A writing and attached article by Mulvey son

[Guest guest]

A writing by Mulvey son:

If any of you wonder why so many of us are fighting so hard on the issue of the devastating health effects of mold exposure, just read this article and you will understand.

Patrice and Dean are two of the nicest people you would ever want to meet. I stood with them on the sidewalk across the street from their home as it was being torn down. Any and every time I have asked Patrice to write a letter to congress, testify before the Boston City Council or just recently testifying before the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Public Health supporting H 4766 (An Act Relative to Healthy Schools and Other Public Buildings) she has been there. Despite their tremendous loss and pain, they are there to support any and all efforts to keep people from getting sick from exposure to mold and going through what they did.

That's why we are working so hard on bringing this health crisis to the forefront. We don't want you to go through what we went through.

To all those out there in peer review land who are trying to say that mold doesn't harm your health, consider yourself on notice. Tell Patrice and Dean mold exposure is harmless; tell that to everyone else out there who is suffering from mold exposure. I can put my head on the pillow at night. Can you?

Mulvey son

THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING

BEVERLY BECKHAM

Their house was not a healthy home

July 30, 2006

Everything about the child is beautiful. She has beautiful hair, beautiful eyes (made even more beautiful by silver glitter on the day we meet), a beautiful smile, and a beautiful soul.

You can see a child's soul when they're new. ``Where did you come from, baby dear? Out of the everywhere into the here." So says the poem. But as they age? Souls often hide.

Mikaela 's soul shines. She is 9 years old and going into fourth grade. She lives on a quiet street in Abington with her mother, Patrice, her father, Dean, her sisters Deanna, 14, and a, 7, and her new umbrella cockatoo, Sassy. She likes to write and draw and go fishing with her Uncle . And she wants to be a teacher. Or a doctor. Mikaela, in many ways, is a typical kid.

Except that what happened to her and to her family is not typical.

But I am not at her house to talk about a heart infection that nearly killed her. Or how sick her sisters were, or how her father got an infection in his vocal cords and couldn't talk for three months. Or how her mother had pneumonia more than 20 times in six years. Or how a baby boy born nine months before she was died when he was just 6 months old.

I have come to meet not a victim but a young author who, along with a dozen other classmates, wrote a book.

``Angel and Meggy" is the title of Mikaela's self-published story. Angel is a red speckled ladybug and Meggy is a little girl with long blonde hair and a big smile , and they are friends. There's a blue sky, a yellow sun, and bright green grass. Everything is perfect , but then the friends quarrel and Meggy cries until Angel says ``I'm sorry" and the world is right again.

If only an ``I'm sorry" could make the world right again.

``My angel," is what Mikaela's mom called her son. ``He was the most perfect little boy." And ladybugs are her spiritual connection to him.

Mikaela never met her brother, . But he lives in her heart.

You can't tell by looking at her that she's missing a brother. Or that for the first six years of her life she was always sick, that everyone in her family was sick. Because now she is better. Now the whole family is on the mend.

Except for , who died on Valentine's Day 1996.

Dean and Patrice grew up in Dorchester. They dated in their teens. They got married, lived in East Harwich, had a healthy baby daughter, and then moved to Abington, to a four-bedroom Cape.

Six months later , was born. ``He was the best baby. Always smiling." His death was seen as a fluke. A tragedy. Bacterial meningitis.

Inexplicable.

After died, Dean and Patrice and daughter Deana suffered bouts of dizziness, and had rashes and kidney infections and lung problems. ``We thought it was grief." Patrice says.

And then Mikaela was born , and she had rashes, too, and chronic strep throat. When she was 6 months old, doctors found a bacterial infection in her blood.

``It was a nightmare," said Patrice. Then a was born, and her face kept swelling up. ``We all had different problems , so no one saw the same medical people."

So no one put the pieces together -- sick parents, sick kids, even the dogs were sick. The family's two cocker spaniels both developed lung and kidney disease.

The s had their water tested. But it wasn't the water. Dean's mother believed it was the house. So Dean went looking, and in the crawl space under the master bedroom, an addition built by the previous owner, he found ``black mold spores everywhere."

And then he discovered what he believes is the source. ``I'm out in the backyard, digging, and boom, I hit concrete." Just 12 inches from the bedroom -- against code and against logic -- there was a septic tank that had been left full when the property was linked to the town's sewer system in 1991.

Wearing protective gear, he cleaned up the mold and poured concrete over the dirt-bottom floor that separated the addition from the crawl space. And then he had the house tested. The experts said to get his family out, to tear the place down and leave everything. The house was toxic.

``The spores were like dust, and they were everywhere. Overnight, a high chair sprouted ``stuff that looked like something out of a horror movie," he said.

Mikaela's scalp started to ooze. ``The doctor thought it was goose poop from doing headstands in the park," her mother said. ``But then they tested it. She had mold coming out of her head."

The contractor who built the addition 12 inches from a septic tank is immune to any legal action. It happened too long ago. The town inspectors? They're immune, too. No one is culpable. No one is legally guilty because, while the family believes the black mold caused them to get sick, there is no definitive proof.

But, morally?

The s tore down their house and carted it away. And decontaminated their lot. Friends helped them. The insurance company canceled their policy, so friends helped them build their new house, too, on the cleaned-up site.

They took a second mortgage and moved in three summers ago. The house is beautiful. The girls are beautiful. ``They're healthy. That's all I care about," Patrice says.

But they still have asthma, and Patrice has polycystic kidney disease, and Mikaela has learning difficulties. And the dogs had to be put down.

``So you have three girls," people say when they meet the s. ``Yes, three girls," they reply.

But they had a boy, too. , called Angel by his mother. ``We didn't just lose our home," she says. ``We lost our son."

Beverly Beckham can be reached at bbeckham@....

© Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company