On Mold Sensitivity: Why I Am Not a Hypochondriac

One frustrating thing about having chronic health conditions is that being perceived as a hypochondriac is often on my mind.  For most intents and purposes, I am a robust, stoic, stubborn, determined, go-getting young(ish) female.  I don’t like sympathy, I don’t want people feeling bad for me, and I don’t like being coddled or patronized in any way.  I almost never talk about my health issues to other people (unless it’s extremely relevant), and I would be happy to go my lifetime with only a select few people knowing what I may struggle with (a big part of why this blog is anonymous).

So, what to do when you believe you have LEGITIMATE symptoms affecting your health, and need to bring them up to other people so that changes can be made?

In my last post a few days ago, I talked about having skin issues flare up again and having the theory that my workplace was the culprit.  Well, the flare got worse as the week progressed, and I experienced other symptoms as well.  Here are a multitude of reasons why I don’t think I am being a hypochondriac about my latest health flare-up and why I really think it is linked to my work environment.

• EVIDENCE #1: I enjoyed basically almost-normal skin from mid-summer onward.  Within about a week and a half of being back at work, my skin (namely, around my eyes) started to get dry, uneven, and irritated.
• EVIDENCE #2: NOT ONLY is this skin dry, but it feels like my eyelids and skin around my eyes is ‘thick’, I guess this is what scaling or lichenification might feel like.  This ‘thick, dry’ feeling means that my eyes occasionally water (because the skin surrounding them is tight) and that opening my eyes really wide also makes the skin feel weird, like it’s pulling on it.  I have not experienced THESE sensations since months ago.  This is definitely not normal to come on out of the blue.  The extra atopic folds under my eyes are also way more pronounced, which are like my barometer that there is some kind of inflammation going on; compared to them being relatively softened and minimal in the recent past.
  

  Here is my newly-suffering eye by the end of the week, so dry that the eyelid is flaking and the rest of the skin is really uncomfortable 😦

• EVIDENCE #3: I have changed absolutely nothing in my skincare routine to my knowledge, and in fact had settled into a minimal yet effective routine (as of about 2 months ago) that seemed to work really well.  IN FACT, I was doing something I never thought I would do – going to bed with ZERO moisturizer on my face at all.  (Just serum and moisture boost oil around my eyes, that’s it).  I was also not using any sort of thick occlusive around my eyes anymore, because… they didn’t need it!  The skin was making its own moisture where I could keep product application pretty minimal.  Now as of this past week, I’m back to HAVING to use an occlusive, because my eye-skin is just so dry.
• EVIDENCE #4: I have also been experiencing some respiratory/sinus issues this week.  Starting early in the week, I started to get a sore throat and thought “oh great, I must be catching a cold”.  However, this was weird because 1., I was not run down (though maybe was stressed out), and 2., it is still summer and typically I don’t get colds until wintertime.  While I do likely have a weaker immune system due to asthma and previous mononucleosis, I usually only get one ‘bad cold’ (i.e., leaves you feeling like absolute poo) a year.  It seemed highly unusual and unlikely that I would be catching a cold in August.  I started taking Zicam (my typical defense against potential colds) and once I had taken it for three days straight, I realized that this sore throat hadn’t devolved into getting outright sick like I normally would, but just had been a constant low-level irritation.
• EVIDENCE #5: As the week went on at work, not only did I get to experience throat irritation, but began to also have congestion and a sniffly nose, that gradually got worse as the week progressed.  By Friday, I was sneezing violently at somewhat regular intervals, was holed up at my computer sniffling into Kleenex, and was in a generally miserable state of hoping everyone would leave me alone for the day.
• EVIDENCE #6: It is currently Sunday night and I have been away from my workplace for 2+days.  No throat irritation, no sneezing, and the sniffling has been gone since Saturday morning.
• EVIDENCE #7: Another interesting skin thing.  The skin around my eyes had gradually gotten a bit more pink with irritation as the weeks at work wore on.  I do wear concealer regularly but try to keep it as minimal as possible – but eventually I felt kind of forced to use it ABOVE my eyes just so people wouldn’t think I was tragically ill.  So, I was incredibly discouraged to see that once again I resembled the ‘trash panda’ (slang for raccoon and also the slang I use for when I have rings of redness around each eye) of a few months ago when my skin was bad.  HOWEVER.  Now that I have been away from work for about 2+ days, the redness has subsided more where it isn’t so bad.
• EVIDENCE #8: I have had multiple days in the past months where I have not worn concealer under my eyes at all.  That was a huge milestone for me because when my skin was horrid, I couldn’t even conceive of that, but I knew it would be a hallmark of being pretty much healed.  Ever since all this rash stuff, I have HAD to wear a bit of concealer just cause my eye skin looks pretty gnarly otherwise.
• EVIDENCE #9: My feelings on workplace environmental un-wellness were corroborated by my boss.  Through conversations over the week, she’s also conveyed that she gets more allergy symptoms at work, feels better when she is AWAY from work, and that they don’t seem to be getting better, despite the fact that she is on multiple medications for sinus stuff, and that she is about as frustrated as I am with feeling like it has to be something around us.  So it’s helpful to have someone else validate that I’m not crazy, weak, or a hypochondriac.
• EVIDENCE #10: I’ve been reading a lot about mold exposure and mold allergy, etc.  What I am experiencing seems to correlate very much so with the ‘bucket analogy’ where I may be literally bathing in these allergens and therefore my body is hyper-reactive because I am sensitive to them, and being in this environment again is the final drops of the bucket where now it’s spilling over into being symptomatic.
• So all that to say – I don’t think I am being a hypochondriac, or crazy, or even trying to use a health issue as an excuse to not be at my workplace.  I feel that based on the above evidence, there is legitimate reason to believe that, due to my sudden onset of symptoms, (and relief of symptoms when away from work), that there are environmental allergens afoot.

Next steps

I have to confess, I’ve been super tempted to just dab some Desonide around my eyes and squash the itching and inflammation, but I know right now that isn’t the answer – it’s just a band-aid.  AND, if I do that, I won’t have a proper indication if the supplements and Biocidin are working properly.  It’s nice to know that I have it on hand if I absolutely, positively need it (and that apparently I can use it very sporadically with no ill effects even after going through TSW), but I am not going to touch it unless I have dire need.  In the meantime, I’m sticking with my minimal skincare routine (which I’ll post about soon), adding Dead Sea Salt splash to my face, and then using an occlusive (Vaniply) for the super dry areas.

I emailed my doctor on Friday morning in the midst of my miserable sneezing, watering eyes, and general malaise to see if she had any suggestions supplement-wise in the meantime.  She gave me some guidelines on what to increase and what to add.  Most of it was relatively run-of-the mill recommendations, like upping my omega-3 and phosphatidyl choline, adding a B complex, trace minerals, and detox nutrients, as well as doing a ‘binder’ at night to bind to toxins (I have been doing activated charcoal but got lazy about being consistent about it so now I’m back to it on the regular); but one interesting addition she gave was Biocidin, which is “botanical medicine” for “microbial challenges”.  Many of the reviews raved about it for things like Candida (which I DID rate as a III on a I-V scale of the inhaled allergens, indicating I had possible overgrowth), and other infections, so hopefully this will provide some relief.  Other people talked about it providing some GI upset or Herxheimer reactions as die-off occurs, so we’ll see how that goes.  She added “Ultimately the best thing would be to get out of the work environment.”

Well.  I can’t outright quit my job.  Not just yet, although I have wanted to move into a ‘work from home’ role for a while, mainly because I want to have the independence to set my own schedule and manage my own productivity, plus as someone who is introverted and mildly socially anxious (even though ironically I am in front of people much of the time at work), having a total ‘at home’ job really, really appeals to me.  However, I’m thankful in a way that this seems like it would give me the push to leave my current role WITH a legitimate health reason, not just me seeming selfish about wanting more work independence.  But, since I work in education and am unique in my role, I really kind of have to stick it out until the end of the term which is early December.

I also brought this issue up to my boss’s boss, who is a very kind and understanding man.  I first delicately brought up the issue of mold and the fact that both my boss and I have bought air purifiers because we are experiencing symptoms, and then asked if he had any health issues at work in relation to that and he said “YES” and that he would bring this up to HIS boss, who is another very kind and understanding person.  However, he also had kind of the futile mindset that we work in old buildings and there is only so much we can do.

Now, back in 2013, when I was scrambling to figure out what was making my skin go haywire (before I knew it was TSW), I actually DID file an OSHA claim for my past workplace (this was a totally different workplace in another state, as this was 6 years ago).  They found nothing, but as I recall, it was an easy and anonymous process.  So I know that I can do that, or can pursue claims through the EPA or CDC.

First, though, I found some mold testing plates on this site, and purchased them, because heck – why not take matters into my own hands and actually PROVE that there is mold in the environment surrounding us.  (I also bought the mold candle, the mold spray, and the mold laundry additive.  Nothing’s arrived yet, jury’s out on how those will perform).  I chose to do this because I wanted to have concrete evidence.  Essentially, it all boils down to – – – if I think I should need to quit my job over this, then having evidence of mold + a diagnosed mold allergy which is being treated + an already compromised immune system which I also have proof of diagnosis + various physical symptoms, means that it’s a relatively air-tight case where no one should think I’m being a hypochondriac about it.