This horrible substance, that just a few years ago I didn't even know was really even a thing people struggled with, returned (or rather it never really left). It seems to be a continual battle in our home, a very difficult, sometime bitter, crippling battle with mold.
Last summer, one of our children's sensory issues seemed to be really flaring. After having many blood labs done, we found that her mold levels were very high. So we had all the kids tested, and while the others were not quite so extreme, they were all very much over a normal level. Knowing that we had had mold in our home their whole lives (we had discovered such and renovated the previous year), it was not to surprising to see that their bodies had not detoxed it completely on their own.
The children's doctor didn't seem overly concerned and we started on a protocol for them in order to detox. They had monthly check ups and seemed to be improving symptom wise in some areas. The plan was to check their blood levels in three months and we expected to see the levels going down. During that time, I helped support Beach through his illness (no doubt worsened by the mold issue), and tried to find a rhythm for our hectic lives.
We had the kids blood checked again at the end of 2022 and found that their levels all greatly increased, instead of detoxing, which we had been faithfully working on. This was shocking to both the doctor and myself. My heart sank, as I knew the only logical solution had to be that there was more undiscovered mold somewhere in our home.
Further investigating led us to air sample test and finding that there was additional issues in the basement. We had already planned (and paid on) doing some work that really needed to be done on the outside of our home to replace rotten wood, but this new new discovery meant we had to be very aggressive on the parts of our home that did not have previous work (and that we had thought were fine). Beach and I are being careful not to do anything to put us at risk (being more directly exposed to the mold) by doing any of the work ourselves. We had a mold remediation company come out to do their things and then construction started. I still felt not well during the construction at the home as that is a whole process in itself, but we at least did not have to move out again during this time.
Beach was able, though, to take down our failing deck on his own one day. Wood and windows replaced, things cleaned and painted ended up taking weeks longer than anticipated.
Over half the basement was gutted and walls were put in, along with an additional AC to help with humidity. I'm not a visionary, so see everything in the midst of the dirt and dust is truly hard for me and makes me feel anxious.
It was a slow ugly and painful process. Everything felt dirty and exposed with strangers around all the time working. It was like the peace that was in our home always felt invaded, and everyone felt more on edge, not to mention all the loud noises. If felt, in many ways, we had to rebuild the house completely.
Ezra grabbed my phone for a silly selfie.
When they were finally done (minus the work Beach was going to do downstairs himself and the rebuilding of the deck - that will be a bit longer) it was like a huge sigh of relief. If felt like I had space again and life could get back to some sort of normal rhythm. Now when things are really done done that will be a whole nother sense of relief. My prayer is that we did get all the mold out once and for all. A huge praise in that the kids mold levels in their blood testing weeks later finally showed great improvement! Thank Jesus!
Meanwhile I will be enjoying much time on our new deck as I catch my breath before all the inside details are finished up and the new house projects begin! Thankful for the Lord's provision over us and this chapter coming to a close (at least for now)! Might even include an after picture of all the things at some point!
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