A Year of Resilience, Part 3

So here we are after several months of our son Theo being chronically ill with fevers, a gunky cough, ear pain, night terrors, and more (Part 1). On an elimination diet for his newly-discovered food sensitivities to gluten, dairy, and eggs (Part 2). And now, after listening to our story, our new holistic doctor has just asked us if our house has mold — the same question our homeopath had asked during our first meeting with her a month before.

This cannot be a coincidence.

Maybe mold is the problem after all? But we’re still not convinced, wondering if allergies may be the to blame. One thing is for sure, after almost a year, we are desperate for answers.

Thankfully, our amazing new doctor, Dr. Mike, happily orders a whole panel of environmental allergy testing for Theo (plus a panel for mold) to help us figure this out. I thank my lucky stars that we finally left our old pediatrician behind and found a doctor that truly cared most about finding the source and helping us heal our children.

Finally we were getting somewhere.

The Dominoes Start to Fall

Now I’m looking back at my calendar since this is where things start to happen fast and the timing gets a bit fuzzy for me.

May 10th
Our AC breaks down and we need to have all our windows open in the house. At this point, we’re not sure if pollen or allergies are making Theo sick. We’re worried about opening up the house this much, but we don’t really have another option.

May 11th
I take Theo for bloodwork, and we anxiously wait for the results.

May 13th
Theo is playing outside and opens one of our patio umbrellas while looking up, dropping a bunch of pollen directly in his eye. Awesome.

May 14th
The next day, Mother’s Day, Theo wakes up with swollen eyes that are red and crusty and this awful gagging cough. My mind immediately goes to the pollen, and I’m convinced Theo has bad environmental allergies (and now an eye infection).

We close all the windows in our house and turn all the fans on full blast to keep cool while we wait for the AC to get fixed, and pray it will help.

Except Theo’s symptoms just seem to get worse, and now Iris has them too. Their eyes are pink and crusty and we’re not sure if it might be pink eye, but we don’t think so? And now Theo’s having ear pain too and this crusty yellow drainage is trailing out of his ears.

Happy Mother’s Day to me. 🙃

May 16th
Theo has not 1 but 2 sets of night terrors and wakes up with dark circles around his eyes and crusty discharge coming from them, plus his ears are draining yellow gunk. He hasn’t slept well in few days, and now his face is puffy and droopy. He just looks exhausted and ill.

Shea (our homeopath) asks us if Theo’s had any of the foods he’s sensitive to, and we realize he had a slight slip-up at school where he had a tiny bit of milk chocolate. She tells us that could be part of what’s wrong, plus potentially allergies, but we can’t believe that licking a little bit of chocolate off his fingers could result in all of this.

That said, we just don’t know.

We feel like we don’t know anything anymore, and I am an emotional wreck at this point, crying pretty much constantly.

We buck up and push forward, because what else can we do?

We start some herbal supplements and homeopathic remedies for allergies and Theo’s other symptoms, plus some antimicrobial natural ear drops in case it’s some kind of infection after all. All of it helps, keeping us afloat, but it’s clear there’s something bigger at play here.

May 17th
It’s Theo’s bath night and we use a bath bomb we bought together with some dried flowers in it. Theo loves bath bombs and it’s those little joys that are getting us through in this season. That is, until he starts itching like crazy after the tub with little patches of hives on his body, and we think he must be allergic to something in the bath bomb. We change his pajamas and give him a remedy for the hives. They clear up shortly after and we put him to bed.

We have no idea what’s happening with our children at this point. We’re doing everything we possibly can to help them, but it still doesn’t feel like enough. We don’t know what else we can do.

We need answers.

Finally Getting Answers

Luckily, Theo’s bloodwork results arrive on May 18th.

And after all our worry about seasonal allergies, nothing shows up in the environmental panel at all — no trees, pollen, or pet allergies to speak of.

But there, at the very bottom of his test results, Theo has high reactivity to 2 types of Aspergillus… a kind of mold.

And there it is. The problem is mold.

This is the answer we’ve been waiting for.

Theo is allergic to mold, and he’s clearly been exposed to a bunch of it, but we have no idea where or what we do from here. Is it our home? Theo’s school? Our food?

At this point, we realize we had closed all the windows in our home and blasted all the fans to block out the pollen, but did we trap our children with something much worse?

We start to spiral and nothing feels safe.

Now my husband Sam isn’t one to talk about intuition, and he can’t explain exactly why, but he is convinced the problem is our upstairs bathroom — the one that’s directly next to Theo’s room. With a shower access panel on Theo’s wall. Directly next to his bed. While on the surface the bathroom seems fine, everything about how it’s built wasn’t done very well and Sam just has a feeling about it. A feeling that has him itching to take a sledgehammer to the whole thing.

Thankfully, we have a follow-up visit with Dr. Mike that same day to discuss the blood test results. He confirms that Theo is allergic to mold and that the next step is to find the source. He suggests a follow-up urine test that will help us figure out how many mold toxins are actually in Theo’s system and whether they’re environmental or from food. This is the clarity we need.

Dr. Mike, a doctor of osteopathic medicine, also offers to do some cranial work on Theo. I had never heard of cranial osteopathy until that day, but apparently it improves circulation and overall wellness.

We think, if it will help Theo, we’re in.

So Dr. Mike has Theo lay down on his back and gently applies pressure to different spots on Theo’s head and neck. At first Theo is perfectly fine, and then suddenly he starts getting super fidgety and frantically itching his head until he can’t lay down any longer. Dr. Mike ends the session, the itching subsides after a bit, and we chalk it up as Theo’s body releasing some blockages.

The Worst is Yet to Come

Once we get home, we notice that Theo has this rash showing up in patches on his face. We’re not sure if it’s the work Dr. Mike did or what’s going on. We check in with Shea, and she tells us it’s likely that the cranial work triggered Theo’s body to starting to detoxing the mold and the rash is how it’s manifesting. She gives us a remedy, and the rash clears.

That same night, we have Theo’s end-of-year family picnic for his school, and since the rash is gone, we figure it’s okay for us to go. He’s already missed so much of his school year and so many other fun things over the past several months, we figure he needs a fun night out. We all do.

I have a flashback to Halloween when Theo was 2. He had an allergic reaction to Amoxicillin, waking up crying with hives all over his body. Back then, after some Tylenol and time, the hives had cleared and we went trick-or-treating anyway so Theo wouldn’t miss out.

This feels eerily similar, but I shrug it off. As it turns out, that Halloween (though over 2 years prior) is far more connected than I realize.

Anyway, we head to the school picnic, bringing our own gluten, dairy, and egg-free alternatives as usual — having our kids avoid the open displays of fun normal foods and wishing that for once this year that things could just be easy again.

Despite the food, Theo and Iris have a blast. Iris discovers her love of slides and Theo is basically swimming in the sandbox with some cool digger toys. We drive home happy, finding a patch of lightness and fun in a very difficult season.

When we get home, we give Theo a quick shower to wash away any germs we may have encountered and start getting him ready for bed.

Then the rash starts showing up again. Except it’s these big red raised patches of hives and they’re all over his body. And he’s screaming and itching and coughing and crying that his ears hurt. And he doesn’t want to be touched.

I’m reminded again of that Halloween and Theo’s reaction to Amoxicillin.

You see, for the past several months of what we thought were ear infections, Theo had to take an alternative antibiotic. Because he’s allergive to Amoxicillin. Amoxicillin (like Penicillin) is made from penicillium… a kind of mold.

Ding ding ding.

There it was, hiding in the shadow of our struggles all along. But we didn’t understand any of this at the time.

We were just scared and desperate to help our son.

So we let him calm down and zone out with one of his favorite shows in our bed while we panic, frantically trying to find the right remedy and figure out what the heck is going on. We don’t know if it’s the detoxing or there’s mold in our house or if Theo is still reacting to that stupid bath bomb (since we mistakenly put the same pajamas on him from the night before).

Shea points out that since Theo was worse after being in the bathroom, that could be the source of the mold. When I tell her Sam is ready to demo the whole thing himself the next day, she warns us that tearing anything out ourselves could make things worse, spreading the mold and its spores all over our house and that we really need professionals to do it. Awesome.

But then when I tell her about the bath bomb, we decide it’s probably an allergic reaction to that mixed with symptoms of detoxing?

This is too much for us to wrap our brains around at the moment, so we turn our attention back to Theo. Finally, the remedies kick in and the hives subside. We debate having Theo sleep in our room because of his bed’s proximity to the bathroom and that water access panel, but we think he’ll sleep better in his own bed and we all desperately need a good night’s sleep.

The next morning Theo seems okay — besides the gunky cough, yellow-green congestion, and ear drainage we’ve come to consider normal — so he goes to school. When he gets home, I send him up to play in his room so I can get get a few things done. His head gets itchy for a bit while he’s in his room, but he seems okay again once he comes downstairs.

That night, May 19th, we give Theo a bath before bed and the hives show up again. Theo is itching like crazy and coughing a lot, and his ears keep draining. We don’t trust the bathroom or his room. We don’t really trust anything anymore. So Theo sleeps in our room with me and, whether it’s the change of location or the remedies we gave him, he seems a tiny bit better.

Leaving Home Behind

The next day — Saturday, May 20th — my mom stops by to visit the kids and Theo takes her upstairs to play in his room. He immediately starts coughing and itching like crazy.

At this point, it’s clear that our home isn’t safe anymore, and we refuse to keep putting our children at risk.

We moved out that same day.

Now I know things seem pretty gloomy at this point, and they really were for us at the time, but stay with me. In Part 4 our story, we find that healing and a new beginning are closer than we think.