How mold nearly killed me

My journey to discovering CIRS

Hi everyone! : )

My name is Niki and I'm a Canadian mama of one amazing little boy named Henry and three crazy dogs Oakley, Jazz and Rory. I used to be a waitress and an early childhood educator, a world traveller and a competitive allstar athlete, until my life was destroyed by toxic mold. Since then I have been bed/housebound and unable to work for nearly five years.

I was completely clueless to what mold and its toxic byproducts are capable of until it happened to me. I am passionate, fired up and hell bent on educating anyone that will listen! I truly never want anyone to have to go through what I have, due to a lack of knowledge to protect themselves.

I moved into an apartment and a new job at a school in a new town and over the course of 2.5 years I began getting sicker and sicker. It started off with symptoms like breathing difficulties and recurring bronchitis and grew to chronically enlarged lymph nodes and severe fatigue.

By 2020 I had been there over 2 years and I began to experience severely abnormal head sensations and at this point I knew something was seriously wrong. We began to notice water damage and humidity issues which included damp walls and black mold on the bottom side of our box spring mattress. The school I worked at was shut down.

I was STILL uneducated on how poisonous these nanosized fragments that are a secondary metabolite of mold can be, so I stayed. Mycotoxins continued to poison me further and on October 8th 2020, I woke up in a severe health crisis. My condition had seemingly collapsed overnight.

It exploded into a body wide systemic illness. Causing symptoms in every body system and organ there is. I developed horners syndrome which caused nerve damage on my sympathetic nerve that controls my pupils and facial muscles. My pupils presented as alarmingly uneven sizes and my eye brow drooped. I developed the most extreme head pressure that affected my ability to think and remember anything. I felt like I was breathing through a straw and had severe chronic nausea.

I experience severe weakness, insane fatigue and insomnia- honestly the myriad of symptoms are endless. I’ve developed over sixty symptoms. I went to the emergency room 10 times and saw countless specialists who had no clue what this was. I had multiple MRIs including one of the brain, chest and abdomen. I had many CT scans and ultrasounds, biopsies, countless blood tests and even a spinal tap. After finding no other explanation, my diagnosis was decided by a grouping cluster of symptoms. MECFS, myalgic encephalomyelitis. "No cure, no treatment, live with it." my doctor said.

I then searched for experts and we sent my urine, blood and nasal swabs worldwide, to the US and Germany to find my root cause. These tests came back with high mycotoxin levels, and after research I learnt of CIRS. A chronic inflammatory response syndrome caused by the toxic components found in water damaged buildings. I learnt of my genetic mutations that make me more susceptible to mold toxins. We also discovered coinfections of lyme. I developed occipital neuralgia, a severe migraine disorder, and more conditions than I like to count.

I am determined to reverse my health problems and after many tiring years of chronic illness and suffering I can tell you that I am still not giving up. I dedicate much of my time to researching any way I can find to improve my health and fight back. Lowering my toxic load by detoxing (I was amazed to learn that so many of us with methylation issues and impaired detox pathways cannot detox a toxic exposure of this magnitude on our own), by changing my everyday products to those with less toxins, changing my diet and trying alternative treatments.

This illness took my job, my friends, my home, my health, my possessions, everything it could. I have suffered in ways I can't even put into words, ways I didn't even think were possible, but I'm still here. I believe that with perseverance, real effort and time I will figure out how to cure an incurable illness. I am of the unlucky grouping of people who do not get better after just leaving the source of exposure. The toxins colonized within my body and caused a chronic inflammatory reaction.

My message to everyone is that, just because the health e

ffects of mold aren't known so mainstream, do not underestimate what it is capable of. It can have a profound impact on your health. It can present as many other diseases, it's called the great masquerader for that reason. It can be lurking in your home, nearly undetectable. I urge you to look deeper into the root causes of your conditions because maybe just maybe there will be another way to attempt to treat these life altering diseases. If I can help even one person to avoid an experience like mine, then it'll all have been worth it.

You can follow my journey at @chasingwellness8

"I have traveled through madness to find me."