Some questions about heat tolerance, mold, leaving

[Guest guest]

Hello all,

I posted my story awhile ago, but realized my full name was showing up, which

made me uncomfortable, so now I've joined with an anonymous email. If you

remember my real name, please don't use it.

I have had some questions that I've been dying to ask that I can ask now.

So I posted about how there is a ton of mold in the basement of my building and

that the condo association voted to remediate it but not fix the moisture

issues. The moisture issues are from negative sloping around the foundation:

rain has come in, and then, too, in the spring, I think, snow melts and dumps

into the storage areas.

I do not go into the basement at all anymore. I can go into the front of the

building and avoid the basement altogether. However, this isn't a tight

building, as it was built over 80 years ago. So I'm not sure how mold works--if

it can float up to a unit through the stairwell. I know that before we realized

there was a problem, we would walk from the basement into our unit, sometimes

with shoes on. Is it possible that there is mold from the basement that has come

into the unit though I can't see it? One of the molds I am allergic to is

penicillium, which as Dr. Thrasher will know, and I'm sure many of you, too, is

found in wet basements.

The other thing I am wondering about, since the heat intolerance discussion, is

if some of my symptoms are from the heat. I used to have a house (oh boy, I wish

I still had it! I had made it a chemical-free environment where mold was

non-issue for me--but the entire roof collapsed and the rebuild made the

mortgage impossible for us to maintain) with central AC. I remember that on hot

days, when I would walk to my job, I would be dizzy after.

I have been generally weak and dizzy and spacey. My top-floor vintage condo unit

has been an oven. The window AC only sort of cools it down, and there are many

days I have spent sweating. So I'm starting to wonder if the mold is not really

causing every symptoms. Sure, the sinusitis, sure the weeping, nose problems,

etc., and more importantly, the lung inflammation, but I'm not sure about

everything. I know I feel better when I leave. I feel best when I am in a cooled

environment (that's the other thing--humidity makes all my symptoms worse--so

probably at that point, I am reacting to outdoor mold as much to my friend the

indoor penicillium). I guess I am puzzling through all of this because leaving

is going to cause a financial disaster. We have almost no money in the bank and

would end up foreclosing. This would only affect my husband's credit, as he is

the one on the bank note, but he's also the one with income. So good luck to us

to get any affordable loans in the near future.

We don't have friends and family to take us in. And I'm not sure where we would

go next. Every rental I've seen seems fraught with potential to make me sick. I

am hypersensitive to natural gas (heck, I just lived through nine gas leaks in

the basement) and every place has a gas stove. There's always, always the

potential for moisture or mold. If we left, then wherever we chose to stay, we'd

have to stay for a couple years, as our credit will be in the toiler. Right now,

we could leave and, as far as any landlord knew, we'd have perfect credit.

It's just really hard when you don't have money to start over or to go get fancy

medical treatment.

I love the story about living in the car (camping?) all over the U.S. I am

getting a very small settlement from a car accident. If I could focus long

enough to make a plan, I would map out forests I could stay in in the next

several months until the market picked up and my husband could sell the condo

with full disclosures.

Any thoughts on any of the above?

Casey