Sorry for the long post. I’m going to try to do better than waiting 5 days going forward so they’re shorter. Mold has kicked our butts again. We were making progress until hanging out with Jake, and it’s been a train wreck happening since. We didn’t take Simcha’s advice and leave soon enough so here we are suffering for our stupidity.
Monday I cleaned the truck and the totes, decontaminated, and changed clothes. We went for a long walk and into town for showers. We decided to help with the food bank the next day knowing we might not be much help and have to leave early.
Tuesday morning I woke up feeling like I was laying on a merry go round with my head to the outside and being spun backwards. I also had a headache and severe brain fog. Wesley had been sweating lots of toxins out of his scalp so I guessed that, we headed to town and I felt normal after washing my hair 8 times. We helped with the food bank. It was mostly outside so as long as I stayed far enough forward from the back of the carport, I was fine. It’s amazing how when you’re working, you tend to focus and stop perceiving badness bc as soon as we stopped packing boxes of food, I could feel pretty hard core that I was reacting. I was trying to have a conversation and was struggling to come up with words, which is totally a mold hit symptom for me. I decontaminated and started working on produce boxes outside and got hit there. I shifted my position and felt OK. I felt good when we left, but Wesley had more emotional responses than usual so I knew he’d been hit. We decided being we had our decontamination tote to just head back for showers early so we could hop on the community group zoom without screwing that up again. While Wesley was in the shower, I had to leave the room bc his shower was slamming me.
One of the great blessings of food bank was I met Dena, a fellow extroverted, believer, and new to homeschooling mama. We quickly connected while filling boxes. My favorite part was she listened to learn instead of to offer advice (which is completely unhelpful bc nothing we do really makes sense to people not doing it). She’s a life and health coach, which is interesting to me bc I think I was essentially doing that with patients in addition to chiropractic. I do hope we can spend more time together in the future, but if not, we may end up virtual friends. The other thing I learned was the location of the water treatment plant in Carrizozo. I get headaches every time we pass that spot and it’s upwind from the food bank location so maybe what I thought was Cyano was actually mild MT (mystery toxin) we drive through routinely and may be what slammed me for Wednesday. The joys of learning this stuff!
Wednesday I woke up dizzy again but without headache. The brain fog was pretty severe. We went to town for me to shower expecting the same outcome as yesterday’s shower, but it wasn’t meant to be. Wesley came in to see how I was doing, but the smell of diesel on him made me worse and I was being crabby so he went back out to the truck. I broke out in a sweat and had to hold onto things to steady myself after the shower. I used the bathroom hoping that would help, but quickly realized that I wasn’t going to be able to avoid puking. Carolyn was at the house and I was tempted to have her get Wesley bc I felt so bad, but I got myself pulled together enough to get to the truck, though not walking a very straight line.
We went back to the ranch and it felt much better at the gate, but not when we pulled into camp. We went a ways farther, which felt better, and I was like there’s 3 cows over there, let’s go see. The closer we got, 2 looked much more like horses so I wanted to check. We parked, but I wanted to get closer so I super slowly walked out to the field. There was an old, boney looking, sorrel horse, a grey mule, and a black burrow. Having done some natural horsemanship in the past I coached Wesley on how to not add too much pressure so we could get closer so I could get a picture. The burrow actually came within 5 feet of us. They’re the crew that got out a few years ago and haven’t been caught since. I did nothing all day, just sat and rested. That night we showered and I made Cobb salads for dinner. I felt tons better after that, but then we had pumpkin pie. We both felt instantly worse and we switched cots bc Wesley has an upset stomach.
Thursday I finally woke up without dizziness, but Wesley was an emotional train wreck. We had an oil change scheduled in Alamogordo so we decided to shower on the way out of town. We quickly reversed roles of who had gotten wrecked worse the night before so I assumed it was something on that side of the tent or the door of the tent. We took some things out of the tent to see if after a few hours of airing things out helped and headed out. We didn’t get very far when I got slammed so hard I had to turn around. It’s hard to drive with your head curled to the wheel with tears bc of severe abdominal pain, but I drove a bit and decontaminated twice and was better. Wesley took over driving and both of us felt tons better as we headed west towards the ranch on 380. We keep going and went shopping in Socorro with the plan to weather this incoming storm and try something different after surviving the next week. Our mentor wanted us to head to Flagstaff, AZ, but I didn’t think we were well enough to try and heard they had FRAT (fire retardant associated toxin), which really messes with Wesley’s emotions. I wasn’t interested in risking a 7 hour drive for an emotionally not OK Wesley after that morning. We shopped at Walmart and I’ve discovered at this point I can pretty well tell if things are contaminated by holding them. We came back to camp and the tent still felt bad so we took things out one by one until only the heater remained. It still felt bad so we gave up. We put everything back in the tent and Wesley cleaned the truck while I got clothes and food organized to leave. We left in the dark and went back to Socorro. We stayed in a hotel room that I picked bc it was the best of three and quickly regretted my choice. We ate, decided to leave for Flagstaff in the morning, and went to bed.
I woke up dizzy again today and kept listing left and running into things. This used to happen in my old apt building in Williamsburg except to the right. We started our morning with a warning of a low tire, which we tried to air up at the gas station across the road to no avail. AAA sent a guy to fix it and thankfully he thought the tire was fine, aired it up, and now we’re on our way. The tire pressure seems to be good and holding so thankfully we didn’t need to lose a day getting that taken care of.
