Down the Path of Mold

[JuliaFaith]

I have to really consider mold being another issue for us. When I was 7-8 months pregnant and on bedrest our finished basement flooded. The days following we had a company come out that used industrial machines to suck up the water & place fans around. My husband was out of town so I took care of supervising the ordeal (big no-no). We didn't replace the carpet or padding. A couple weeks later I was diagnosed with H.E.L.P (liver toxicity) and needed to deliver asap.

Three years later had another flood. We replaced the carpet this time with no padding underneath. The company said there were no signs of mold, but I always wonder about behind the drywall.

We still occasionally get flooding in one area when there's a lot of rain.

 

And, in our bathroom, there is green stuff in the handle to turn the shower on-off. Yikes.

We believe that our basement was flooded before we purchased the house. DH has removed a lot of mold downstairs. In one room, he had to remove some drywall for something else and found mold behind it. Removed the bottom 3-ft of drywall/insulation around the entire room. In another room with plastic flooring there was black mold between layers of it. He also removed all the carpeting and put in engineered bamboo flooring. This is why we are thinking the entire house may have been cross-contaminated because he may not have done the remediation properly.

[philamom]

Michael

Another thought occurs to maybe help give a sense of how bad a mold problem is. At least it gives us some information in my case. Started having acid reflux again last couple nights, preventing me from sleeping in lying down position. This problem was solved following removal of mold from bathroom, so I knew then that this acid reflux problem had mold as part of it (but not all of it, I have traveled to non-moldy places plenty and still had the problem, but that was before lyme treatment). Well, finally realized I better check the A/C filter, and it needed changing. It was 4 weeks old, but part of the 4 weeks included cleaning up from removing bedroom carpeting, so a tough 4 weeks, if you will. These are the MERV-11 filters we started using as recommended for mold, as they collect mold spores. I highly recommend them for anyone even vaguely considering whether they have a mold problem (I guess that includes really anyone who has lyme). MERV-11 is not a brand name, but more a quality, related to how much it can catch. Anyway, if these filters are supposed to last 3 months, and last 4 weeks, that's a sign to me that we still have a problem (and I'm not surprised by that, I know we still have work to do). But, anyway, perhaps this could be another something to do, using these filters, seeing how long it takes for them to get clogged up, noticing health effects when new ones are installed, just to give some information on how moldy your home might or might not be. They are not cheap as far as filters go, don't look for them in the stores, recommend buy online to get cheaper price rather than special-ordering at a store.

Good timing. Filter change is on my list this week. I will hold off and check online. Thanks for sharing Michael!

Michael, is there a difference between MERV-11 and MERV 12 or 13?

[MichaelTampa]

Going from memory here, but I think the higher the MERV number the "better" it is in terms of blocking smaller particles. But, the recommendation I hear from "the mold experts" is to get MERV-11 to catch the mold spores. I don't think they say MERV-12 or 13 is a horrible, I think more like money unnecessarily spent.

[philamom]

Going from memory here, but I think the higher the MERV number the "better" it is in terms of blocking smaller particles. But, the recommendation I hear from "the mold experts" is to get MERV-11 to catch the mold spores. I don't think they say MERV-12 or 13 is a horrible, I think more like money unnecessarily spent.

That's what I was thinking. Thanks again!

[Familyof5]

Well, our attic was kind of large and dark. If you shone a flashlight on the rafters and roof it looked just like dust and the knotty pine made it look even more deceiving. Not until we walked right up to it, it did have a slight greenish tinge to it. We touched it with our fingers and it was somewhat fuzzy, but still looked like dust---the fuzziness and green hue clued us in. Most people will look for black sticky mold, which we did have some of, but the entire attic was covered in this fuzzy greenish brownish dust looking mold. I had already had ERMIs done in the house, so I knew we had mold, I just hadn't found it yet. Our air handler was in the attic with this mold. Once we found the mold, we immediately shut off the air handler, closed and taped all the vents shut, and the entire family started to improve within days. I then had remidiators come by to look at the mold for pricing of remidiation and they all verified that it was indeed mold.

 

As a side note, for years I would hide all the kid's Xmas presents in the attic. And, every Xmas my kids would have pretty severe setbacks. The mold had settled on their presents, and opening them up at Xmas time caused the spores to be released right in their beautiful little faces. It also released these toxic spores in my family room to be settled there for weeks to come. This has been an amazing journey of discover for me realizing all the environmental factors that cause illness in my family!

 

 

What kind of setbacks did the kids have? symptoms? And if you can share, do you know what HLA's are mold susceptible?

 

 

 

Between my three children they had: headaches, memory loss, concentraion and focus issues, frequent urination, motor tics, vocal tics, ADD, OCD, night terrors, sleep walking, cold uticaria, tinnitus, floaters in vision, pains in legs, gluten intolerance, sinus infections, chronic ear infections, fatigue, chronic bloody noses, bed wetting, asthmatic (only slightly--just one kid), strange sensation to have to "pop" their ears, joint pain, teeth grinding, chronic black circles under eyes and chronic puffiness under their eyes. There is probably more that I am forgetting. All are so much better since moving out of the moldy house. But we still struggle with acute exposures that cause setbacks and tics seem to be the hardest symptoms to get rid of....but still, they are better.

 

Take a look at this website which shows clearly the HLAs and what they can be susceptible to:

 

http://www.survivingmold.com/diagnosis/lab-tests

[philamom]

Well, our attic was kind of large and dark. If you shone a flashlight on the rafters and roof it looked just like dust and the knotty pine made it look even more deceiving. Not until we walked right up to it, it did have a slight greenish tinge to it. We touched it with our fingers and it was somewhat fuzzy, but still looked like dust---the fuzziness and green hue clued us in. Most people will look for black sticky mold, which we did have some of, but the entire attic was covered in this fuzzy greenish brownish dust looking mold. I had already had ERMIs done in the house, so I knew we had mold, I just hadn't found it yet. Our air handler was in the attic with this mold. Once we found the mold, we immediately shut off the air handler, closed and taped all the vents shut, and the entire family started to improve within days. I then had remidiators come by to look at the mold for pricing of remidiation and they all verified that it was indeed mold.

 

As a side note, for years I would hide all the kid's Xmas presents in the attic. And, every Xmas my kids would have pretty severe setbacks. The mold had settled on their presents, and opening them up at Xmas time caused the spores to be released right in their beautiful little faces. It also released these toxic spores in my family room to be settled there for weeks to come. This has been an amazing journey of discover for me realizing all the environmental factors that cause illness in my family!

 

 

What kind of setbacks did the kids have? symptoms? And if you can share, do you know what HLA's are mold susceptible?

 

 

 

Between my three children they had: headaches, memory loss, concentraion and focus issues, frequent urination, motor tics, vocal tics, ADD, OCD, night terrors, sleep walking, cold uticaria, tinnitus, floaters in vision, pains in legs, gluten intolerance, sinus infections, chronic ear infections, fatigue, chronic bloody noses, bed wetting, asthmatic (only slightly--just one kid), strange sensation to have to "pop" their ears, joint pain, teeth grinding, chronic black circles under eyes and chronic puffiness under their eyes. There is probably more that I am forgetting. All are so much better since moving out of the moldy house. But we still struggle with acute exposures that cause setbacks and tics seem to be the hardest symptoms to get rid of....but still, they are better.

 

Take a look at this website which shows clearly the HLAs and what they can be susceptible to:

 

http://www.survivingmold.com/diagnosis/lab-tests

Sorry I don't remember, but did you and your family ever test positive for lyme and/or co-infections? Were you dealing with both lyme/mold or just misdiagnosed with lyme? thx

[philamom]

I would like to run the Shoemaker Panel and printed the Physician Order Sheet off the website. I have a DAN doctor that will order the labs, but I don't think he is familar with him. On the sheet, there is labs to be done with Quest, Labcorp, and a Jewish lab (done thru Quest in Baltimore). Do I just have him write out the different scripts? thx

[philamom]

I have to really consider mold being another issue for us. When I was 7-8 months pregnant and on bedrest our finished basement flooded. The days following we had a company come out that used industrial machines to suck up the water & place fans around. My husband was out of town so I took care of supervising the ordeal (big no-no). We didn't replace the carpet or padding. A couple weeks later I was diagnosed with H.E.L.P (liver toxicity) and needed to deliver asap.

Three years later had another flood. We replaced the carpet this time with no padding underneath. The company said there were no signs of mold, but I always wonder about behind the drywall.

We still occasionally get flooding in one area when there's a lot of rain.

 

And, in our bathroom, there is green stuff in the handle to turn the shower on-off. Yikes.

We believe that our basement was flooded before we purchased the house. DH has removed a lot of mold downstairs. In one room, he had to remove some drywall for something else and found mold behind it. Removed the bottom 3-ft of drywall/insulation around the entire room. In another room with plastic flooring there was black mold between layers of it. He also removed all the carpeting and put in engineered bamboo flooring. This is why we are thinking the entire house may have been cross-contaminated because he may not have done the remediation properly.

By cross-contaminated, do you mean it got into the heating/air system? How should the remediation been done? I'm thinking about cutting a square in my drywall and pulling up some carpet to check. Our basement was finished 14 years ago by a friend. I'm not so sure of the quality of his work. I do know he used plastic sheets at places within the drywall.

 

And today, I woke up and went in to our family room and there is a big water balloon in my wall. There is damage to my sloped ceiling which caused a cascade down the wall forming a big ol water balloon. Popped it with a bucket beneath. It's been raining hard here. And of course, husband's away.

[justinekno]

We did all of our labs through Labcorp. The ones that Labcorp couldn't do, they were sent out. C4a and C3a were sent to the Jewish lab and took the longest to get back (2 weeks). Our LLMD has been in contact with Shoemaker so I feel pretty confident on how the labs were handled.

 

I would like to run the Shoemaker Panel and printed the Physician Order Sheet off the website. I have a DAN doctor that will order the labs, but I don't think he is familar with him. On the sheet, there is labs to be done with Quest, Labcorp, and a Jewish lab (done thru Quest in Baltimore). Do I just have him write out the different scripts? thx

[justinekno]

Just wondering if you hired a mold removal expert or if you hired a general contractor/bath remodeler? We are going to tackle our bathtub surround which is over 10 years old and I always see black stuff coming out of the seams when I clean but I'm wondering who we call if we're suspecting mold but don't necessarily know definitely yet.

 

We had a moldy bathroom tub and walls that we got fixed,

[MichaelTampa]

Just wondering if you hired a mold removal expert or if you hired a general contractor/bath remodeler? We are going to tackle our bathtub surround which is over 10 years old and I always see black stuff coming out of the seams when I clean but I'm wondering who we call if we're suspecting mold but don't necessarily know definitely yet.

 

We had a moldy bathroom tub and walls that we got fixed,

 

We had a mold remediation expert come in to look around various parts of the home, things that we were suspicious of. That was just a free visit to talk over what might be done in terms of testing and/or remediating, and I think an excellent place to start. The tub was just obviously moldy on the caulk in plain site. As the caulk had come up in places, he said possibly it could have spilled beyond inside the wall, and he did cut out the wall on the other side (back of a closet) to look in and said it probably was okay (wouldn't know for sure until removed the tub).

 

For the problem that he said it looked like we had (just the plain site, nothing else), anyone could have done that, really, I think. But we hired them because if there was more bad beneath that was unsuspected, someone general would likely not handle it seriously but they would have. Turned out there was nothing more serious beneath.

 

Some people like to have the remediating done by one company and the testing done by another, perhaps that makes sense.

[Familyof5]

Well, our attic was kind of large and dark. If you shone a flashlight on the rafters and roof it looked just like dust and the knotty pine made it look even more deceiving. Not until we walked right up to it, it did have a slight greenish tinge to it. We touched it with our fingers and it was somewhat fuzzy, but still looked like dust---the fuzziness and green hue clued us in. Most people will look for black sticky mold, which we did have some of, but the entire attic was covered in this fuzzy greenish brownish dust looking mold. I had already had ERMIs done in the house, so I knew we had mold, I just hadn't found it yet. Our air handler was in the attic with this mold. Once we found the mold, we immediately shut off the air handler, closed and taped all the vents shut, and the entire family started to improve within days. I then had remidiators come by to look at the mold for pricing of remidiation and they all verified that it was indeed mold.

 

As a side note, for years I would hide all the kid's Xmas presents in the attic. And, every Xmas my kids would have pretty severe setbacks. The mold had settled on their presents, and opening them up at Xmas time caused the spores to be released right in their beautiful little faces. It also released these toxic spores in my family room to be settled there for weeks to come. This has been an amazing journey of discover for me realizing all the environmental factors that cause illness in my family!

 

 

What kind of setbacks did the kids have? symptoms? And if you can share, do you know what HLA's are mold susceptible?

 

 

 

Between my three children they had: headaches, memory loss, concentraion and focus issues, frequent urination, motor tics, vocal tics, ADD, OCD, night terrors, sleep walking, cold uticaria, tinnitus, floaters in vision, pains in legs, gluten intolerance, sinus infections, chronic ear infections, fatigue, chronic bloody noses, bed wetting, asthmatic (only slightly--just one kid), strange sensation to have to "pop" their ears, joint pain, teeth grinding, chronic black circles under eyes and chronic puffiness under their eyes. There is probably more that I am forgetting. All are so much better since moving out of the moldy house. But we still struggle with acute exposures that cause setbacks and tics seem to be the hardest symptoms to get rid of....but still, they are better.

 

Take a look at this website which shows clearly the HLAs and what they can be susceptible to:

 

http://www.survivingmold.com/diagnosis/lab-tests

Sorry I don't remember, but did you and your family ever test positive for lyme and/or co-infections? Were you dealing with both lyme/mold or just misdiagnosed with lyme? thx

 

 

Well, I was the first to get ill and I initially went down the lyme path. I was ready to be treated by him, he diagnosed me with lyme (he had the prescription in his hand for antibiotics) when I told him about the suspected mold in my office. He pulled the prescription back and told me that I needed to go see Dr. Shoemaker. Lyme and mold are so similar in symptoms. The remaining members of my family all became obviously ill over the next two or so years, that there was no doubt it was mold. Pretty unlikely that all of us were bitten by a tic.

[philamom]

Well, our attic was kind of large and dark. If you shone a flashlight on the rafters and roof it looked just like dust and the knotty pine made it look even more deceiving. Not until we walked right up to it, it did have a slight greenish tinge to it. We touched it with our fingers and it was somewhat fuzzy, but still looked like dust---the fuzziness and green hue clued us in. Most people will look for black sticky mold, which we did have some of, but the entire attic was covered in this fuzzy greenish brownish dust looking mold. I had already had ERMIs done in the house, so I knew we had mold, I just hadn't found it yet. Our air handler was in the attic with this mold. Once we found the mold, we immediately shut off the air handler, closed and taped all the vents shut, and the entire family started to improve within days. I then had remidiators come by to look at the mold for pricing of remidiation and they all verified that it was indeed mold.

 

As a side note, for years I would hide all the kid's Xmas presents in the attic. And, every Xmas my kids would have pretty severe setbacks. The mold had settled on their presents, and opening them up at Xmas time caused the spores to be released right in their beautiful little faces. It also released these toxic spores in my family room to be settled there for weeks to come. This has been an amazing journey of discover for me realizing all the environmental factors that cause illness in my family!

 

 

What kind of setbacks did the kids have? symptoms? And if you can share, do you know what HLA's are mold susceptible?

 

 

 

Between my three children they had: headaches, memory loss, concentraion and focus issues, frequent urination, motor tics, vocal tics, ADD, OCD, night terrors, sleep walking, cold uticaria, tinnitus, floaters in vision, pains in legs, gluten intolerance, sinus infections, chronic ear infections, fatigue, chronic bloody noses, bed wetting, asthmatic (only slightly--just one kid), strange sensation to have to "pop" their ears, joint pain, teeth grinding, chronic black circles under eyes and chronic puffiness under their eyes. There is probably more that I am forgetting. All are so much better since moving out of the moldy house. But we still struggle with acute exposures that cause setbacks and tics seem to be the hardest symptoms to get rid of....but still, they are better.

 

Take a look at this website which shows clearly the HLAs and what they can be susceptible to:

 

http://www.survivingmold.com/diagnosis/lab-tests

Sorry I don't remember, but did you and your family ever test positive for lyme and/or co-infections? Were you dealing with both lyme/mold or just misdiagnosed with lyme? thx

 

 

Well, I was the first to get ill and I initially went down the lyme path. I was ready to be treated by him, he diagnosed me with lyme (he had the prescription in his hand for antibiotics) when I told him about the suspected mold in my office. He pulled the prescription back and told me that I needed to go see Dr. Shoemaker. Lyme and mold are so similar in symptoms. The remaining members of my family all became obviously ill over the next two or so years, that there was no doubt it was mold. Pretty unlikely that all of us were bitten by a tic.

Good that you figured it out. Thanks.

[philamom]

We did all of our labs through Labcorp. The ones that Labcorp couldn't do, they were sent out. C4a and C3a were sent to the Jewish lab and took the longest to get back (2 weeks). Our LLMD has been in contact with Shoemaker so I feel pretty confident on how the labs were handled.

 

I would like to run the Shoemaker Panel and printed the Physician Order Sheet off the website. I have a DAN doctor that will order the labs, but I don't think he is familar with him. On the sheet, there is labs to be done with Quest, Labcorp, and a Jewish lab (done thru Quest in Baltimore). Do I just have him write out the different scripts? thx

Were they covered by your insurance? Did you run the labs on entire family or just your son?