The Joy Of Hope

It's been too long since my last post here. It's a long story, one that perhaps I will go into later, on another day. For now I just wanted to let everyone know that we are all okay. We are now living in Woodland Park, and I must say, we love it here!

Mark has been having a lot of problems that had started in Indiana, that the doctors there were clueless about. We now know that he has Errosive Esophogitis. His asophagus is all full of sores from severe acid reflux! Poor guy. He didn't deal well with the drugs that the doctor gave him, so I have been giving him Camomile teas and that seems to be helping a lot. We'll know for sure after his next ondoscopy.

Dan and I both have finally, after almost 9 years been able to see a doctor for all of the problems that were caused by the mold, as well as other health issues we have had. We both have been diagnosed with arthritis. Dan has COPD, and I am still having trouble with my stomach, but I think we have figured out what causes all the pain... food allergies!!! The only foods I can eat now, that do not cause me pain, are fruits and vegetables. Breads kill me! Eggs, and meat I have a hard time with, but not as bad as breads.

All in all we are getting by, not easily, but we have God, and that makes it much easier than it would be without Him!

Since I am unable to send e-mails, or get online long enough to do e-mail online, I thought I would post an blog update here. If you have read our RV page you'll see that we have a 5th wheel now, and the fundraiser for the RV has ended. We've been parked at an RV park in Green Mountain Falls, Colorado for about three weeks now. Next week we are moving further up the mountain to Woodland Park. Since our van has so many miles on it we figure it better to be within walking distance of the stores for the Winter just in case the van goes out on us. We also are unable to get a very good Internet conection at the park here in Green Mountain falls, and the park in Woodland Park has a good connection. So we feel it is the best thing for us to do. Woodland Park is bigger by far than Green Mountain, but it is more a tourist trap than anything. The actual population is only around 7000! However, they have everything! Two Starbucks, a super Wal-Mart, two grocery stores, two post offices, all kinds of RV parks all over the city, and in the woods to boot! We will be posting photos real soon, probably after we get moved because of how horrible the connection is here.

There are a few people who have sent me e-mails, I just wanted to let you all know, I am not ignoring you, I am suffering from Internet withdrawls, LOL Seriously, it is so bad we have not been able to do any real productive work all this month! That is a serious problem when you consider all of our income comes from the Internet. However, I am designing this really cool door cover for RV's, and if it is a big hit, we'll be doing real good. The idea is really neat, and I found a TON of red fabric, and maroon floral print fabric for $5.00 at a yard sale a few weeks ago. There is enough fabric to make 4 door covers, and a bunch of pillows for the ceiling vents in RV's. Someone told me to find a nitche that RV'ers want and need, and we could do quite well for ourselves. Well, I think I may have found that niche with these two items. Anyway, to those who have sent me an e-mail and are waiting to hear from me, please be patient with me, I will send an e-mail as soon as we get moved to the new park. We are due to move at 10:00 am on the 6th, and it is only a 5 minute drive. It will take a little bit to set the rig up and hook up all the lines, but as soon as we are hooked up and situated, I will send everyone an e-mail who is waiting to hear from me, especially one dear lady in particular.

So I thought I would make a quick post and update everyone on what's been going on. I'm still fighting the body pains, and I'm fatigued a lot, but we keep the windows open 24/7 so that the mold in the basement does not bother me so much. We finally got the basement dry, but of course that creates a new problem with mycotoxins. I do not smell the mold very strong when I have gone into the basement, so I am Praying that I am not getting dosed too badly.

The owner of the house came by the other day, and I really felt as though he thought it no big that we have had to turn on the water and power each day and wait 30 - 60 minutes for it to heat up before we had hot water. I got from him that we were wrong for not paying our rent, but we had gone 2 weeks having to do what I mentioned above when rent was due, I did not feel it was right that we had to

They sprayed for mosquitos again last night, and I am fighting headache because of it. Not letting it get to me though, working hard on the web site, (have you noticed?), and getting lots done. Putting everything in a much better order, and into proper perspectives. More mold stories are going to be going in soon, and as many educational materials as we can find will be posted too.

I don't want to focus on todays blog more than this, because I want to get as much done on the site as possible. So I will leave this at that for today. Oned thought for everyone, We are one family, with no home, (only a rental), no funds, only what we make for writing articles, we are disabled and we need help from our readers to build this foundation to be one that can help, and save hundreds of lives. You can help! You can help by passing out flyers in your town, spreading the word about molds, and if you are in a position to do so, a donation will help tremendously!

To date, just click the button below. All donations are tax deductible, and will NOT be used for anything other than helping to educate others and to build a safe community for those who need it.

The weekend was not the best, but doing better today. I'm going to be doing some major changes to the web site, as you may have already read. I'm not sure if the general look is going to change or not yet, still thinking about that. I am going to bring the mold focus, into main focus, and the info on autism, abortion, chemical sensitivities, vaccines, etc,will all be in a "special resources" section.

Other than working on the site our main focus right now is to find a cabin we can move into, and we just may have found one a bit North from us. If we get a cabin for awhile, we can save a lot faster so we can get that RV and start doing some traveling, speaking, and looking for land to build that community on. I know it's only a dream right now, but it's a dream that can save lives, and I will NOT loose site of it until we either make it a reality, or God calls me home.

Today has been the worst day I have had to deal with in awhile. My entire body aches, especially my joints and muscles. My head feels like it is in a cloud, a really big cloud. I'm very dizzy, light headed and disoriented. I have so much I need and want to get done, but absolutely no energy at all to do so. I feel like my whole world is caving in all around me and don't know how to stop it. Depression is closing in on me so hard, I feel as though I am going to crumble, and getting air into my lungs is such a great effort I keep having moments that I feel as though I am going into a panic attack!

I just do not understand why all us "moldies" must live through this, it is just so unfair. No one but another moldy understands this life we all live, and it seems no one else cares. We say we have pain and hurt, and are told, "yeah, I have pains too". Well let me tell you something, you have no idea what pain is, until you have lived with the pain us moldiest live with every single day of our lives. What is worse, many of us are so toxified by the mold we live with, that we cannot take anything to relieve our pains. How would you feel if you had to deal with your pain without any medication to ease it? That is what I have to do! I cannot even take an advil without having more pain from it.

If you have not been toxified by mold, I ask you please, do make fun of us who have. It is not a pleasant life, and it is a life I would not wish upon my worst enemy. One day you too may be in our shoes, and when you are, you are going to want others to understand your pain, not look down on you because you want understanding. It's a hard life all us moldies live, one you never want to know. So be nice!

Today and yesterday have both been full days. I am working hard on the mold Ministry, and hopefully it will start getting the much needed attention that it, as well as all the people who need this Ministry deserve.

I'm getting ready now to put up 3 more stories from other sufferers. I'm also going to make some changes to the web site. I think there are a lot of pages that we have on other web sites and are not needed here as much as lots of info needs to be here on Sick Building Syndrome and toxic mold poisoning. So I will be "redecorating" the site today and tomorrow.

I have been posting blogs EVERYWHERE! The more we all post our stories and the dangers that so many want to ignore, the sooner we will be listened to and taken seriously.

We also bought a new domain which will be The Joy Of Hope Foundations sister site. I think it will get more notice than The Joy Of Hope because it's name has toxic mold in it. The new site will basicly be a duplicate of this one, just hopefully more easily found on Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. The new site is Toxic Mold Avengers. We will try to get it up and links from here to it sometime this weekend.

That's all for now. If you would like to help us get the word out, please e-mail us.

As the title states, I am sick of being sick! 7 years ago after DH injured his back and could no longer work, we lost our home. We moved into an old farm house, which at the time we thought was way cool, until 4 years later when we found black mold growing on our bedroom wall. This find came after we all started getting very sick, and could not get better. Well that mold was not only on that wall, it was IN that wall, under the floor, and in other walls throughout the house. We had no choice but to stay there until we could find a clean house to live in, unfortunately being poor due to hubby's back injury that was not an easy task because it cost a bundle to move these days, between a first and last on the rent, and deposits, and not being able to work the job we were able to work which was the Internet. When you move you have a little down time with no connection.

We did finally find a brand new modular that was clean and we were able to afford. Unfortunately, this house had problems with the central air system. It blew insulation throughout the house from the attic and walls, and sucked dust and derbies up from the crawl space. This did not help our already sick lungs, and hubby nearly died from it. Hubby was able to see a doctor, who said he had COPD, asthma, and possibly mold infection in his lungs. Unfortunately we could not afford for me to see a doctor for the severe pains throughout my body, but I felt I could cope, and hubby needed a DOC more than I did since after all, he couldn't breath and thought he was going to die from suffocation. He had me scared half to death! Anyway, the owner of the modular refused to fix the central air, and when the heat of summer hit, we all thought we would die from the heat and humidity, because the AC did not work at all. We kept complaining for the problem to be taken care of, but it was such a big job and costly, he refused to fix it, and left us sitting in a house that caused myself and our autistic son to have multiple heat strokes through one of the hottest summers on record for Indiana. This of course upset me and I complained more, and the owner told us, he was not doing the repairs and we would have to get out!!!

After looking for yet another house we could live in that was not moldy, (the farm made us all very allergic to ALL molds, as well as a lot of chemicals too), our choices came down to, a moldy home that would kill us all, or get out of the state to a state that was dryer and not so much mold. So we sold and gave away every single thing we owned, all we kept were a few clothes for each of us, craft and jewelry supplies so we could make a little money on our creations, our lap top computers, the kids school books and supplies, (we homeschool), and a tent and camping supplies! We placed a few things in a very small storage unit, and we headed West, leaving our life and belongings behind for a second time in a year, as we lost everything on the farm to the mold, it was all too moldy to take with us. So we left with what we could pack in the back and on the top of our mini van with 200,000 miles on it, and headed for dry Country. We camped all the way, with the exception of a few motels we "tried" to stay at. Most of the motels all had mold in them too. Remember, we are very sensitive and the tiniest amount makes us all very sick. Camping was fun, but I was very sick from staying at hubby's mom's for a few days, (not sure what was in her house other than dust, which I am also sensitive too), but even with that issue, we all had a good time on our journey across the Country to find a new home.

We had absolutely no clue at all where we were going, all we knew is we had to get to the dryer states and take it from there. We ended up in Colorado and fell in love! The air was clean, and fresh, and we could finally breath again, (Indian was so bad it made me sick to be outside!), so we started looking for our new home. We looked in Trinidad, but there were no rentals there, so we kept going North, and came upon the small town of Walsenburg. Here we quickly found a nice little house that had hardwood flooring, (I am sensitive to carpeting too), and had just been remolded. We were turned down at first because there were too many of us, (5), and we had brought or cat, (no way were we giving her up now), so we offered an extra $50.0 a month on the rent. That was accepted and we were told we would have to pay an addition $100.00 on the deposit for our cat.

Here's were our story gets really sad. After all we have gone through for the last 6+ years, our new home that appeared to be free of any mold when we first moved in, acquired a leak in the basement, and by the time we found it, the mold had already begun to grow! It only takes 24 hours for mold to start growing, if the moisture issue is not taken care of right away, then you have a major problem on your hands. We did what we could to stop the problem from getting worse, but the water kept coming in and we could not figure out where it was coming from. We took bucket upon bucket of dirt out of the basement that was down there, until we got it all up off the concrete floor, (this took many days of working on it when we could, remember hubby has a bad back, and I have a hernia so hubby refused to let me carry it at all, there was a lot of dirt), and we have been running a fan down there to dry it up 24/7 for the last 5 weeks or so. We finally have figured out where the bulk of the water has been coming from, the water heater! The heater had problems when we moved in, and the contractor who did the remolding repaired the element, and put on a new pressure relief, but that did not fix it. Last week we found the pressure relief valve leaking, okay, it was pouring out when we found it at 3:00 am! Needless to say, the mold is so bad now, that it is making us all sick, and just when we thought the hell we left behind in Indiana was over. We are now waiting for a new heater to be installed, and in the meantime, we are doing without hot water. We turn the power to it on at night long enough to heat the water, then we all quickly take our bathes and cut the power. Not only are we dealing with all of this, but the water heater not working properly, is causing the electric meter to crank, and costing us big money, (the light company told us that was why our bill was so high, $70.00 for 2 weeks! We only have a fan, fridge and two laptops and a few standard lights at that time!)

So here we are, nice dry state, and right back in the same boat, living in a house with mold. If we owned the house ourselves, we could have taken care of things long before now, but since we are renting, we've had to wait, and waiting has created a situation we can not live in much longer. We sleep with the windows open so that the mold gases do not build to high, but once the temps start cooling down in the fall, that will be out of the question. At this point I am ready to live in our tent, it seems the only way we are going to be able to not deal with mold, is to either build our own log home, buy an RV, or just live in a tent. Needless to say I am frustrated, aggravated, irritated, and plain sick on being sick! Oh and if I failed to mention it, contrary to popular believe, ALL molds can make you sick, even kill you if you are sensitive to them, not just black molds! When I complained about the mold growing in the basement, I was told, "we don't have a problem with black mold in Colorado"! All molds are harmful to someone who is allergic to molds, and I am highly allergic to all molds, including the mold growing in my basement right now. Oh, and there are molds much more toxic that black molds out there.

The bottom line, molds, all molds, can be very dangerous, and can make any person very sick, especially if you live with a mold problem for very long. There is a whole host of illnesses linked to molds to, a few are, asthma, lupus, cancers, fibromyalgia, arthritis, bleeding lungs, nose bleeds, and the list goes on.

You can find more info, and links to some great info by going to our web site at, www.thejoyofhope.org Please do not take mold lightly, it is a very serious problem and it is growing like a cancer across the country. It is becoming more well known and talked about, but still not enough. People are dying in the homes with no way out, and no one wants to help. Please don't let yourself become one of these people, it is not a bag of tea, in any way at all.

Mold, an invisible killer - Jan 23, 2007

This is a story that needs to be told and read by everyone in the country, it has already been posted in e-zines and other sites on the web, and I am making it my goal to get the word out on mold and it's dangers. My family lost almost everything we owned to toxic mold growing inside the walls and under the floor of our farm house that we dearly loved. Now we have basically no furniture at all, very few clothes, the kids have very few toys anymore, (all left behind), family heirlooms were lost, and worst of all, our health was seriously injured. All because of mold. Mold is a very serious subject that everyone seems to want to sweep under the rug and ignore, but it is not to be ignored, it is very serious and is slowly killing hundreds of thousands of people and most of them don't even know it! Mold causes many diseases, like cancer, arthritis, fybromyalgia, MS, lupus, asthma, interstitial lung disease, and that is only a few, the list is huge. Mold is much more common than people think, and the town we live in (Shelbyville, IN), is FULL of it! There are very few buildings that I go into that are clean, 90% of every house or building I walk into I smell mold of some type. I am so allergic to the stuff after living on the farm, that just a few minutes in a moldy environment and I am sick, either with a headache, unable to breath, severe pains throughout my body, coughing, sneezing, or my face turns lobster red and begins burning and itching. How sick I get all depends on how bad the mold is in the building and how long I spend in it. A few minutes can be mild for me, but an hour or more and I am in misery for days. If I spend more than an hour or so in a moldy building, I can be sick for weeks, even months, all depending on how long I spend in the building. I know I am not alone in my allergy severity, but I also know there are not a lot of us. So far I have met no one with a problem as severe as what my allergy problem is now. The more I am exposed to molds, the worst my allergies get.

I try to inform folks of how dangerous it is when I know they have a problem, but most do not listen to me. I honestly do not believe that it is because they don't care, I think they do not believe that mold can actually make someone that sick. It can though, and worst yet, it has been the cause for many deaths in this country, especially in babies! I cannot begin to tell you how sick I get inside when I go into a house that has mold, tell the owner there is mold somewhere, and a week later a family with young children are moving into that house. I've seen it happen too many times, just in the past year! There is a trailer near my house that I've never been in, but was told by the gentleman working to clean it out, told me there was so much mold in the place, that it was growing up the walls and smelled horrible. He said it was so bad, that the trailer could not be rented out. That was about a month ago, and now someone is living in it. Not only is someone living in it, but there are young children, because today I noticed kids bikes against the side of the trailer. Come on people, WAKE UP!!! You are allowing families to live in conditions not suitable for a rat! I don't get too upset when people don't listen in cases where you cannot see the mold, because they honestly don't know, all they have to go on is some woman telling them she can smell the mold, (I can smell EVERYTHING even what no one else can smell!!!), but in cases where it is growing up the walls, and they rent it out to someone anyway, that makes me so mad. In my honest opinion, if you own a house, and you know for a fact that the house has a serious mold problem, and you allow someone to live in it, then you are premeditating murder of that person, or family. Sorry to be so frank and so cold about it, but I have lived through total hell for almost 4 years now, and watched my family go through way too much to just sit back any longer and keep my mouth shut. I am taking a stand against mold and I WILL one way or another educate as many as I possibly can and do my best to make sure others never have to suffer the pains that I have had to suffer and will most likely suffer until the day I am gone from this earth. Mold is BAD, mold is toxic, mold can and will KILL unless we educate and learn how to live with it. Mold is everywhere, but there are things we can do, simple up keep we can do to our homes, that will help keep it out of our homes. Think about this for a minute, Indiana is a very moldy state, as are many Midwest states, (remember the Histo at SHS a few years back?), we have a lot of moisture here, (mold loves that). Watch a house being built, it is built part way and then rains, and the wood gets wet, it's not allowed to dry out before the workers are back putting up tyvek, and other things over that already wet wood that is going to hold the moisture in. What happens to moist wood that cannot air out? It starts to grow mold! Yep, you got it, that new house starts growing mold before it is even finished! I My husband and I have done a lot of extensive research on molds, and have learned a great deal and we are now working on an easy to understand book that will help educate others on this very dangerous issue. If you would like more information, or want to be informed when the book is complete, you can write us at; PO Box 771, Shelbyville, IN 46176, or you can e-mail us at; admin@thejoyofhope.org

Our hope is to help others to not have to go through the pain and loss that our family and many other families have gone through. If we can save one life by sharing our experience and knowledge, then it will all be worth it.
Carmella Dunkin

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Mold, an invisible killer - Jan 23, 2007