68 | Is Hidden Mold Making Your Family Sick? Toxic Mold Symptoms Doctors Miss |Mold Illness Series 1

Aubree Felderhoff: it is my hope and prayer that by just talking about my story, what not just myself, but my family has gone through over the past almost 12 years now of dealing with mold I help someone who feels lost, overwhelmed, maybe has no idea like I for so long no idea that they're even dealing with mold, but they have a hunch. They have just a gut feeling or a curiosity that nothing else seems to be working and you're doing all the right things and you've changed your diet and you've changed this and that and yet you still can't find healing. Well, maybe today's episode will be helpful for you to either rule it out or consider the possibility that this is your answer. I am just so happy to be back with you guys And if you missed last week's episode I explained the reasoning behind why I left the podcasting world for almost two months my family had some remodeling done in our house and It unfortunately caused mold which if you know my story, you know that we moved to the house we're in now due to a mold issue in our last house. And so as a result, once I started to get sick, really sick, I began friend surfing, staying at friends and neighbors houses. And as time grew on and it became very evident that we really did have an issue, my family also had to move out. And so then I told the story of how we went to eight different Airbnb's and you guys would be surprised how many of those eight, by the way, it was five out of the eight had mold, clear evident mold, which obviously if I'm running from mold, trying to heal, cannot go stay in a place that has mold. And so after last episode, I told you guys that my plans for Mom Intentional as of right now are really just to put out there in the world. what it looks like to struggle with mold toxicity, what symptoms in yourself or your kids or friends, loved ones, spouses, anyone, what it can look like because they are so far and expansive. Mold affects every system of the body and depending on your personal makeup, your genetics, your lifestyle, I there's so many different things, kind of like a lot of illnesses, but depending on the specific person, it can look very different. for many different people, which makes it really hard to diagnose. Today, my goal is really to educate you guys on what it looks like to be dealing with toxicity, and just help to put the information out there on if you are someone that is maybe dealing with constant sickness or what seems to be unconnected misfortunes in your health or bogus... labels it is my hope and prayer that by just talking about my story, what not just myself, but my family has gone through over the past almost 12 years now of dealing with mold I help someone who feels lost, overwhelmed, maybe has no idea like I for so long no idea that they're even dealing with mold, but they have a hunch. They have just a gut feeling or a curiosity that nothing else seems to be working and you're doing all the right things and you've changed your diet and you've changed this and that and yet you still can't find healing. Well, maybe today's episode will be helpful for you to either rule it out or consider the possibility that this is your answer. let's get into what mold looks like. Now, like I said, I have dealt with mold now in two different houses. And both of these houses were brand new houses. before I ever got chronically ill, I had heard of mold, but I really had no understanding of what it could actually do to a person. And I was gravely misinformed on What a mold illness would look like I assume that mold is what grew in dirty old houses People that didn't maintain their home people that had homes that were decades and decades and decades maybe even centuries old castles I Thought of mold as something that you saw you know, like what you see in your shower in the growl that that gross ugly black or green or orange-looking stuff that grows in the grout when you don't clean. That was unfortunately what my understanding, and I think a lot of us, what we understand mold to be. And so if you don't see it, it's not a mold problem. And in fact, I had doctors within the first few years when I was sick ask me about the possibility of mold in my house because of all the symptoms that I was having that just didn't make sense. And I shot them down. I told them my house is brand new. There's no possible way that we have mold in our house. There's no visible signs. You can't smell mold. There's no way. Well, first and foremost, let me tell you that both times that I've had mold, it's been invisible. We couldn't see it. We couldn't smell it. We had no idea. It likes the dark. It's often not gonna grow out into the light. It likes the dark, wet, damp. And so many of the people, and guys, I have been on... So many groups with thousands and thousands of yes, there's thousands hundreds of thousands of us that struggle with this but thousands of thousands of people that had to search and search and search to even find the mold because it really truly is kind of an invisible illness Maybe if you're lucky and I say that with air quotes, which I know you can't see if you're lucky You see it growing on the wall. In fact, one of the Airbnb's I talked about in my last episode that we went to On our journey just to find a safe place for us to rest and heal while our house was getting remediated. One of the Airbnbs that looked pristine and they had shown us how pristine they were and all of their cleaning regimen before we even went and purchased this Airbnb to stay in for a couple months. When I walked in, there was literal mold growing. had pushed the sheetrock out and it was growing up this white wall. When I went to the other side of the white wall where that master bedroom was attached, it had grown through the other side of the wall and come down through the ceiling, down just a few inches of the other side. Okay, that tells you how intrusive and how strong it is, that it's literally growing through the walls and busting out. That was a serious mold problem. But it often doesn't start like that. It often takes years and years and years of growth for it to become so powerful that it's able to bust through walls, if it ever does. So let's talk about some of the symptoms that are associated with mold. And honestly, it could really hit any system. I went seven years without even knowing that I had mold in my home. For me, it had really affected every system. So I want to start off just telling you guys the symptoms that I dealt with throughout my journey with mold. And thank God, most of these are now gone. And so I actually had to do some digging going back and looking at my... doctors, office visits, and looking at my journals, even dig up because it's kind of like a really hard painful labor, right? Like when we go through labor and it is so incredibly painful. We often at the end say, I don't know if I could do that again. That was so hard. was so, or something else that's hard. That was so incredibly painful. I don't know that I could ever do it again. And then wouldn't you know, most of us moms are forgetting it completely or almost completely and out comes baby number two or number three. So it's similar to that when it's so painful, oftentimes you just kind of forget it. You have a little bit of amnesia. So I really had to dig to go back and find some of the symptoms that I didn't have this time because thank God. this second time through with mold was much shorter and I have been through it before as I was able to identify it and get my family help. So let's start off with just some of the symptoms. I'm just going to list them that I struggled with with mold. What are the top symptoms that I and so many other people struggle with when it comes to mold toxicity is severe fatigue. I'm talking not just you're tired, you need to take a nap and you wake up and you feel refreshed, but you wake up feeling like you got drug through the mud. You go through the day feeling as if you're coming down with the flu. You, if you take a nap, wake up feeling worse than when you started. It's the fatigue where you really can't function. You just need to lay down you Really feel like doing nothing because you just feel icky that type of fatigue. So severe fatigue migraines dizziness ice pick stabbing pain, so that would be If you know what ice pick is like one of those little kind of looks like a toothpick But harder that you would pick into ice to break it up That's what an ice pick stabbing pain is. It's feeling as if that ice pick that you would use to stab ice is going into your brain. So it's not a prolonged headache. It feels as if this one's stabbing you. But it can happen in different places. I had it a lot on my left side of my brain, but it also would happen in my arm where I would get like an ice pick in my leg. So just kind of rotates through. Mostly for me, it was in my brain. Numbness and tingling. All over but especially for me on the right side of my face starting out my ear going down to my lip almost as if I was having some sort of allergic reaction and then it would feel as if that part of my face would fall asleep and then when it would wake up, you know when your foot falls asleep How when it wakes up it hurts it kind of tingles all over and it hurts to step on That was happening over and over and over 24 hours a day in my face So that numbness and tingling in the face. I had a feeling of my body catching on fire. So different areas of my body felt as if they were on fire, literally as if there were flames going up I had a feeling of bugs crawling on me. So I was constantly itching at myself or like trying to flick off this, felt like tickles, almost as if a hair was or feather was tickling me or crawling on me. joint aches, bones aching. Bones shaking inside my body, tremoring, an unquenchable thirst and dehydration that could not be settled with water, just a constant dryness in the back of my throat. Chronic canker sores and sores all over the roof and bottom of my mouth. Severe hair loss, eyebrow loss, muscle twitching, muscle cramps and spasms, severe neck cricks and stiffness. Dark bags under my eyes, brittle broken nails. So my toenails and my fingernails continuously broke in half or fell completely out of the nail bed. Dry, flaky skin. Itching, really, really bad itching, especially at night when I was trying to sleep. I just felt like I was on fire of itchiness. anemia despite treatment and a lot of these things are despite treatment severe loss of balance guys I was a college gymnast and I went from being a college gymnast to not being able to bend over and tie my shoes I always had to sit on the ground I just could not hold myself up when we were in church Our pastor said to pray and to close our eyes I had to hold on to something and I know that it's kind of a joke within the church community that when you close your eyes and you pray you know everyone's swaying I wasn't swaying. I definitely looked as if I had had a long night It was not done with drinking because I was all over the place. It was severe Heart enlargement. So I had a lot of heart issues. One of them was my heart actually became enlarged, which can happen from mold toxicity. And I was seeing a cardiologist. My eyesight declined. I've always had perfect eyesight and it all of a sudden declined to the point where I not only needed glasses, but I also lost my ability to see at night. I was seeing floaters. All of the lights looked like fireworks. And so I no longer could drive at night. My teeth started to decay out of nowhere. My diet didn't change. And within a few months, I had eight cavities. I had never had a cavity in my life. I became sensitive to everything. Makeup, food. smells chemicals every single thing seemed to all of a sudden cause my body to react or to break out into hives or to get itchy or to get red and inflamed. Constant stuffy nose. I felt like my nose was constantly clogged, especially when I woke up in the morning. I could not breathe at all. Bloodshot eyes This was one that my entire family dealt with but our eyes looked pretty creepy very obvious red bloodshot in the entire eyeball It did not look if you look at an eyeball and you look at the white part and sorry I don't remember that now to be of what that is called, but it was a very very red and bloodshot I had a metallic taste in my mouth, almost as if I was chewing metal. And Mitch, my husband, constantly complained that my breath smelled like metal. I didn't smell it, but he did. I had a sensation of choking constantly in my throat. Not of someone choking me, but internally. Felt as if my throat was swollen and choking me, and so it was really hard to swallow, sometimes almost impossible, and I had to spit. And it was hard sometimes to breathe. Ringing in my ears. what was called air hunger where no matter how much I breathe in I felt as if I could not get enough oxygen in my body, which then led to chronic yawning. And it was quite embarrassing. For a long time, I did not know what was happening. I just thought I was yawning because I was rude. People would notice and say things such as, wow, you look like you didn't get enough sleep last night, because it would be five or six yawns in a row. And it was just my body's way of trying to get more oxygen. I could not get enough air. And so it literally makes you feel like you're hungry to breathe because you just can't get that deep breath in no matter how much deep breathing you're trying to do. I had severe insomnia. It would come and go. It would always be out of the blue. It was not associated with caffeine or staying up late or looking at my phone or any of that stuff. And during my personal insomnia, it would go for weeks when it happened. I had a really difficult time falling asleep. And so I would do all the natural things that I tried. And eventually guys, I went to the doctor and I got a prescription for, I don't know, one of the the sleeping drugs, which if you know me, you know that I don't do medicine. I don't do Advil. I don't like doing any of that stuff. But I was so desperate after months of not being able to sleep and how horrible that is if you've ever struggled with insomnia, that I got medication to help me sleep. And guess what? I still couldn't sleep. I still was having the same thing. My body was exhausted. My mind was exhausted. But every time I lay down, it was almost as if I was having convulsions of like shocks. My body would not stop twitching and my mind felt, maybe you'll know what I mean, maybe you won't. I had these electrical, as I call them, electrical dots going into my brain of, I gotta do this, I gotta do this, I need to do this. And it wasn't even important stuff. It just would not rest. I had the most severe insomnia bouts. And then they would vanish. they would go away. Exercise intolerance is another one, which what in the world does that mean Aubrey? I had no idea either and I suffered with it for a long time and I love exercise. I love fitness. In my previous life, I was a personal trainer and ran a boot camp for over a decade before I got sick. I was a collegiate gymnast. Fitness is a huge part of my life and I will never ever ever give it up. Not to mention it's my therapy and it's my personal coping skills with so many things. But when I became exercise intolerant, I could no longer move without it breaking me. My muscles were breaking down constantly. I was losing so much muscle mass. I was constantly sore. I was constantly getting injured. And it wasn't from, it started, of course, with the workouts I was doing, which was weight training and HIIT workouts and long distance cardio and short bursts, but eventually it got to the point where I would just get on my treadmill and walk at a 2.0 for a mile. And eventually even that I couldn't tolerate. So it really became this progressive thing where I just got weaker and weaker and every bit of exercise I did was detrimental to my health. However, I'm stubborn and I continue to do it. I would just break it into a five minute walk. And then a few hours later, a five minute walk. because I was insistent on staying moving. And I do think that helped me in the end just to continue to move my body, although it was nothing like what I used to be able to do. Heat intolerance. So that's another thing that can happen whenever you have been in mold for a long time and are affected like I was. Going outside, being in the heat, and I'm in Texas, so this was really bad in the summer. It would basically cause me to get sick. I would need to vomit. I would start shaking. I would start feeling as if I was going to black out and faint. And I'm talking about going out on my back porch and sitting on my swing for a few minutes. I'm not talking about running a marathon. I really was not able to tolerate the heat whatsoever without getting violently ill. loss, already talked about weight loss. So I experienced pretty rapid weight loss now. Also, I had to completely change my diet during this entire journey. So at first I thought it was associated with this, but then I realized it was actually a lot of muscle loss, which then after a few years was followed by rapid weight gain. So out of the blue, I gained quite a bit of weight for my size with Nothing that could seem to counterbalance and it had nothing of course to do with what I was eating which at that point I was down to like 10 foods it was just my body's way of trying to help me and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a while because I don't want to go on that right now as I'm sharing symptoms, but This is a pretty common thing unexplained weight loss unexplained rapid weight gain is very common with mold toxicity severe bloating definitely looked like I was having twins half the time. Leaky gut, I never ever had an appetite, severe food allergies, persistent alternating bouts of diarrhea and constipation. I had stomach spasms. I had sudden, extremely low blood pressure that was causing fainting and dizziness and that kind of blackout feeling. You know what I'm talking about? If you're sitting and then you stand up and you're like, whoa, I'm gonna pass out. I had that pretty common. pretty substantial hormone dysregulation and I did all the things and nothing fixed it. Hashimoto's hypothyroidism, that was one of my very first symptoms. I had wounds, so you know when you fall and get a cut or you scratch yourself, I had wounds that never healed. I'm talking months I would have these scabs and they would get infected and they would just keep getting infected. They just never healed. I could not seem to heal from anything. I had a feeling of cold water. running through my feet pretty commonly. It's usually when I'm sitting, I now think it might've been adrenaline or some sort of cortisol dysregulation, but it felt as if my feet went freezing cold. I could feel it. It was like a rush trickle feeling through my feet. Trachea, Cardia, I talked to you guys a little bit about my heart becoming enlarged, but I would have bouts where my heart rate would just race out of the blue. It would jump from my usual 50s, 60s up to 120s. and pound out of my chest, much like if you've ever experienced anxiety, it feels a little bit like an anxiety attack. But it wasn't ever accompanied with anxiety. It would just be sitting reading a book or something like that. Random migrating pain. My left eye felt, I called it hammer punches. It felt as if someone, tiny, tiny person had a hammer and was punching my eye over and over and over with this little tiny hammer in my left eye. severe nausea and flu-like bouts. Okay, those are the majority of the physical symptoms that I experienced with mold. Doesn't it sound fun? No, it is not fun. And I'm sure you could tell just by listening how many different systems were affected. I mean, anything from my skin to my teeth to my eyesight to my heart becoming enlarged to my thyroid to my hormones to my sleep to my joints. I mean, it was really across the gamut, which is why mold toxicity is often missed when doctors are diagnosing. You know, we're trained to go to the doctor for what we're having. Like when I had migraines, I was supposed to go to a neurologist. And when I had my heart issues, I went to a cardiologist, but we don't often look at the body as a whole. And so you can see why it's so confusing. Now, on top of all of these physical symptoms that I had, I had quite a few mental symptoms And let me tell you, I would take those physical symptoms, as horrible as they were, any day, over the mental anguish that came with mold. So let me tell you, and it's a much shorter list, but it's more severe. Let me tell you the symptoms that I dealt with when it came to mental-emotional. The top one, severe crippling anxiety, especially this second time with mold. The anxiety guys was so bad that I was basically hunched over for hours a day fighting on what I needed to do next. I felt so anxious out of the blue. It wasn't a small buildup for me this second time. It wasn't like, I'm getting a little anxious. it's getting worse. It literally felt as if a rug was pulled from underneath my feet and I was on my back. and I was in pure survival. So this crippling anxiety that hit me. Now in my old house, I definitely dealt with the anxiety and I also really struggled with depression. And maybe if you're like me or if you're on some other path, you don't even have the full answer. You don't understand what's going on. And every doctor you go to, every person you go to that promises to get you better, fails. After a while with chronic illness you start to experience hopelessness If you're not getting better and you're not finding an answer as to why this is happening And you don't know how to help yourself you start to feel so helpless and that helplessness Can really lead to a feeling of I don't have hope and it's a really hard area to be in it's so hard some other Symptoms that I experienced that were more mental. I would have random rage. I now know it's called mold rage and I saw it with my kids as well. Where out of the blue, I'd flip a switch. Now this is confusing because random rage could also just be, mom's had a really bad day and I just can't take it anymore. know, all the blocks were stacked against me and I just snapped. I think we've all been there. But mold rage is different. Mold rage is almost this blackout snap, or at least it was for me and it was for my kids when they experienced it, where you go from zero to 10,000. No warning, no buildup. A lot of times in the past when I have lost my temper with my kids and it wasn't mold related, it was more, I was frustrated. I gave them a chance and they wouldn't stop doing whatever it is I was asking them to do. And I kept talking to them and I kept giving them warnings and. That was probably more on me to give them so many mornings, right? But eventually I would lose my cool and I would snap. That is something that I think most of us go through. Mold rage isn't like that. There's not a buildup. It's a zero, 10,000. You snap and it's almost this blackout feeling. You have no control. You don't know where it's coming from. It's really confusing. It's really hard. And it happened a lot with my kids. So the mold rage was really bad. Now, along with just the emotional, Struggles that I had when I was dealing with mold. I also had a lot of cognitive issues So one thing that I think a lot of moms and this is where I got really confused because a lot of doctors told me this is normal But a lot of moms will say that they struggle with poor memory lack of focus I would have a lot of issues with word recall So, you know when you're looking at a banana and you're saying hey bring me that and you can see You could see the word banana. I could see it in my brain. I saw it in yellow. I knew it was a banana. But for whatever reason with mold, I often could not take that word that I could see the spelling, I could see the color, I could see the fruit in my head, and I couldn't describe what it was. I would blink and I would say, bring me that broom. Oh, that's not it. Bring me that box. No, that's not it. Banana can never come. And so I got to the point where I was often acting out what I needed my kids to do because I couldn't come up with the chore or I couldn't come up with the place we were going to go or it was so frustrating. And honestly, it's funny. It's a little bit funny. Okay. At first, but after a while when you're, you know, when this started for me, I was 29, 28 in my early thirties. It becomes concerning. It becomes kind of scary to not be able to recall words that you've known your whole life. that are simple words. And that was really one of the first indicators for me besides the fatigue that made me recognize, I might have an actual problem. So the word recall is a really big one. The poor memory, I had a severe lack of focus. I felt as if I was all over the place and I already have ADHD. So it definitely magnified it. I had random amounts of amnesia where I would be driving home and all of a sudden I had no idea where I was. I'd have to pull into a gas station. I'd have to try to remember where I came from. It was like I got hit in head. Very scary. I had constant confusion. I was confused about everything. I just couldn't comprehend what people were saying. I didn't understand what I was reading. I, of course, had fear and it started to develop into paranoia that I was gonna die, that I had a brain tumor, that I had, and of course, It doesn't help when you have doctors kind of compounding those things. I got tested for dementia. One of my doctors gave me a dementia baseline test because of how severe my cognitive dysfunction was. I had to go to a hospital and have a brain scan for a brain tumor because my labs were so off that they indicated that I most likely had a brain tumor, possibly cancer. We weren't sure, but I had to go and do a scan to check my head for a brain tumor due to all of the symptoms that I'm telling you guys. So of course, the fear and the paranoia have an easy opening to creep in whenever you're worried about having brain cancer or dementia in your 30s. I really struggled to learn any new information. I really couldn't do it. Things that people could read and recite back. which is pretty normal, you read a sentence and then I look at you and say, what did that sentence say? I couldn't tell you. And I would do it again and the same thing would happen. And again, and then I would write it. It was incredibly frustrating and incredibly scary. All right, so those are the main symptoms that I dealt with as a adult woman dealing with mold toxicity. And like I said, everyone is different. My husband had completely different symptoms. But let me tell you a little bit about my kids because like I said, my entire family grew up in mold for the first seven years. And so I definitely saw symptoms in my kiddos. And in case you're someone that's listening to this more for your family, you're a little concerned about your kiddo. You're wondering what would the symptoms look like? I can tell you their symptoms looked nothing like mine. There were some similarities for sure, but they had a lot of different symptoms. And I think with kids, you know, they're growing. they're so much more resilient than we are as adults and their bodies are so much better at renewing tissue and cells and detoxing. They're not as clogged down as us. And so you may miss this in your kit. So I want to run by a few of the symptoms that my kiddos experienced while we were in mold in case you recognize any and want to dig deeper with your own kiddos. So one of the first things that Noticed my oldest Nolan had severe night terrors severe for eight years his entire life Until we moved and then for the first year even of being in our new house He had night terrors and they were vivid. He would get up. He would walk around He was always screaming always Trimmered in his arms and his hands and with holdings and shake And his eyes were completely open and it would usually be 30 minutes to an hour. It usually happened at 10 PM and then again at 4 AM every night around the clock. Now, if we went to bed later, it might be 11. If we went to bed earlier, it might be nine. But you get the point. He would walk around. He would describe things that were terrible. He saw horrible things, nightmares and visions. I mean, one of the scariest, I remember in the middle of the night, Mitch was out of town. Nolan was in his room. He was probably three or four. The night terror started and so I went up there and I was trying to calm him down But if you have a kid with night terrors, you know what I'm talking about. It's Absolutely horrifying to watch as a parent because they are so traumatized In this night terror and is so real to them and you really can't wake them up out of it mean their eyes are open they're walking and talking but they have a glossed-over look in their eyes and you can't shake them and wake them up So I go in there and Nolan is screaming about a demon and he is up against a wall and he's thrashing and kicking and scratching and screaming a blood curdling, get it off of me, get it off of me, get it away from me. And of course there's nothing in the room but can I just tell you as a mom who's home alone, and of course Nolan wakes up Cooper who's little, little at the time in his crib, he's screaming and it's horrifying, it's horrifying. So the night terrors, the sleepwalking, my kids had chronic, Nolan especially had chronic nosebleeds, just out of blue nosebleed. Raging tantrums, that kind of goes along with that mold rage that I was telling you. I experienced food allergies, bloodshot eyes. skin rashes. Constant sickness. This is a big one for kids. We were constantly sick. And I know as little kids, you often go through seasons where you're constantly sick. We didn't go through seasons. We were just constantly sick. Literally, we were non-stop sick to the point where after about eight months in a row of being at the doctor so much, I finally brought it up to my doctor. And of course, they kind of brushed it off as, little kids get sick and this is just what happens. I remember the very first day at the time, my youngest, Cooper, who's now my middle son, he was starting preschool. at our church and I was teaching preschool at our church and I was so excited for him to start. He was gonna be in the twos classroom. We had been sick so much and I just wanted to go to work at the church where my kids were gonna be anyways, just to have a break. Do you know what I mean? I just needed separation. Even though it was gonna be other people's kids. It wasn't the same and I think you know what I mean if you're a mom. So we go to church. And it's the very first day of school. take the pictures and we get in there and I drop my kids off. I go to my room to start welcoming all of my adorable little preschoolers that are coming in. And my pastor, walks up to me and I think, he's going to tell me good luck on my day. You know, he came in here to say good luck and he leans over. He says, Aubrey. I'm so sorry. And my heart just dropped. And he goes, Nolan just threw up in the middle of the hallway. And y'all need to go home. And I look out my door. And my little three year old is standing in the middle of the hallway. vomit coming out of his mouth. There's a puddle on the ground. I see all the other moms like grabbing their preschools up, you know, scooping them up away from my kid who's splashing puke everywhere. Running around and he's literally no one's just in the middle of the hallway just puking his guts out. I'm like how? How we just got I just want to go one day. but anyways, that was a Constant theme for us every holiday every birthday. We were sick Every trip we were sick. We were just constantly sick. In fact, it got to the point That my pediatrician I switched pediatricians And our new pediatrician, after another year and a half of being with him, and my first kid had bacterial pneumonia, and then my next one caught bacterial pneumonia, which bacterial pneumonia is supposedly not contagious. And one of my kids started throwing up blood. And long story short, that pediatrician actually said, I think we might want to get the CDC to take a look at your living environment, because I am concerned at how much I've had you in here. It was really bad. We could not get well just constant sickness. Okay, so back to other things that my kiddos went through so constant sickness chronic again chronic colds allergies We all had headaches. They had ice pick pain, but I didn't know about it until Years later when I was talking about having ice pick pain and then it came out each one of them was like I've had that. I've had that. I had that all the time Of course as a kid if you grow up in mold, you don't know any different. I was lucky. I knew as an adult, this isn't normal, but my kids didn't know, which let's talk about mom guilt later. ⁓ So ice pick pain, decaying tooth enamel, Nolan's teeth all of a sudden started to decay and chunks of enamel started falling out. Just pieces of his teeth would fall out. We had to go have a stem injection into his back teeth. Nolan has pediatric myopia and is on specialized contacts for eye out of the blue, his vision just went down the tank and has continued to get worse and worse and worse. Chronic infections, focus problems, ADHD, hyperactivity, fatigue, chemical sensitivities. Now my kids personally are not experiencing these symptoms that I'm about to list. but a lot of other friends that I know that have mold toxicity are dealing with these. So autism, ADHD, PANS, PANDAS, POTS, and mast cell activation syndrome. that is just an overview and it's really not even all, but the symptoms that I can remember to report to you guys of what my family and I dealt with while we were in mold. It's a lot. And I'm sure after hearing all of that, your head is spinning, right? Like, well, how would you know? Because there's so many different areas that mold can affect that it's hard to know where to even start. So the next question I want to answer for you guys is if you heard yourself, any of that, or if you heard your kids, or if you heard your sister, your best friend, or your brother, or whoever you're listening to this for, if you heard things that may be registered, and I didn't list... Tenth of the symptoms. This is just what my family has dealt with if you heard that then you might be thinking well, what's next? How do I even know if I have mold? I mean you said at the beginning Aubrey that for you guys it was invisible It was an invisible illness. You never saw it. So, how do you know? Well, that is where we get into testing. And there are so many different ideas on how to test, what to test, and the right way to do this. And that is going to be an episode all on its own on this mold series, because as you can see, I could go forever. on mold and I'm pretty sure I did. And so if you haven't tuned out, thank you. And I will be putting out the next episode on what you can do if you hurt yourself or your loved one and anything I said today. And I know that if you heard this today and you heard maybe a little bit of yourself in this or your child or your spouse, you may be feeling overwhelmed. Rightly so, it's a lot. You may be feeling terrified. You may be feeling denial. I did, that's where I started. I don't have mold. I don't have mold because I don't wanna deal with mold. Who wants to deal with, this is a lot. I get all of that. But I wanna tell you, that there is hope. There is healing. There is a way out. I can't tell you guys that I'm 100 % healed and that I have all the answers, but I can tell you I've done a lot of things wrong on this small journey. I believe I've done quite a few things at this point right. And thank God for God because he has taken me when I talk about these symptoms, it makes me want to cry. And if I'm being brutally honest, to teach every single human being on this planet about mold, give them awareness so that they can be empowered to beat it. I also don't want to talk about It's like picking open a scab. It hurts me to even have to go back through what my family and I have walked through with mold. It's brutal. And if you're going through it, I want you to know that you're not alone. there are plenty of people that have walked this path and have healed. And although I'm not 100%, I can say pretty confidently now that I'm there. And although I don't want to go through that again, I can tell you that I wouldn't have traded it because the payoff that I've received and the health and the love and the faith that my family has received through this journey was worth it. And so I hope that even though it was probably hard to hear just all of the suffering. Especially if if it rung true for you, it's hard to hear that I want you to know there's hope on the other end that you're not stuck You're not lost. You're not invisible. You're not crazy as so many doctors told me you don't need a prescription to a psychiatrist or psychiatric ward and a nap or as one of my emergency room doctors told me You know, I just needed a good vitamin No You need God you need God number one You need faith and you need to know that there is a way out. There's a path. There's healing. You are not meant to stay here broken and lost and hurting. And so don't give up. Don't give up. Continue to pray. Continue to search. Continue to believe that God will heal you. he will. He's with you even when you can't see him, you can't hear him, you don't feel him. You feel abandoned. And believe me, I went through, a long season of being mad, of being mad at God that he allowed this to happen and I felt neglected and abandoned by him. Just know he's there. He's there. And so if you haven't reached out to him, now's your time. Start. getting on your knees and praying. I hope that this was helpful. And until next time, Go win your day.