Quick question, with long post on BG

[Guest guest]

Anyone willing to offer a quick comment or two on how much better you felt

in the first month away from irritating molds, assuming you’ve been able to

leave your major source(s) of mold behind?

I know that people on this list have a variety of exposures to a variety of

organisms, and a wide range of sensitivities both in terms of allergic-type

reactions and reactions to toxins. So everyone’s experience will be

different. I’d just like to get some idea of the range of responses possible

during an initial gross decontamination period.

That’s the quick question. Here’s the background to it, to read if you have

the time and inclination.

I am in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I have been ill with slow-onset CFIDS for

a decade. Finally made some modest progress with the illness 2000-2001,

using mostly Eastern approaches to medicine but a little Western medicine

too, then relapsed spring 2002 after a move to a townhouse with some leaking

windows. Realized over time that my increasingly fragile health, increasing

intolerance of Western treatments and decreasing benefits from Eastern

treatments all coincided with living in a leaky home. My body became more

problematic for both the Western and Eastern practitioners to work with, I

had some serious setbacks such as a nasty pneumonia, my number of systemic

infections started to once again climb, and I had systemic Candida for the

first time in 20 years.

I started to pay attention to how I felt after rain or leaking snow made its

way into my home via windows and walls, especially once the existing water

paths were extended by some heavier rainfalls. Realized that water leaks

were indeed coinciding with some setbacks and symptom flares and also

realized that I was having increasing symptom spikes that I’d had most of my

life around friends’ musty basements, molds in biology lab, spring mold

season (snow mold) and autumn mold season (leaf molds).

I was living in a condominium townhouse, the water was leaking in from the

exterior and the exterior of the complex, of course, was the responsibility

of the condo association. The condo association had great difficulties

identifying and correcting various exterior problems. So…no point to

remediation and remodeling of the interior when the exterior problems were

not being corrected.

Moving to a new home has been an exhausting ordeal. I am one week in a

lovely home I will rave about in a future post, thanks to a whole bunch of

people, at least one of whom is on this mailing list.

I am currently recovering not only from all the usual effort to spiff up and

sell an existing home and find a decent dry home to renovate to safer

standards. I had a hard crash the first couple of days after the actual

move. Friends and family had to partly carry me to see my qigong master,

‘cause major back and leg muscles went into serious seizure. My TCM

practitioner simply said “Everything fall apart—EVERYTHING” and left the

detailed explanations for later follow-up treatments.

I was walking under my own steam (albeit like a duck with arthritis) by the

time I saw my MD this week. He’s willing to accept that living in a leaky

house may have exposed me to mold, which may have had an effect on my health

the last 3 ½ years. He hopes that simply being away from the source of

irritant will make a big difference in my health within a month, much as he

would hope that being away from a family pet one has become allergic to

would relieve a person’s allergies. He knows my body’s mysteriously much

more problematic than it was early 2002, so he doesn’t hope to just

introduce new treatments or re-introduce old treatments as if we could turn

back the clock nearly 4 years.

But I’m remembering when I was a teenager, very sick with

improperly-diagnosed multiple, severe food allergies. By the time a good

allergist put me on a super-strict elimination diet, my body was traumatized

by months of diarrhea and vomiting, dizziness with jerking eyes, etc. It

took several weeks of elimination diet to get me to a reasonable plateau

where we could start doing food challenges—not the DAYS that other docs

recommended, but WEEKS.

I don’t want to start any new Western treatments (for example, a new form of

immune system booster my doc’s keen on) or retry any old treatments (oral

and IV chelation for arsenic and mercury were devastating to my health)

UNTIL I can regain a modicum of stability. I have no idea what degree of

stability and symptom relief I might regain in the first weeks of simply

being in a healthier environment.

My doc seems to be assuming that a month in a leak-free home, with washable

floors and a decent furnace filter and maybe some washing of possibly

contaminated personal belongings will prove one way or another whether mold

was an issue for me at my old home. (He doesn’t understand some of the

additional home modifications and decontamination procedures that my mold

experts have recommended and I didn’t have time to go into much detail this

week.) My doc’s also clearly hoping that the new place will prove

immediately very helpful, to the point that we can soon incorporate new and

old ways to address multiple systemic and localized infections and high

levels of heavy metals. He’s eager to once again have me try treatments that

have clearly helped so many other patients at the clinic (including the wife

of one of the docs).

If simply being in a healthier environment is a PASSIVE way to improve my

health, I welcome it. But I wonder how long to simply “let the clock run” in

order to see how much a healthier home (along with my various prescribed

long-term qigong exercises and basic supplements) can boost me and stabilize

me.

After 10 years, I am one very tired soldier in the war against CFIDS, and

wouldn’t mind a slightly less aggressive phase of this “war”—for a little

while at least. Can I afford that, however badly I yearn for it? I don’t

know.

I’ve been knocked on my butt for weeks and weeks at a time with so many

treatments over the years (from antibiotics to antivirals to immune system

boosters to chelation formulas), and gone downhill for so long (this last 4

year period has really scared my family and friends and formal health

advisors) that I’ve kind of lost sight of what base level of

physical-emotional-spiritual resources I need in order to get back on the

treadmill of Western treatments.

My doc’s been letting me coast with painpills and sleep meds and a modest

amount of supplements and saunas and lots of individualized qigong home

exercises during my 4-month effort to get moved to a healthier home. My

qigong master has seen me only on an emergency basis this calendar year, due

to budget constraints, but I am faithful in following my homework program.

So my more open-ended questions to you all are:

Have you ever taken a break (or breaks) from the ongoing war to improve your

quality of life and allowed yourself a more passive phase of restoration or

at least a less aggressive form of body-and-environment remediation?

How do you get a little bit of R & R, when you’re sick and tired of being a

good soldier? (Reasonable levels of self-care vs more vigilant and more

aggressive health strategy.)