Our House is a Death Trap Consumed With Black Mold

by Tammy
(Tacoma)

We've lived in our house for 25 years, it is located on swampland. It has poor ventilation and the garage and house flood every year. A few years ago the garage had to be emptied out because the whole thing was rotten and moldy.

So about 2 years ago I noticed black mold in my bedroom upstairs. I was told I was hallucinating it was all in my head, but it got worse and worse till I finally packed up my room and put it in storage. The bathroom is directly under my bedroom. All the leaking issues we have had in the bathroom were fixed but left the rotten stuff in the walls. We moved into the living room and slept there, but the mold was growing and showing up in all areas in the house, some places worse than others. It got so bad that I stayed away from the house for months at a time but my husband refuses to move and just keeps denying there's mold here. It has gotten into everything including food, furniture, blankets etc.

We have, or I should say had, 2 dogs. One was a Yorkie, very strong little guy, who was covered in mold. I would bathe him but it would just come right back. I kept telling my family what was wrong with him because he started having vision problems and then developed a really bad hacking cough. Within a short time he started going downhill fast, so we took him to the vet and tried medicines for 2 weeks but they didn't help. The vet said it was probably liver cancer, which he had never seen in a dog like that, and we had to put him down. Our 2nd dog is a 4 pound Chihuahua and I keep her out of the house as much as I can. She also can barely breathe, hacking and choking continuously, and has eye problems Still, my husband tells everybody I'm hallucinating as he denies there's a serious problem.

I moved into another room where we store boxes and some of my stuff. I started to move things around and there was mold in everything, including clothes boxes and my china hutch. Everything was damaged. I did my best to clean it up as my little dog and I have been in here the last 3 to 4 days, but I'm getting sicker and sicker. I have lupus, COPD, rheumatoid arthritis and now serious digestive problems along with bad kidneys. I'm miserable and my dog has seizures and her breathing has gotten much worse. I'm afraid she is going to die soon and I know it's the mold. I've begged my husband to face reality and get us out of here because his health has gotten really bad and mine is deteriorating fast. The longer we stay here the worse it's getting and I'm afraid he won't man up and try to save our lives.

I had a stroke in 2014 and it left me with paralysis in my right arm and fronts of my legs. I'm only 57 and my health issues are growing worse every day. I've proved to my husband that it's really the mold doing all this damage, but he just tells me that I can move. When my little dog dies I'm going to go crazy. She's 15 but I've been watching her suffer from and it breaks my heart that I can't do anything about it. It's causing me to lose my mind because I don't see any relief in sight, just death. I feel like I'm caught between a rock and a hard place and I don't see a way out. The mold spread through the whole house now and there's no other place to hide. It's just a matter of time, so anybody reading this please do something about it as soon as you can because after living in it for 2 years you'll pay for it with your health and even your life.