Did you wonder what happened? I was here and then I wasn’t. And it all started with a drip…drip…drip…
On my way out to do morning chores one fall morning, I heard drip, drip, drip. Thinking I’d left my faucet on, I turned around to to see my ceiling bulging in the corner by the sink…like a huge balloon waiting to pop! There was a tiny pin hole in the middle dripping…drip…drip…drip.
One of my sons opened it up into a large trashcan with the hope we could stop the inevitable flood all over my soap kitchen. Success! We were sure we could make the repairs ourselves until we opened it up and took a look inside…MOLD!!! All kinds and colors! Evidently, we’d had an ongoing water leak in the ceiling, coming from a bathroom upstairs. We needed help!
We called a local company (ACR) and spoke to Ken who had people here in less than an hour. We also called our insurance company who had an adjuster here quickly. Thus began the process of gutting the bathroom and my beautiful, cozy soap kitchen down to the studs! This took weeks with ACR using great effort to mitigate and control the mold issue. I never knew how serious mold was until this happened. Because we opened up that ceiling before containing walls were in place (didn’t even know there was such a thing!), we allowed all of the mold toxins to flow into that area and I got sick….very, very, sick with mold poisoning!
As the soap kitchen was taken down to the studs following all the correct protocols for mold, air quality tests were done by an environmental biologist – upstairs where the leak started, in the soap kitchen and in my living area. The results weren’t great…some Stachybotrys mold and tons of penicillin and aspergillus forms of mold.
Mold is nothing to mess around with…I began to feel weak, I had trouble walking straight, I was so tired it was hard to walk across a room. I had a tremendous amount of brain fog and memory issues, I sounded like I had pneumonia deep in my lungs and I couldn’t breathe when laying down – so I began sleeping in my recliner. And then there was the weight gain…oh, the weight gain. By the end of the year I thought I was dying and didn’t much care. I wrote letters to all my children and grandchildren.
I had been throwing all the herbs and oils at this that I could. I was even doing an SOC protocol multiple times a day. These attempts probably saved my life until I got educated enough to figure out what to do.
I talked to the gentleman who created the SOC protocols and found out I was using the wrong protocols. He gave me some advice which I immediately applied and within 36 hours things began to turn around. I talked with my naturopath who did a major blood work-up and put me on some supplements that really helped. Turns out he had received special training in this area from one of the most famous experts, Dr. Shoemaker. I read everything I could by Dr. Shoemaker and John Banta and slowly…oh, so slowly, I made improvements.
Within a year, I felt like I was back to about 70%. I was told that was “fast”. I still had a lot of brain fog and memory issues. My energy was better but not back to normal. We kept doing blood work, adjusting supplements, herbs and oils and improvement continued.
My soap kitchen and bathroom also continued slowly. All of the studs from ceiling to
floor had to be washed down with a special solution and painted in a special (read expensive!) paint to kill anything we missed washing and prevent mold growth in the future. Slowly construction continued. I picked out cabinets again – very similar to the remodeling we did just a short time earlier. I had to destroy much of the furniture that was there, some Persian rugs my mom had purchased on her world travels, a sliding barn door for the window that my sons had made for me from very old barn wood we found here on the farm (probably the greatest loss to me – I loved it!). All of the soaps and salves that were in stock at that time (ack!) and so much more.
Then in May of this year, my doctor started me on a supplement that he formulated himself to support the Mitochondria. With in a week of starting this, my brain woke up, I could think, plan, create again. I began dropping the weight 1/2 lb to a lb a day. My mitochondria were waking up!
Once that happened, I contacted Kelly who designed and maintains this website. I had asked her to close it down when I got so sick. She works magic y’all! And, so I’m back…almost to 100% thanks to so many in the field of natural medicines, and those who study and teach about mold and how to overcome it!
And thanks to all of you who chased me down looking for my soaps and salves (wow the Soothing Salve really motivated a lot of you!) through Facebook, phone calls, texts, emails and even snail mail! I have the best customers in the world!
I look forward to blogging more, creating more soaps and salves and teaching and sharing more traditional skills here and on the farm!
Blessings y’all!
Cheri
The Essential Herbalist 
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