Mold and the Eight-Month-Long Cold

Finally, I hit upon why I've had a cold for eight months. That's right--eight months. At various times, runny eyes and nose, nasal congestion, dry cough, phlegm-laden cough, sneezing, chest constriction. The only time I have been free of symptoms was in the weeks following transplant when I was taking heavy-duty steroids that knocked everything out. Now that I'm off the steroids, the symptoms have returned.

My bedroom is the darkest spot in the apartment. It only has two windows, one of which is shaded by a large tree, the other by a fence and banana tree. Though the rest of the apartment has been updated, the bedroom has popcorn texture on the ceiling and the walls above the tops of the windows. When I moved in mid-June 2009, I asked the landlord about the dark spots on the popcorn. He assured me it was only dirt or shadowing. I asked him about the cracks in the walls, and he said they weren't going to topple over. So I figured everything was OK.

During the year and a half I performed nightly dialysis in the bedroom, I kept the door closed at all times, per the instructions of the nurses who trained me, so that dust and other contaminants would not enter. Little did I know that I was trapping contaminants inside. This no doubt worsened the problem, as it prevented air flow and created a cold environment during most of the year--fantastic conditions for growing mold.

I began to notice that I felt better when I was outside or away from the apartment. At last something clicked. I asked my friend Rick, who is a licensed plumber and general contractor, if he would take a look. He came over this morning. He found that the dryer vent (the laundry room is next to my bedroom and accessible through a door at the back of the house) was not hooked up, so instead of discharging heat and water vapor outside the building, it was blowing underneath the house, creating a damp environment. Add to this a continuously dripping shut-off valve on the back side of the house and the lack of rain spouts to direct water away from the shaded area next to my bedroom, and Rick was not surprised that the walls in my bedroom were crumbling and spongy. He said he could have easily poked his finger through the drywall.

A few hours after Rick left, John, the handyman, took a look. He seemed insulted by Rick's assessment, but in the end agreed. He said he would ask the owner what she wants to do. He also admitted that he could smell the dampness upon entering the apartment. John said he'd fix the vent tomorrow and get a tree-trimming company to down the tree. I was really hoping that Rick would get some work out of this, since obviously he knows what he's talking about and is more than qualified to do the job.

For the past few nights Aaron has been sleeping at a friend's house or at his dad's, and I've been sleeping on his bed on the opposite side of the apartment from the bedroom in what is to have been a breakfast nook, the sunniest place in the apartment. I've felt much better sleeping there than in my own room, but still not great.

I have never liked a neighborhood and its people as much as I like this one. I sure hope that the landlady adequately resolves this problem. Rick said that if she doesn't, the city will come down hard on her, sending in guys with all kinds of meters that can pick up every last spore. They might have her take the whole place down to the frame, and she wouldn't want that.