhere. Do you think I

should go to a motel or what?

Bob

__________________________________________________

Bob,

Yes, you stirred up the spores. Yes I think you should go to a motel

right now and take absolutely nothing into the room with you except

wallet/keys and even these should be put in a NEW plastic bag far

away from where you sleep. Don't park your car too close, a car can

throw off an amazing plume that can still hit you at hundreds of

feet. Buy a new change of clothing and put them in a plastic bag

when you buy them so they aren't cross contaminated by you and your

car. When you find a place to stay, immediately drop your old

clothing outside the door in a plastic bag. Don't touch anything

until you shower. The object is to get yourself into another

environment without dragging any spores along with you at all.

There's a weird " denial " kind of inertia that will try to take you

over and want to just lay down and do nothing. I know what you mean

about feeling too bad to even try. It's part of the neurological

symptoms. Very hard to make yourself act in a manner consistent

with the necessity. It's time to get the Hell out.

If you break out in hives and your ears turn red, it's too late and

you've already " Hit the Wall " .

Whatever you do, don't let anybody give you Prednisone or any type

of Cortisol, that's how people wind up with the worst type of

chemical reactivities. All this is described in Mold Warriors.

When this happened to a friend who stirred up the mold, I had to

literally carry her out of her house and take her to the desert.

Even at the most extreme level of avoidance and with all the tricks

I've learned, it still took months for her to recover.

This is truly mold hell.

I hope you are already out of there.

-

FAIR USE NOTICE:

January 25, 2006

This sounds truly ominous..

I too have gotten the weird 'LSD-like' visual phenomena at night when

I'm trying to sleep (on those nights I never can sleep) maybe its

ergot alkaloids in aspergillus or something?

I also think there is a water reservoir under my building...

I feel really terrible.. I gave Bob a hard time and I had NO idea..

January 25, 2006

Bob,

Are you talking a travel trailer or a mobile home?

I have some experience with travel trailers.

January 26, 2006

SERENA EDWARDS < wrote:

>

> I think you meant " cortisone " , not " cortisol " . But thanks for

digging this up. I want to put it in the files section along with

Bob's obit. Barely 5 months from the time he discovered the problem

and was warned.

>

Yes, you're right, I meant cortisone.

I had been trying to convince Bob about mold for several years and had

told my story on RESact, a CFS advocacy group we were in as well as

several other CFS groups, but people simply can't believe it even when

you give it to them straight.

When Bob was doing all the work on the surface of his floor and

tearing out the carpet, I kept telling him that his description

sounded more like mold than the chemicals he was implicating. This

whole toxic mold concept is just too new and unfamiliar for people to

accept, but I guess that is changing.

Gail Kansky of the NCF has a daughter with CFS who has had Stachy

problems and had her apartment remediated " but didn't have the

improvement you did " .

And as I say " No, of course not. Remediation didn't do anything for

me either " .

Mold always had control over me until I realized that this was

something I had to do as a lifestyle of persistent avoidance.

But Gail wasn't interested.

It's like our pillow discussion, the entire point is moot to me.

I cannot use a pillow since they cannot be washed, yet people go on

discussing washing and treating pillows after I point this out.

All I can do is surmise that perhaps they aren't at the level of

reactivity in which this detail becomes extremely important, and that

it is appropriate for them to disregard the more extreme measures that

I must resort to.

I don't propose that I'm doing isn't a viable therapy that everyone

can do, it was a desperate leap at an idea that paid off.

It was just a clue that I felt should be followed up because it is

something I witnessed in other CFSers, even though they are not aware

of what they are reacting to, and it's something to try when all else

has failed - as it had for me.

The amazing part is the flat out rejection and dismissal from people

who one would think would have been the most interested.

I don't know how to overcome the dismissal and opposition people put

up against those of us who have been in the same position and can

recognize the signs other than to just tell my story and let them make

the decision for themselves.

-

January 26, 2006

Resistance is particularly strong from people who have a lot invested,

emotionally, or career-wise, in the 'conventional wisdom' (which by

definition is safe but often wrong)

There is a great explanation for this in Leon Festinger's " Cognitive

Dissonance Theory " - basically, people want to much to believe what

they want to believe that they will follow even the smallest shred of

evidence that supports it, even in the face of a much more substantial

body of evidence that says differently.. especially if the

implications of the new knowledge require some kind of change or

action on their part.. Propagandists rely on this.. it always works..

The biggest downside to this habit we humans have.. Again and again,

throughout history, people who failed to adjust to new information

fail to survive.. the world changes, and they don't change with it..

January 26, 2006

I think that is exactly the right approach. Tell your own story. There are lots

of ways to tell the story, and not everyone is going to understand or relate to

every version. Hell - it's mold. No everyone is able to maintain an intention or

follow a thought from one end a sentence to the other. I go over every

interaction with every moldie I encounter, looking for ways to make the message

more effective - because when we do bomb out, people die. When the " experts "

tell them this can't be happening and they buy it, people die. When others fail

to validate their experience and support them, people die. I have a zero

tolerance for that, so what else can I do but try to do it better?

I haven't found any single thing that makes the message clear to each person I

encounter. There are common themes, though. The illness makes people feel

hopeless and worthless. No matter what else they understand or believe, I have

yet to encounter anyone who is not anxious to hear that they aren't alone or

that they are worth it. And amongst moldies, I have yet to encounter anyone who

is untreated who doesn't need to be told that like, a thousand times, because

the illness just keeps pounding away at them. Hopeless worthless people don't

believe anything, except that they are hopeless and worthless. They don't do

anything. They've got nothing to save and nothing to look forward to. At that

point, to expect them to grasp a lot of new information is kind of pointless.

For someone who's already been damaged in life, or who lacks a strong sense of

self to begin with to be confronted with something this overwhelming? For

someone whose belief system already limits them or outright

denies them the right to fight back? I don't think their odds are too good to

begin with.

It's quite nearly impossible to give those kinds of tools to someone when they

are in a condition which prevents them from learning, even if they want them.

(Not that I wouldn't try real hard anyway.) But for the rest of us, it's more

like we just forgot for a minute. If someone jogs the memory a little, there are

stores of better times and feeling stronger on tap. Just last weekend, I caught

a hit. I left the area, of course. And as I drove home with both hands clamped

on the wheel, I had to keep repeating over and over out loud, " This is not real.

This is just a mold hit. This is not real. This is just a mold hit... " . It was

really an overwhelming feeling of doom and worthlessness, and a horrible urge to

drive my car right off an overpass (not a good thing - I was on a huge overpass

at the time). See? Even when I KNOW better, know what this is, how it works,

what it does - I still have a fight on my hands. I believe I can continue to win

that fight, but it takes work on my part.

So, you know. I just don't see how we can expect others to get the message,

learn the facts, get into a safe place, seek treatment, overcome the denial in

others, overcome the madness in ourselves, and then learn to practice avoidance

- not all at once. It's a process, and we still have to get much better at

understanding how that process works and how to do a better job of facilitating

it each step along the way. It can't just stop at, " I know how you feel, "

because as warm and fuzzy as that may be, it doesn't change what the mold is

doing to that person. And it can't leap right to, " Run away! " because no one's

going to hear that until they have a sufficient amount of information and trust

to believe you.

We've got a lot of good info started on how the disease itself works, how to

go about making a place safe, what's happening in the political world, and what

the legal landscape looks like. But we really have nothing more than a

seat-of-our-pants approach to the individual recovery process. It's a beautiful

thing to see it happen, but that doesn't mean it can't get better.

Stopping somewhere short of creating some kind of quasi-religious dogma, I'd

think I'd like to see us take that up as a topic of its own here and see what we

might be able to come up with. I do think the very first step has to be

combating the hopeless/worthless thing. It's after that that things become a

little more blurred.

erikmoldwarrior <erikmoldwarrior@...> wrote:

I don't know how to overcome the dismissal and opposition people put

up against those of us who have been in the same position and can

recognize the signs other than to just tell my story and let them make

the decision for themselves.

-

Serena

There is no such thing as an anomaly. Recheck your original premise.

...Ayn Rand,

paraphrased

---------------------------------

What are the most popular cars? Find out at Autos

January 26, 2006

Serena,

There is a very good chance that the mycotoxins effect

neurotransmitter levels such that they might

1.) Create a situation of temporary depression (serotonin) and

temporary ADD/ADHD (dopmaine) in someone who gets poisoned.

2.) Create structural changes in the brain's malleable (plastic) areas

that become more and more ingrained over time.. reinforcing the short

term changes from above

3.) Prevent new brain growth - which may not just effect the storage

of long term (longer than one day) memories, and learning at night,

they may also inhibit whatever processes by which the brain repairs

itself and integrates new *emotional* knowledge..

These biological aspects of mycotoxin poisoning might explain what you

describe..???

On 1/25/06, SERENA EDWARDS <pushcrash@...> wrote:

> I think that is exactly the right approach. Tell your own story. There are

lots of ways to tell the story, and not everyone is going to understand or

relate to every version. Hell - it's mold. No everyone is able to maintain an

intention or follow a thought from one end a sentence to the other. I go over

every interaction with every moldie I encounter, looking for ways to make the

message more effective - because when we do bomb out, people die. When the

" experts " tell them this can't be happening and they buy it, people die. When

others fail to validate their experience and support them, people die. I have a

zero tolerance for that, so what else can I do but try to do it better?

>

> I haven't found any single thing that makes the message clear to each person

I encounter. There are common themes, though. The illness makes people feel