MCS, Toxic Mold, Sick Building Syndrome, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome by Thomas Leo Ogren

It was a nice enough apartment, neat and orderly, and she told me that their rent was very reasonable. Inside I discovered that one wall in her bedroom, next to her bed, looked moldy. I also found another wall, a wall in the living room that also looked moldy. Outside in the yard I discovered that the rainbird sprinklers for the lawn would hit the wall directly every time they went around. There had also been a leak in the roof, directly over the bedroom wall. I suggested she hire someone to do an inside and outside mold count for her. This she did and it was found that the mold spore count was high in the yard, and even higher inside the house. It was highest in her bedroom.

She then confessed that she had tried to clean up all this mold, several times, using soap and water. Afterwards she had felt even sicker.

I suggested that she explain all of this to the landlord, and immediately move out until it was fixed.

She did explain it all to the landlord, but she did not move out. The landlord hired someone who supposedly cleaned it all up but she just got sicker and sicker.

One day a few weeks later she called me up again. She was crying and told me that her doctor said that she had MS. The symptoms she was having certainly did seem like multiple sclerosis but I didn’t think that was her problem. As we talked she would lose it, stutter, slur her words, forget what she’d just said.

She said that she’d had to take a leave of absence from her job since she just couldn’t work any more. When I asked her what she was doing instead of working, she said she was mostly just lying in her bed. It was about all she could do. “That bedroom,” I told her, “is killing you.”

I called her back later and got her husband on the phone. He was now starting to feel kind of sick himself. “Look,” I said, a little angry now, “ get the hell out of there! Leave that apartment and do it tonight. Pack a few things, go to a motel and check yourselves in. Tomorrow you can tell your landlord what you had to do. If they won’t pay for the motel bill, I’ll help you find a lawyer and you can sue him.

They moved out of the apartment that night and into a nearby motel room. He took some time off work and the two of them just hung out at the motel, watching TV, eating in a restaurant around the corner, and they slept a good deal. The landlord (I think he was finally afraid of a lawsuit) did agree to cover their motel bill while this was being figured out.

On the phone I advised her husband that he ought to start looking for a new apartment. He told me that he was starting to feel more “like himself again,” and agreed to look for a different place to live.

They stayed at the motel for two weeks and by the time they moved into their new apartment she too was starting to feel a little better. I insisted that her husband move everything from their old apartment himself. That all their clothes, everything, had to be thoroughly cleaned before he brought it into their next place. I didn’t want her to even walk in that door again, and she didn’t.

As I write this now, it has been just over two years since they moved out of that mold spore-ridden apartment. Little by little she started getting better, the slurring of words stopped, the disorientation stopped, eventually all the symptoms disappeared. Two months after they moved she went back to work. Six months later she felt so good she started taking night classes at the local college. They are now both working full time, both are taking advanced computer classes in the evenings and they are doing great. There’s been no more talk about her having MS either.

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BIO:

Thomas Ogren is the author of Allergy-Free Gardening. Tom does consulting work on landscaping for the USDA, county asthma coalitions, www.Allegra.com, and the Canadian and American Lung Associations. He has appeared on HGTV and The Discovery Channel. His book, Safe Sex in the Garden, was published in 2003. In 2004 Time Warner Books published his latest book: What the Experts May NOT Tell You About: Growing the Perfect Lawn. His website: www.allergyfree-gardening.com

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