Welcome to Mold Champs! This is a personal site designed and hosted by me - James M. Kemp. I am a special education teacher on the south coast of Oregon. In 2004, after visiting friends of friends in southern Virginia, I was admitted to the Norwalk Connecticut hospital with a high fever and hands that were itching and covered with blood blisters. Was it Lyme disease? Was it a food allergy? Was it an allergy to bacteria in bird feces? Was it a chronic lung infection?
Finally, in 2009, I received a medical diagnosis - hypersensitivity pneumonitis. This begins my long journey toward recovery and toward my discovery of only some of the many issues relating to toxic black mold reactions. Let me share my experiences with you.
In my own research, I have found some basic information about a class of black molds called basidiospores. The internet sites of many mold abatement companies state that Basidiospores produce five mycotoxins - amanitins, monomethyl-hydrazine (MMH, a rocket fuel), muscarine, ibotenic acid and psilocybin (a class 1-controlled substance). Some of the research suggests that MMH is actually produced by basidiospores. Other research suggests that basidiospores produce a mycotoxin called gyromitrin. When ingested, inhaled or touched, the human body reacts to the gyromitrin through the hydrolytic process by producing MMH. OSHA lists hypersensitivity pneumonitis as a sypmtom of MMH exposure.
First, you may want to watch this You Tube video about Toxic Black Mold Syndrome.
Introduction
What follows is my own story about my exposure to toxic black mold.
Until my
hospitalization on February 23, 2009, I had no idea what was making me sick.
Then, I slowly realized that the cause of my illness might be the mold in the ceiling of the classroom
where I had been teaching at a local high school. The room
had a hole in the ceiling through which the plentiful rains of an Oregon rain
forest, had been leaking for 7 or 8 years.
My classroom ceiling at a local high school. The wall clock did not work. The intercom speaker was taped over. The wall outlet did not work. All of these items had been damaged due to continuous leakage from the roof.
However, my story actually begins when I was vacationing on the East coast in 2004. That was on July 28 and 29, 2004. For two
nights, I stayed with friends of a friend in an old cabin near the Great Dismal Swamp in
Southern Virginia. A tornado
had just ripped through the area, knocking down a stand of trees next to the
cabin and tearing off part of the cabin roof.
My friend's friends had just spent a great deal of time cleaning up the place
to make it habitable. It was a beautiful setting - peaceful at nights and warm.
Like much of the South in summer, it was also damp and there were many
mosquitos present.
By July 30, we had left Virginia, driven
north to Manhattan and were sitting in a restaurant called "Le Figaro" that was
about 5000 feet north of the World Trade Center site. I had poured an ale,
ordered calamari and was relaxed. My calamari came. Ten minutes into the meal,
my hands began to itch violently, and I developed a fever. My the end of the
meal, my hands had broken out in blood blisters, and I felt slightly dazed.
The next day, I was admitted to the Norwalk Connecticut hospital where I was
initially treated for Lyme Disease. This was the beginning of a mysterious
ailment that has plagued me ever since my stay in Virginia.
This is my story and I'm sticking to it. Read on. Email me your thoughts and
comments.
It all
began in a cabin in Virginia. This is the rustic cabin near Lake Cahoon. The fallen trees resulted from a recent tornado which also tore off large sections of the cabin's roof.
Here I am at "Le Figaro", in Manhattan on July 30, 2004, about 5000 feet north of the WTC site. 10 minutes later, while eating calamari, my hands began to itch and then "blew up" with blood blisters. The next day, I was hsopitalized in Connecticut. The doctors there never discovered the cause for my fever and swelling. They treated me with a cocktail of Prednisone, anitbiotics and Benedryl - IV. I was a long way from home, so since I was improving, they put me on a plane at JFK and sent me to LAX.
After returning to LA, I developed hives on my scalp. Another IV Benedryl session at St. Vincent's relieved that. I then became symptom free (or perhaps not) until 2008.
I have a history of weird inflammatory conditions. I have been diagnosed with Bell's Palsy twice. That diagnosis is simply one of eliminating all other possibilities. It just means you have an inflammation in a nerve to your face.
Here I am at my
60th birthday party June 14, 2008. I am seated on our patio, next to our storage shed. I had sat there in the sun many afternoons that June. The building is metal. The interior of the building heats up, and when the doors are open, wafts of warm air drift out onto our patio. The question now is - what was in that warm air?
This is our
patio on the morning after my birthday party. By the time of my sons' birthdays on June 21, 2008, I had already been given a "Z pack" by a nurse practitioner for what she suspected to be a minor lung infection. I drove to Portland, Oregon on the 21st, and had developed a high fever all the way up I5. That night, I was admitted to Providence Medical Center with a high fever and oxygen saturation levels in the 70s.
During
my first hospitalization of the summer of 2008, I was placed in the cardio-vascular unit. Since I had been smoking cigarettes since 2002 (don't ask why), I was treated as a person with a possible lung disease. As in 2004 in Connecticut, one of the first diagnoses I received was Lyme Disease. That tested negative.
In 2008, I told the Portland doctors that I did not want extraordinary measures taken in the event that I lost consciousness. They took that to mean that I did not want to be on a ventilator. So, they placed me on a bipap machine.
The night of June 22, 2008, I was moved to ICU and one of the doctors phoned my wife to say that I was not expected to live through the night. By morning however, after having a near-death experience, I was showing signs of improvement. A few days later, after many tests, I could once again eat solid food.
This is just an introduction to a long journey in which I discovered much about my own body and its unsual reaction to toxic black mold. To read more about my journey, click on the chapter titles as they will appear here in the future. The next page discusses my medical history prior to that trip to the east coast in July 2004.
