The Background

I lived five days in a toxic waste vat and survived.

The vat was my family's house. A window was leaking, and when my parents went to have it replaced, the workers discovered the construction all around it was rotten with mold.

The opened wall was like a broken dam. It released into the house a flood of mycotoxins, poisonous gas which mold spores produce.

Providence had us going to a doctor who knew mold could kill by mycotoxins. She told my mom to get out of the house, and so Mom did, and I went with her.

If we had stayed, we would have died. But the house had enough time to leave its mark.

Before the mycotoxin flood, my family and I had lived in the house for five years, getting ill from the dribble that seeped through the walls. My brothers were away at college the year the dam split open, and so only my parents and I were caught in the current. My mom and I were swept away.

The flood, or "big contamination" as we call it, changed our immune systems. The overload of toxins sent our bodies into hyperdrive, making us highly sensitive in smell and taste. Because our immune systems were laid to siege, they were made paranoid and overreacted when they sensed the smallest intrusion of fungi, mycotoxins, or chemicals.

The overreaction presented itself in a series of acute symptoms. These symptoms included mainly burning lungs, the inability to think clearly (aka brain fog), the feeling of no oxygen in the air, headaches, and instant exhaustion.

It is important to understand that these symptoms were simply increased versions of what we felt all the time. Our waking hours were filled with aching joints and muscles, chronic headaches, back and neck pain, decreased lung capacity, tightness in the throat, severe food allergies, brain fog and chronic fatigue. Sleep was hard to fall into for me and hard to remain in for my mom.

Though we were out of the house, these chronic symptoms stayed with us because we couldn't find a place that didn't have water damage and therefore mold.

When dry wall or particle board or ceiling tile gets wet, as in the case of a flooded toilet or leaky pipe or unsealed window, it creates the perfect environment for mold to grow. The processed materials in dry wall and tiles, and the glue in particle board, are prime feed for mold. It only takes one spore on a moist food source for a colony to form, and it only takes one leak for a building to be unsafe for us.

Since almost every building has some sort of water damage and mold problem, and therefore mycotoxins, finding a safe place to live has been the most difficult challenge we've faced.

The reason housing free of toxins is so important is that we can only get well once we are completely separated from them.

To further explain, there are four types of immune systems, and one of those types is susceptible to mycotoxins. Essentially 25% of people are made sick by the toxins, and my mom and I fall into that category. Our bodies can't process and expel toxins, so the nasties are recycled causing damage with every rotation.

Unable to expel toxins on our own, we take absorbers, called binders, that attach themselves to toxins and take them out of the body through the digestive system. But taking binders while still perpetually exposed to toxins is like trying to mop up water from an overflowing sink while the tap is still on.

The cure isn't in a pill; the cure is separating ourselves from mycotoxins.

We know when we come into contact with contamination, which is presence of mycotoxins, by our hyper sensitivity. We are bloodhounds; I, in particular, can smell trace amounts of mildew, mold, mycotoxins, and chemicals.

This 'superpower,' gained by the toxic waste, has served as blessing of protection. When a building is unsafe for me to be in, I know to get out. When a person who carries mycotoxins on them comes close, I know to move away.

However, my superpower has not always been so precisely tuned.

As my mom and I have slowly separated ourselves from mycotoxins by finding less contaminated dwelling places and by getting rid of contaminated objects either from the house or bought after we left, we have felt better and better. But instead of our sensitivity decreasing, it has gotten stronger exponentially.

This phenomena has been documented and called by some the "sicker quicker" effect. The better you feel the faster you feel sick when in contact with contamination. My theory is that that toxins don't affect me anymore than they did in the beginning; now that I know what almost-healthy feels like, the contrast with mycotoxin exposure is stark. My world has gone from dark gray to light gray, and dark gray is no longer as light as it once seemed.

While my superpower has enables me to get better, it's also a curse. I have become so sensitive, 99% of people, places, and things I am now incompatible with. Mycotoxins and chemicals are frighteningly prevalent in America's infrastructure, homes, and lifestyle, so much so, my world has become severely limited.

Isolated people have often been described as "living in a bubble." Such a description is easily applied to me, especially since I literally do live in one.

My mom's two-year search for safe housing has led to the move into an Airstream Flying Cloud. Airstream's iconic aluminum travel trailers have a reputation for water tightness and minimal leaks. This seemed the perfect solution to our housing problem, and so we moved into a new Airstream in May of 2013, just over three years since we left the house.

The Bub, short for "Safe Bubble" as we named the trailer, has been the most conspicuous change in our radical avoidance of mycotoxins. But there are many things, unwitnessed by others, that my mom and I have gone through isolate ourselves from toxins. Most are unknown to nearly everyone we come in contact with.

My world is a hidden one. Most people don't understand or even get the chance to peek into my daily life. When they ask me a simple question, like where I want to eat out, they have no idea all that entails for me.

No one but God will probably understand to the full extent the ramifications of what I survived. I doubt even I know. However, I want this blog to be a window others can look through and see the most extraordinary part of my life.

I never could have foreseen I would end up living and traveling in a trailer. I cannot foresee where I'll be living in a few months time.

I fly in a cloud on the wind that veils my sight; I don't know where I'm going or how long till I get there. But I do know the God who controls the wind, and He knows exactly where He's taking me.