162: A Family’s Journey Through Mold Illness and Remediation with Ash Brockinton

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to today's show. If you're one of the 130 million people that are dealing with Sirs Lyme disease, autoimmune disease, or other conditions that are impacted by mold on a daily basis, and you need to learn how to eliminate that exposure, then you're in the right place. My name is Brian Carr, and you're listening to Mold Finders Radio.

Hey, everyone, what's going on? We are here for another episode number. I have no idea because I don't know when it's coming out, but just look at the number it's in front of it. Anyways, today's show is pretty cool. I've done some of these more recently where I brought on, you know, not doctors, but people who are actually dealing with things as opposed to people who are treating it, because there's a. There's. There's a balance. And like, yes, this is the way you handle something, but then also hearing from someone who's actually gone through an experience and, And. And just kind of seeing that other perspective on what's going on. So that's what we're going to do today. This guest I actually saw came through. She actually emailed us about something and told her story. And I was like, hey, let's see if she wants to come talk. Because this is the type of story that I feel like would be really beneficial for people to hear. And not a lot of people are always, like, open and willing to come onto a podcast and talk about stuff. So whenever. Whenever I feel like there's an opportunity for that, I like to like to jump on it. And so this story is one that I hear all the time. I actually think I've. I've sort of like, I almost like, predict what someone has gone through before they've even talked to me because it happens so frequently. And really, you know, this timeline and everything that was shared, it was like the same exact thing. It was like just over and over. And so I hope out of this, guys, that we take away that one. If you're in the middle of this somewhere, you can course correct, right? You don't have to go through the full timeline of stuff. You can course correct at any point in time. So while you're listening to this, whether you're just at the beginning and it's like this massive light bulb, I feel really happy for you if you take a hold of that, because you might save four, five, six years of your life and trying to figure it out. If you're somewhere in the middle you can save some of that time on the back end and some of the expense that comes with that. And even if you're closer to the end, there are still things that you're able to pull out of sort of like future living and things that you're able to tweak and do to kind of maintain what you've done so you don't feel like it all happens again. So I think that there's a lot of value for anyone who might be listening out there. So with all of that, today's guest is Ash Brockington. Like I said, she wrote me a really nice email that sort of outlined what was going on and was kind of asking about some stuff that we do. And she actually just recently started a, a blog that's called Low Talks. Ish. It's L lo wto x I s h dot com and I want to start there because we were just talking before this, Ash.

And you said it. And I say this all the time. Like we get so focused on all of these, like, low toxic sort of things. I'm not gonna even say. Can you just say what you just said? Because I think it's so important for us to wrap our head around this.

Yeah, I, I was telling you that I started my blog. Now that we are through remediation, my family has healed. I started this blog with like, this new, like, mindset on life and on health and on how to be healthy and keep our stress down because I felt like I did everything right. Like my son that got sick from mold, like very, very, very ill. He's actually adopted and I, I breastfed him. He never ate gluten, he didn't eat dairy. I mean, like, I did everything, like, everything right. I, you know, used glass containers to store food in and everything. And yet I wasted six years of my life. Like we lost six years of our life living in hell because it's. We didn't realize we had high levels of toxic mold that were very hidden. And even though I did get it tested and we'll, you know, probably talk about in the, you know, later, I, I don't know, it's like you don't want to, you don't want to dig deeper when it comes to this when, you know, like that finding mold could mean a lot. You kind of want to just focus on like the little, you know, the small things. Like is my iPhone, like in the right container that will stop, stop EMFs and everything like that. Um, so we do talk about that kind of thing on my blog. Like lowering the toxic burden. But we try to keep it light and low stress because. So that we can, like, have room and energy to hear, like, the deeper parts and the harder things, the broader, like, ways to improve your health, like knowing if you have mold or not.

Yeah. I mean, the big takeaway for me when you said that. And I've been thinking this a lot, too, and I say it a lot, too. It's like.

There'S the 8020 concept that we all know, right? Yep. And. And there's so much on social media and all the things of, like, this is the new here. You store your stuff in this glass thing inside of this plastic thing. Swap out your cooking, your cookware for this, you know, caraway pan instead of this pan over here with the PFAs and all that stuff on it. And that's all great. That's cool. And there's nothing wrong with that. And that's the easy thing to do. Those are also the easier things to do. So it's much easier to do the easier things. Right. But if you take a step back and you think, big picture of what the 8020 concept really is, it means focus 80% of your energy on the thing that's having the biggest impact on you and work on that. And if you do that, then the rest of it either doesn't matter as much at the end of the day because you've addressed 80% of the problem, or you can get to it later. Right. And when we talk about breathing and air quality and all this stuff, you take 20,000 breaths a day. We spend 93% of our time indoors. And breathing is the most bioavailable pathway for toxins to impact our body more than food because it impacts our system in multiple areas. It goes in through our lung and our respiratory system. It also goes straight to our gut as well. So you are actually hitting your two biggest, like, internal distribution pathways for toxin from breathing. And we breathe the equivalent. I just saw this out the other day. Oh, gosh. I want to quote it, right. It was the amount of breaths you take in the day is the amount of volume of water that fills up a standard size pool in somebody's backyard.

Whoa.

That's how much you breathe every day. So imagine all of that is full of toxin, right? There's mold, there's microtoxin, whatever, and you're literally breathing in the volume of your backyard pool. And that really puts into perspective the chips that you're eating that day. Right. Like, how many chips am I eating in relation to the size of that.

Pool and how sick somebody can get and how, like, little you can get done. Because, I mean, I did everything to get. To try to heal him. But if you're in that swimming, you're breathing in that swimming pool, you can't take teaspoons out. Like, you've got to get out of.

Swimming pool, you know, 100. No, that's. That's. That's a great add on to the first time I've ever said that. So thank you. All right, so that's just the kick. I do want to kind of kick it over and run through your story and your timeline and kind of get the background. And. And so you just mentioned, you know, your son. And. And.

So he was diagnosed with pans, or was he not? He was, yeah. Kind of walk.

Yeah, he was. We have five kids, and, like, looking back, they all were majorly affected by the mold that we found. But we didn't. I didn't realize how everybody was until. Until we found the mold. And because we were really just so focused on one of our sons who, starting at age four one day, his personality and his behavior just turned around completely. We spent five years going to all, like, the top doctors. I mean, he had such a team of doctors. And when you said that breathing, what you breathe affects your gut, I hadn't actually heard that, but his gut was. It was like, half psychotic behavior that we were dealing with and just him not being himself. Lots of, like, signs, symptoms of, like, autism. He was, like, kind of diagnosed with autism, but then other people would be like, no, this isn't autism, because it kind of goes up and down. And then the other 50% was his gut. Like, he got to the point where he couldn't go number two without two Extra strength, Extra strength Ex lax, which is like six regular plus two dolax. And. And it was like, we didn't wanna do that. We spent four years trying to do natural things for that. But it just got. He had a mo. Like a mobility specialist. I mean, there was. It's just such a tangled web of spaghetti. And so I think a year before we found the mold, he was diagnosed with pans, which is pediatric acute onset neuropsychiatric syndrome. And it's caused by a biotoxin, often strep, but it can also be another virus, Lyme's disease, mold, or allergies. So I was, like, systematically trying to go through all these things, and we even had him tested for mold with a urine, like a misotoxin test, a urine sample, and it showed up, like one thing was that out, you know, out of line. So I thought, well, it's not that.

Can I ask a question about that? Did you end up. Did you end up retesting for mycotoxins later on down the road and the levels were way higher, or did you not?

I didn't. Just because everything. All these tests are 3 to $500. Um, I mean, but I have all the lab tests showing like brain inflammation. Like he had a tumor in his brain. Like just inflammation all over. And I do wish, like I do think about retesting, but just poking him with more needles and everything he's been. It's like, is that really worth it?

No. The reason I was asking is because I. There are a lot of times when some. The first time they test, you'll see almost nothing.

Yeah.

Because your body isn't really mobilizing it and it's like holding all of it. And then it started like treatment, it starts flooding out and your levels are like dramatically fly off the chart. When you do one later, it's.

Yeah, a hundred percent. I think that's what happened. I think he was not able to detox. I think all of his pathways were just clogged.

Got it. So, so timeline. So this is what, like 20, 15, 2016, something like this when you first started.

Yeah, I think 2016is.

Yeah, got it. And then, so then 20. So then you start systematically checking everything you listed them. But it's important for people to hear, like pans isn't just a mold thing. Right. A lot of times it's not even thought that mold is the trigger. It's usually, you know, you think it's a strep thing because there's also pandas, which is a specific, like strep driven.

Reaction. So there's a, sometimes a confusion between the two. So other infections, other things that are creating the stress on the body. Right. So you have your bacteria, mold, viruses. Those are kind of your three things. Right. So lime, epstein bar. Those are kind of your main viruses that trigger stuff off. Then you have mold and you have toxins. Right. And bacteria, say mold bacteria. So. So you're checking these off. So when you got to the mold piece, like, what did you do there? Because I saw in here that you. That you thought you had ruled it out, that there was no problem. I think this is a really important thing to talk about because a lot of people do the same thing.

Oh yeah, it's. It's really hard. It's a really hard pill to swallow because I mean, like I said, we had the test for his body, and then I remember seeing on Facebook some person was testing for mold. It was like, a deal. And they would come and they would inspect the house and do a test. Now, I didn't know. I didn't think we had mold. We had no signs when we bought the house. It was gorgeous. I didn't smell mold. So I'm not wanting there to be mold, but I still being a good mom, I hired that person. They came. I wasn't here when they came. I guess, you know, my husband said, looking back, like, he did not do a great inspection. Like, kind of just opened the crawl space, looked at it, just kind of looked for stuff. And he did an air sample. And so the air sample came back fine. I think he said our crawl space, you know, was kind of dirty, didn't look good. But I don't know what 30. That looks. I don't know what that means. I mean, I'm. And then his body test came back. Okay, so that was like, January, 2020, February, January, February 2020. And so I just. It's like, shut the door on that. Because then, of course, our minds had to go to everything else that was about to happen. So I just closed the door. And of course, with being in the house more and more in 2020, like, his pans just got worse and worse and worse and worse. He had to, you know, couldn't go to school. Just everything got. I mean, I just. Pans is so bad. It's like. It's literally hell on earth. It's the worst thing ever.

So. So during this time, because I'm thinking, you know, if I was. If I was here, right, doing what you're doing, and don't know what I know, and I run a body test on my kid, and the body says this, fine. And then, you know, you have somebody come in, they say the house is fine. I've talked about this ad nauseam, about this way of going through and testing, but do you. Do you feel like looking back that there's. There was any other signs that, like. Yeah, I do still think there might have been a mold issue, because when you connect the body test not showing anything to that, it's natural to just be like, okay, this one's checked off the list. I'm wondering, now that you look back, is there something else that maybe you're like, oh, you know, if I had thought if I'd seen this or known the context of this or something like that, that maybe you wouldn't have. Have dismissed out the mold thing because I think that could be helpful for people.

Yeah. So, I mean, one thing that was really weird about our house that I didn't. But I didn't connect, but now I kind of do, is that it was, like, very, very dusty. And we have five kids and a cat and a dog. So I just thought that's why. But I would go and we have, like, chair rail molding in some places, and I would like dust that several times a day, like, go through and wipe that.

And.

And I just thought that's it. But during all of our whole thing, we had, like, we lived with another family for like, two weeks. And so there was seven of us and then like six of them. And I said, why is your house not dusty when there's like 12 or 13 of us living here? Like. And so the whole connection between dust and mold, that was a sign that I didn't. I didn't know. And I think people should know about. Is that the dust and mold, like, it's just, they're. I don't know how you would make the analogy, but they're. They're not one in the same, but they're like, symbiotic, I guess, or something along those lines. Like, it's a carrier.

It definitely. It definitely is a carrier. I have a hunch. I. We haven't talked about this. If I'm wrong, you can tell me, but we've been talking for maybe 15 minutes. You said. Your person said the crawl space was dirty.

Was your. Did your air conditioning unit live in your crawl space? I'm just curious.

Yes.

And that's where all the dust came from. So here's what happened. So your H vac system wasn't sealed properly, was screwed up. There's a more problem downstairs. Just pulling all the dust from the crawl space in and spitting it over the house. Is that right?

Yes. And our house was built in 1978. And the. The ducks. The vents weren't sealed either. So it's like you had. We had a duct and then it's just like the COVID just sat on it. So all around, every duct, it was not sealed. And everything underneath, not only was. Could things blow up, but it was just. I mean, it just. It's so horrifying. But we moved from Florida before this and every. I mean, we were also young. This is our second home. So if you. You just learn by experience. But I mean, coming from Florida and a slab and everything like that, but. Oh, I'm just horrified now that I didn't even know that your ducts needed to be sealed and things like that. Yeah. That you had it.

So you're. So there ended up probably being a bigger problem in your crawl space at the end of the day too, huh?

Oh, yeah. The crawl space was. I don't know what percentage. I would say the crawl space was a huge part of it because it's just, like, flowing. But then we also found, you know, the. We finally found good inspectors. 20, 22. We had two teams come. I like, did lots of research, like a week. And I had two people come. The first guy came and he found, like one spot in our sunroom that we kind of, I think, pointed out. And then the crawl space, he was like, yeah, this is bad. The second group was a team of three, and they found so much that we had to end up gutting our house. And there was mold in every bathroom. I have a picture in, like, our toilet in our master bedroom. It. Once they took the tile off, it was just a. The toilet was just like floating. Like all the wood underneath had rotted. So all the bathrooms, the laundry, the kitchen. I called after we found out how bad it was, I tracked down. Because, you know, we'll get wrong mail from the past owner. So I tracked them down on Facebook and I was like, can I talk to you? And I said, what I need. Something's going on. Is there something about the home's history? I don't know. And they said we bought it as a site unseen foreclosure. And they said it was horrible. The wife had six kids. The husband left. They hadn't paid the mortgage in three years, and the water was cut off. There were holes in the floor and ant piles. And I live in a very nice neighborhood, and we live on a very nice house. You would never. You would never imagine that it had been a foreclosure to homes back. And so that's another thing I wish. And it passed all the inspections. I mean, we were very careful. Yeah, I wish. I mean, I wish I would have like, said, has this house ever been foreclosed? But, you know, you're in a bidding war and it's going so fast. And it had been remodeled, and it was. It had been remodeled but not remediated. And it was so pretty. And that's why we had no signs is because everything was new, you know, and sealed up.

So I don't know what I missed along the way, but.

No, see, I'll. I'll just to piggyback off of that, that the renovated home Thing. If you're looking to buy a place, we'll say never do it. It's hard to say never do it. But the thing is like if you don't know history and you said exactly what happens, like you fresh coats of paint, new finishings, you know, this, that or the other. And to sell it needs to look pretty and people come in, it looks pretty and you sell it. So one just like quick tip for people listening. If you're in like a, like a remodel like that, figure out how to get eyes in the crawl space. Whether you do it or somebody else does it, if there's a crawl space and get into the attic, those are the two areas that they're not going to doctor up and make look pretty. Right. Because nobody goes and sees them. So you can get a much better understanding of like just kind of the bones of a house. Obviously it's not like perfect. Right. You're not in the bathroom or and you know, wherever but like you can kind of see like what's going on in this house. You said your house was late 70s, right. So you're talking about a 40 year old house, 35 year old house, whatever it was at the time. It's a lot of time for stuff to happen in those places and they're not going to go up there and you know, cover all that up. Right. So it's like, you know, something that, you know, people can do if they're doing so to go back as we were talking timeline, the timeline on this is so important for people. So 2016 issue, you, you know, he starts showing signs, you start taking things off the list. 2020, you roll out more mold. So now basically four years of research essentially trying to figure out what's going on.

And doctors visits and new diagnosis.

Yeah, yep. All the stuff of not even realizing what's causing the problem.

Yes, exactly.

So you go through that amount of time, then 2020 happens. I cross it off the list because tests aren't lining up and we think everything's okay. And then now it's two years later from how I'm sort of looking at this timeline.

Yep.

When kind of the next set of people come in and find some things. Right. So this two year timeline between inspector told me things were fine. I'm going to put it on the back burner because I've had someone tell me and then to when figuring out this timeline happens to almost every single person. And so anyone listening, you can literally cut these two years out of this, you know, by, by understanding how this works. And that's kind of, you know, that's kind of the whole point of this. All right, so you went through 2022ish. They come through, they find some stuff, find some more things, find larger things that had to happen. And you're out for a long time, right? I mean, this. This is kind of bringing you through. So as you get into last year and then moving into now, so, yeah, we.

We were out for 19 months because, I mean, we had to basically gut the home. And.

We. I was really. I mean, insurance paid $5,000. We followed all the things you're supposed to do, like to, you know, suggest water damage instead of. Don't say mold. Don't say mold. Look at your insurance policy now, whether you're going to make a claim or not. We had a $5,000 cap. Who would. I didn't know that. You don't think about that. So, I mean, we tried to get around it. We, the remediators, inspectors showed, like, active leaks, like little pinhole leaks in the shower and that kind of thing. And they said no. So they gave us $5,000. I mean, we've probably spent 150,000.

And we. Like, right now, I'm looking at my bed. Like, we don't have baseboards. I don't have doors on my cabinets. We have one bathroom for the seven of us. Like, we are not even close to. Our home is safe, and we are living in it now, but it's not, like, decorated or finished. We had to throw all of our sofas away, mattresses. I mean, every. We lost almost everything. We had to throw it away. And. And we had nowhere to live. We lived in a Hotel for 10 weeks thinking the insurance would pay us back because we were kind of told by different people who had gone through stuff like, yeah, insurance paid for us, and then they didn't. I mean, we were basically. We became basically homeless. Like, we were about to go and live in a tent because we had run out of all of our money on the hotel, on the remediators, on the inspectors. And it was like a miracle. I was literally researching campgrounds because we couldn't even. Because we have seven kids. We couldn't even. We weren't even, like, allowed to live in an RV park because you could only have three kids. It was. It was like. It gave me this whole new, like, perspective on people, other people's, how they live, like homeless people or people just, like, down and out because, I mean, we. Nobody would take us in. There's seven of us but one, this one family in our neighborhood heard what was happening and they didn't even know us. And they called and they were like, God told us to invite you to come live with us. And so we went and we lived in their basement for two weeks. They had two teenagers and two kids they were fostering at the time. Like that's what type of people these were. And I will never forget that. And then after that we kind of figured it out. Like a townhouse came available. We asked our church if they would help us pay for the rent. They did, but I mean it's like, it's crazy. It was crazy. But so we had to do, we paid for someone to do the remediation, but then we had to do most of the rebuilding.

Ourself and just by the grace of God, like people that we knew from a long time ago would call and say, I feel like God told me to give you money to help you put floors down. Or I mean just really, really random things that I could never make. Like I could never promise somebody how this will work out because it was very random what got us to this point and it was not by our own checkbook. So.

Yeah, did you, before you got into the rep. The remediation repair piece of it, I mean it sounds like you kind of knew the size of the project you were in for. Did you consider not doing it and just cutting ties and going like what was that thought process like?

Yeah, so this was right when the interest rates were like, and we had just refinanced in 2020 down to like a 2.75% like rate. So never ever in our lives, our kids lives, will there ever be a lower interest rate? I don't think. And so we locked in there and then it was right when the interest rate was maybe at 4.8. And then while we were actively trying, we're trying to get like a HELOC loan or we were trying to look what would it look like to sell as is and buy somewhere else. But as we're doing that, the rate went from like 4.8 to 6 to this to that. It just kept going up and it just didn't, at that point it didn't make sense financially. If we sold as is, we would barely, we would get very little back. And then to buy with the new rate we would have to live very far away. And honestly, like you said, like buying a redone house, once you, once you've kind of been through it, it's almost like the devil you know. Now I I'm scared. I would be scared to buy any house right now because at least I know my house at this point, like very, very, very well. And every house is going to have issues. But we definitely considered, definitely considered moving financially. We just felt like this was. It was worth taking the risk. And we felt very confident in our remediators and because we were gutting it and not just like trying to isolate one problem. That also felt better because then you're really looking at everything.

I've always said that if I, because I rent right now, that if we end up buying something, my ideal scenario would be to buy something that we fully gut. And so, you know, because you just, like you said you could see all of it, right? And then at that point you could come in and just do a full. If you see certain areas, you remediate them more properly. If, if other things look all right, then you just do like a full house cleaning off of all of it before you build in. And you can kind of do that sort of thing. You know, the challenge is finding a place like that that you can get, right, that isn't. That isn't priced as if it is a great place, right? That's always the, like, everything's our house is great and so they price it the super high. And then it's like, well, you know, we'd be getting it. So it's. It's a lot to think about when you're buying, when you're buying places and you know, being able to understand at least the signs and what to look for is helpful. But like you said before is like, if it's. I mean, if they're coming in and painting new stuff, I will say this, and I wonder if you, if you notice this or if this ended up being true for you. A lot of times when people do the, the I'm going to make the house look nice before I sell it sort of deal, they actually don't cover up all of the problems because most people don't even look where the problems are. And so you can still find a lot of signs of things that are happening even though they came through and painted. Because I don't want people come like, well, if they paint everything, there's literally no way to find anything. Like, I will say that, you know, in my experience, what they're not painting are like the baseboards around a certain area, like that. Like, that's not what they're doing. They're painting like the big walls where your eye is all the time. Right. So did you you know, once you got back into it and you started like, understanding where everything was and the inspectors were finding everything, did you see that there were probably more signs when you bought it originally that you just didn't know how to identify at the time?

Yeah, so we actually found it before. So we. Last January, we thought we were done. We were like, yay, we're done. And I said to my husband, I'm like, we're supposed to do a post remediation inspection and test. We, I think it's like, we didn't, you know, we knew we needed to, but we really thought we were good. And there's always that part that's like, I don't really want to know the truth, you know?

Yeah.

But we did, we hired a third party or another, you know, because of course our remediators were like. And then we, they did a great job and we really trusted them and, you know, we're really grateful. But of course they're like, we got you. It's good. You know, but so I did more research and I found another company that, you know, they knew about pans, they knew about mold illness. It's very important, I think, to hire remediators and inspectors that know about mold illness if they don't know about the sick part. I don't, I don't trust him, honestly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that's what, what it is. I don't care if I have a brown spot. I care if I'm getting sick. So we did.

Well, the thing is, they're not going to look at things under the same scope if they don't understand the repercussions of missing something and what it can mean. Right. And it's just like a different approach of how you even like enter a situation. It's a mindset thing. So.

And what, and what mindset you pass on to the homeowner too? Because they're queuing off of you if you're like, eh, it's not that bad. So we did hire, you know, another company and they came in into our dismay. They, all of the vanities, they didn't take out. Our remediators didn't take out. And so they came in and they were like, there's water staining behind, like on this wall where the vanity was and then this one where the vanity was and then this. And so we're like. So we went and we had to cut all the bathroom area. And I would say on half of it, we found mold along the plate, you know, like the base plate.

Yeah. And then there was a couple other things. They really, really got up into our attic.

We found some areas with, like, our chimney, like, flashing. Not. I mean, it's just like. It's like a can of worms, Pandora's box. But, yeah, we did. We did find more, but that. Oh, yeah. To answer your question.

We could have looked and looked for water damage in the vanity, the backs of the vanity, in. On the wall, because it was there even. But even though our second. Our first remediators, they gutted almost everything, but for some reason, they. I don't know, they didn't do that. So you can look, open up the kitchen. Anywhere there's a sink, anywhere there's a toilet, a sink, bathtub. If you see anything warping, anything stained, I would say that's a sign.

A hundred percent. If you dropped me into anybody's house and told me my life depended on me finding a problem and I could only go look in one place, like, where would I go? Well, if I could pick a room, it would be a bathroom, because I would have a toilet, a tub, and a sink cabinet to look at. But, like, if I can only look at one, I would be looking at sink cabinets. That's.

That would be where I go, oh, that's crazy.

You're right. That's. I mean, they. And the thing is, the thing about remediators, even the ones that are really wanting to, you know, like, the ones you're describing sound like they were really, like, on board and really, like, working and trying. At the end of the day, remediators are not inspectors. And so, you know, really is like kind of a dual thing. And so a lot of times a remediator will see a little bubble or something this or there. And it's not that they're, like, hiding it or not doing it. It's that they just literally don't think it's an issue because that's not necessarily their strong point. And what they, you know, they're not the lookers, they're the cleaners and the fixers. Right. And so it is really important to kind of develop that eye on what's going on. So hopefully, you know, that can help some people as they're looking around.

So how is your son doing now?

He's doing so good. Like, he still has. He was just, like, in here a second ago, like, trying to, like, his can. Came over here at once while he was like that distract me. He is doing so well. He still struggles a little bit with anxiety. So we. We've been homeschooling him, but he'll go to co op. He's been going to, like, his church youth group. That's really the only thing, like the whole XLX thing. I told you. He doesn't have to take any medication anymore. He takes like a probiotic and fish oil.

It's like, I mean, our whole lives have just turned around, like every day. For as bad as it was and everything we went to, the blessing is, is that every day feels like beautiful and a blessing, like, because it was like a prison. It was so hard. And we are just so grateful. And so now whenever I see kids that have, oh, like, behavior problems, rage, really, just hyper, sporadic rashes, swollen eyes, you know, just really a lot of any type of issue. Like, I just want to be like, have you really searched for mold in your house? Because, I don't know, like, kids aren't supposed to be sick. You know, there's something. There's a reason when kids are acting like that. And it's not just because they're bad kids. There's something that's causing inflammation in their brain or in their gut. And there's just a lot of hope, I guess. There's so much hope. But you have to be willing to dig. And I would say, I really would say air quality in mold is like the first thing that people should very much dig into when it comes to health. Because I, I mean, like you said, it's just we can't get away from it. It's the constant.

It is. And we spend more and more time indoors than we ever used to before. It's just, you know, and our houses are built tighter than they ever were before. So it just increases the probability of mold issues to happen. And then our time is increasing in there. And, you know, the, the, the good and the bad about kids at their age and how their body reacts. The bad is that it can react quickly, right? The, you know, because their immune systems aren't fully developed. So if you get like an ongoing exposure, you can start seeing it happen a lot faster. I mean, I've seen this in so many kids that we work with too. Like pants pandas, like kids on feeding tubes that are in wheelchairs all of a sudden, like, just all kinds of stuff. But the beautiful thing about it is that if you're able to figure out what's causing it. Cause you're right, it's not normal. Like, it, like, like, if your kid is like this, it's not like, oh, they were born like this. Like. Like our bodies are these amazing Machines that they work perfectly, basically, when they're. When they pop out, right. And then they adjust and things happen and whatever. But if you can. If you can remove the trigger that's causing. So in your case. So it's an inflammatory brain issue that's triggering all that stuff up. So if you could figure out what's causing the inflammation there and move that. The bounce back is also incredibly fast. I've seen the bounce back happen. Be really fast, too. When you get older, it takes longer. And I don't know what the science is behind it because I'm not a doctor, obviously. But, like, when people are older, it just might take some more time for the body to kind of recalibrate and start working the way it's supposed to. But, like, the rubber band on the kids, it's like, it's a tight rubber band, and you let it go, and all of a sudden they bounce, like, straight back. And like, when you get older, it's like that old raggedy rubber band that doesn't sl. Snap all the way. Right. It, like, takes some more time.

But yeah. And I will say, like, if anybody's listening and they're trying to figure out if mold is causing their kid, if they really are sick because of it. When we got out, at first, it was not better. Like, my son, he actually projectile vomited on me, like, two days after being out. I was having, like, racing heart. Heart palpitations being out. And it wasn't. And he actually. His behavior got worse. It wasn't until, like, four months later, we started to detox him, opening up those drainage pathways. We use cell. Cell core products. They're comprehensive phases. And I just. I honestly, they're like, miraculous. And we just. On. Almost immediately, once we started those and we have tried everything.

He started to get better. And just like. I mean, that's been like, 18 months he's been using their products, and they just worked really, really, really, really well. Yeah.

Yeah. Cellcore makes good stuff. I've used a lot of their stuff myself too.

So what. So you mentioned the other kids were showing, but you were so focused because he. It was maybe more extreme with him. What are some of the, like, lesser extreme things that you were seeing? So somebody who doesn't have, you know, a kid that's in as bad a shape as your. As your son was, but maybe some other things that they could. They could look at.

Yeah. So I. There's really only one of my kids that I don't. My five. That I don't. I can't really say there was something how he was affected but like my one that was like 11, he started having a lot of anxiety about going to school. Just really freaking out if things weren't perfect. One of my daughters was in eighth grade and she, she would have like panic attacks and get really angry and refuse to go to school. Almost every day she fail was failing all of her classes. I mean it was really bad. But then that we got out of the mold. It's been, you know, year and now she's gets recommended for honors in all of her classes. She's got straight A. She was given the biology award. Like it just made her very anxious. And then my other daughter and again it's like was, you don't know, like was that teenage stuff. But she was I think depressed and she would have panic, like panic attacks. And I, I just thought maybe it was an aging of personality. But then when you get them out and within five, six months they're not, they're like doing really well. And then it just gets better and better. It becomes apparent. And then I think myself and my husband were very depressed. I, at one point I felt like suicidal. Like thinking more thinking. Waking up every day saying, I don't. I hate being alive. Like I don't. And that a lot of that was tied to how bad my. How sick he was and how it's, it's. It's pediatric acute neuropsychiatric syndrome. So they full on insanity, like wild animal type behavior and. But I think it probably was compounded just by, you know, laying in bed feeling like, oh my gosh, I can't do this. And then we're just, I'm looking at my vents, just breathing it all, you know, breathing it in. So yeah, I think like anxiety is one of the biggest.

Is probably like the biggest.

Symptom.

What did, what did you find that was helpful for you in those times where you were thinking like that I can't, I mean I just, yeah, I.

Just told my mom right away and my husband was a IC ICU nurse at the time. And I said, and like I'm not okay. I can't do this alone. I can't take care of him. Which of course nurses have like 12 hour shifts, you know, so he's gone like half the week. I said I can't, I can't do this anymore by myself. It's too much. This is what I thought, you know, having those thoughts. And so my husband's awesome and he left nursing to come home and help me. And it Was, man, did he figure out how bad it was once he was there with me. But I think just telling, I told a friend, I told my mom and I told my husband and that's not fun. But I think just being very real, that was very outta character for me. Like that is not. And that is not something I think about now or ever had. And so, yeah, I think if that happens, tell someone. And I also went after things died down and we like had a place to live and everything, I started going to a therapist and she did EMDR therapy. And just hearing having someone say you have complex ptsd, PTSD from everything you've gone through with the pans and with fleeing your house and with like losing everything you own. I can't tell you how healing that was because sometimes when you're going through all of these things, you feel like everyone around you is like, keep going. Too bad, so sad. You're a bad parent. That's why your kid is acting like that. It's because you're a bad parent. Maybe if you did this, maybe if you did that, oh no, it couldn't be this. And you're, and you're trying to figure it out and everybody makes you feel kind of crazy. Like you bring up mold. I think the reason my son is this ill, you know, and has been diagnosed with autism or maybe like precursors to bipolar. I think it's actually mold or parasites. Like you tell that to somebody and it's just like you've lost them. Of course, now that I was right, you know, it's like, oh, woo. Because now that, now everybody sees the difference, you know, it's like night and day, like with my son, with everything, it's kind of cool to be on the other side. But it was very isolating.

It just really showed me a lot about how a lot of people in the world live. And I'm very grateful for that because yeah, I have a lot more compassion for.

Lots of people.

I was just gonna ask this, so maybe that's the answer, but do you feel like. Like what? How have you changed since you've kind of come out on the other side of this?

Yeah, I mean I used to be very, I don't know if I'd say type A, but just like very, very ambitious and non stop and go, go, go and just have, you know, like win, win, win. And all of this has taught me that life is very precious and very sweet and that all the things we take for granted, all the normal things, our child being healthy or normal, you Know, our home, having safe fresh air, all these tiny little things that we take for granted every single day are actually a really enormous gift. And so I think it's caused me to really slow down very much, take pause before I start something new.

You know, lest I miss out on the things that really matter. And I think, yeah, I think it's given me like this whole new way to see humanity through a lens of, I don't know, just, I think a little bit through a lens of illness. Like that sounds strange, but I think most people, when they are acting really off, I think I've realized a lot of it comes from trauma or like they're not well, there's something in their body or some type of inflammation that, and that may sound like, oh, giving people too much of a pass, but I, I think it's, I don't know, I've kind of found that to be true.

Yeah, I mean, you, you said it right before I asked. But it's, it's a, it's more of a compassion and an empathetic look at people as opposed to more of a judgmental, you know, accusatory look at people. And you know, when you're talking about that, I forgot where, who I heard this from, but I was listening to something, they were like, you know, before I make a decision that's going to be like a huge suck of my time or like just like a very larger thing, I'll, I'll look at, I'll pretend that I'm 85 year old me and I'll ask 85 year old me is this worth me doing? Or is like, you know, is 85 year old me going to be happy that I did this or is 85 year old Brian gonna even remember that I did this? Like, is it really important? Like, whatever it is and like almost because you know, when you go through like a, a loss or like a health thing, like, you know, your perspective does change and you know, kind of like fast forwarding a little and be like, all right, so like, what is really important here and having that type of conversation with yourself? I know that I've made a few decisions based on future me having a conversation with future me. And I like, all right, future me said current me shouldn't be really that worried about this or I shouldn't spending time on because it's not important. And the time that you have with your kids right now is more important than this thing over here that you don't really need. And is it whatever, like those types of conversations so it's just interesting, the perspective shift and, you know, we could talk about all the time. Sometimes, unfortunately, you have to go through something to really understand the perspective switch. Yeah. But also there are times where you can hear it enough times, and it makes sense. And maybe logic ties in. If you're that type of person, you're like, oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So maybe, maybe somebody listening that. That might help trigger something for them on. On how to look at stuff. But the. Your. Your view on, you know, not judging right away and. And saying, you know what, there must be. There must be some sort of underlying factor here that's going on here. Is there a way that I can like this person as opposed to the flip side of that? Right. I think is a real cool thing.

Yeah. Because I definitely remember the people that helped us, you know, like, and what a huge impact. Like, there's all these opportunities we have all the time where we could do something to help people. And I think the mindset is somebody else will do it. Somebody else will let that big family stay with them. Surely they have another option, you know, And I just got to see. Wow. What it means when somebody. I mean, I just will never forget the people that sat in my driveway with me and, you know, did the pizza method with all the, you know, small particle cleaning. Every single thing that we kept. And I mean, just. Yeah, I'll. I'll never. For. I'll never forget it. So we have huge. I also will. I will say I care a lot less about what other people think. You know, when you go through something and you have. I used to care a lot about. I wanted everyone to like, like me and think we were this and that. And then you go through this period where you are like, I felt like the scum of the earth, honestly, just losing everything. And then my son being so sick, felt very judged. I felt. I mean, and when we left our house, we just grabbed like, garbage bags of clothes. Like, we each had like, five outfits, and we lived with, like, five outfits for two, almost two years. So, like, I mean, we were just like, stripped down to our core. And I don't know, like, it was horrible, but I'm so grateful. I. I am very, very grateful for. I wouldn't be grateful if I was still going through it, but I'm very grateful now that I've gone through it.

Well, I'm very happy that you're on the other side. I'm very happy that people can hear that there is another side. And listen, your. Your path is it was a very difficult one. And I think a lot of people are not even to that point. Right. I mean, it feels difficult. Everybody. I've always say this. Like, my version of how I felt when I was impacted is not anywhere near the version of what somebody else feels, because I know that I'm not on that level of sensitivity. But for me, it felt a certain way for me. Right. And so for everybody, it will feel what it feels like to you, but just know that you're not the only one going through this. Bunch of people go through this. People like yourself had it really rough, figured out a way to get through it, and are literally sitting here saying that they're grateful that today. And. And that's, you know, that's the hope. And when I, you know, when I talk to people like you, Ash, this is the type of thing that I want to get taken out of a conversation like this is. Yeah, there was. There was a dark place. You can get through it. It might not be easy, but it's completely possible. And on the other side, you see that, you know, there's a rainbow here on the other side of. And there's something to look forward to. And I just want to thank you for sharing. Like I said, I think I said at the top, you know, not many people are comfortable talking through a lot of this stuff, but I think just being comfortable talking about it, you know, is a way that. That you can help somebody else who, you know, who may be in a situation that's similar to this or even just like it or a part of it or whatever it might be. So thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me.

Yeah, thank you. And that's all I wanted. Just if I can help anybody, just like you said, shave a couple of years off of their. Their story, then I. I will be so grateful. That'd be awesome.

All right, well, thank you again. Really appreciate it, everyone. Thanks for hanging out, and we'll talk to you next time.

So that's it for today's show, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, please take a moment and subscribe and give a rating wherever you get your podcasts. It'll help spread the word to those who really need it the most.