Coming to a head…
Posted on April 27, 2007
One way or another, my family has lived in this farmhouse since my grandfather came over here from England in 1920. I grew up in the house and right now, my mom, my sister, Fran, and her two kids, Ian (4) and Collin (3) live there. For the past year or more, all of them have gotten sick on and off. For a while we thought it was because Ian and Collin were going to daycare. About 6 months ago though, the back porch ceiling started caving in and eventually left the back porch with a huge gaping hole. We found the reason it started caving in was because of mold. It’s bad…really bad. But they continued to live there. I think they knew they were getting sick because of the house, but they really didn’t want to move. Mainly because we all really don’t want to get rid of the house. We are all sentimental about it because we all grew up there. But none of us have the money to fix it up. Its deteriorating and we can’t do anything about it. My mom is 60+ years old and works in a factory and my sister is a waitress. They can barely afford groceries. Well, a few months ago, my mom got sick with pneumonia. Then, shortly after that, our family dog, Akhala died because he had tumors in his liver and his spleen and they were bleeding into his abdomen. The kids and everyone have been getting sick on and off and this past week, Fran, Ian and Collin all have had very sore very swollen throats. Its almost normal though…almost every other week Fran would tell me that one of the boys were sick and had 103+ temps. I was beginning to think that they would just get really high temps all the time and that was just them. Well, Fran did some research and found out that it is extremely dangerous for them to be there. People have died from living in a home exposed to mold after a few weeks. They’ve been there for months. Most of the symptoms that Fran listed off to me, they all have. Pneumonia, red eyes, sore throats, runny noses, colds, high temps. Kids in school who are exposed to that for long periods of time, cannot focus, they don’t pay attention, and their memory suffers. Ian, we’ve been thinking that he might have ADD because he doesn’t listen to you, he cant even look at your face when you are talking to him. He doesn’t remember what you told him 2 minutes ago. It also causes liver and kidney tumors in animals. Akhala’s food was out in the back porch. I’m certain he died from it. In the last couple days here, its been raining a lot, and because of it, more mold has been stirred up there and another large piece of the ceiling fell. Fran read about a family living in an apartment that was having mold problems and a large piece of plaster fell overnight, exposing them to more mold. They all died of respiratory failure. So, today, they are all packing up and leaving. She’s taking the kids to the doctor to get them checked out, but they can’t stay another night. They’ll die. They may be coming over here, but we really don’t have room. I don’t care, I just want them out. My other sisters and my brothers and all of our families are going to help this weekend. You have to understand, there is so much stuff in that house…things that have been there since the 1920’s. It was a very lived in house. And its over..we can’t live there anymore. It will probably be torn down. We don’t have the money to fix it. We even tried Extreme Home Makeover a while ago…they turned us down. I can’t tell you how hard this is going to be for our whole family. What a horrible mother’s day present for my mom. Anyway, if you can keep us in your thoughts and prayers. Pray for my sister and her kids, that they will get better. I know we will get through this, but its gonna be tough for a while.
