Mold Pt. 1

Growing up in Oregon, mold was a common household word. Fungi were fascinating to explore on hikes, on rocks, and under logs in the river beds. The dampness of the Pacific Northwest is nothing short of an understatement. Towels would acquire an odor after a night of hanging to dry, rain would fall for two seasons straight, and one could taste the moisture in the air. I was mostly likely exposed to mold in every home I lived in and every school I attended. Mold was a part of life.

One summer, after I met a flighty sailor, I moved to Seattle. My desire to follow him there was disguised by an internship I got at one of the largest organic farms in the PNW. I did love food and was a budding organic connoisseur in the hopes of learning how to grow my own, but I was also in love. I landed in a trailer on 60 acres of land and knew nothing about soil composition or stringing tomato plants. I was thrust into 12 hours of backbreaking farming a day. I was excited to get a tan for the summer while driving tractors and planting sun chokes. I think the crew laughed when they saw me in a tank top and short, cut-off shorts. Most everyone was wearing long sleeves and jeans. I couldn’t fathom not taking advantage of being in the sun all day. Little did I know.

I didn’t feel particularly comfortable there, but it was free lodging in exchange for a lot of sweat and some tears. I feel into the trailer bed after one long, hot, exhausting day. I fell into the trailer bed after one long, hot, exhausting day. I was lying on a wobbly foam mattress pad and looked up. Mold was lining the trailer sun roof—a thick blanket of mold. It was as if the outside environment was infiltrating the inside. I sort of slept that night. Within the two weeks of sleeping in that trailer and traveling to and from my sailor’s pad, I got sick. The lymph nodes lining my jaw swelled to the size of golf balls, and my face erupted with lesions. I had a fever, and my body ached. It got worse. I went to the emergency room, thinking I had meningitis or some weird infection. They couldn’t diagnose me. I went to an acupuncturist, and he said it was mold. I drank a horrendous concoction for weeks and received acupuncture daily. The farmers put me up in a hotel.

This was most likely not my first encounter with mold, but by far the worst. There were years of damp basement apartments in my twenties, and hints of mildew creeped in throughout my thirties.

It was twenty years later when mold took hold again. There were many signs I ignored. During the pandemic, I moved with my daughter to Mexico—the humid, hot, but beautiful Caribbean. When I first arrived, I didn’t feel well, and the apartment smelled of musty mildew (aka mold). That was the first sign. The next sign was behavioral changes in my daughter. The third sign was visible mold growing on my backpack, money, and books after a two-week trip away. I had closed all the windows and turned the air conditioning off. (A big no, no.) I should have run; I should have thrown everything out and run.

Then COVID hit again. This was the fourth sign. It was the second time we had it, and I couldn't quite recover. That was the beginning of a few years of navigating mold toxicity.