The results of our car testing and hyperbaric oxygen

Our five days of waiting for the car test results were up and when we opened the bag, we were shocked. Completely floored.

We now had three times the amount of mold showing up in our car. Instead of the 6-9 mold colonies we had before, now we had ~26 mold colonies. The pinky colored ones were also new. So we have no idea how we would have more show up, unless the fogging we did only stirred things up instead of actually killing it. Maybe the increase in summer temps we've had since the last test also caused more of the mold to show up.

Now I don't even feel safe for us to get in our car, knowing that mold is just being sprayed in our face when we turn the AC on. It especially concerns me for Ruth, since she falls asleep in the car fairly often on our way to work. So now we're working through what we will do for our car situation. Whether we want to keep trying repairs/remediation, or if we need to just forget it. The seats are so thick, that we just aren't sure if we could ever be sure that we've taken care of all the mold. Thankfully, ever since we saw this result, we've been able to borrow my grandparents car and avoid spending time in our own car.

Some other news: A friend recently reached out to me saying that a coworker of hers had seen our story on GoFundMe and sent it to a friend of hers. This lady had gone through a lot of the same things we have had going on, but hers was so much more extreme. She was sick for 12 years, and was literally dying from mold exposure, and specifically black mold exposure. The turning point for her was when she finally saw a doctor who found the mold, and then used hyperbaric oxygen chambers to jumpstart her healing. Once she was healed, she came back to Conway and opened up her own hyperbaric oxygen office so that she could help others gain the same health that she had experienced. Stephen and I scheduled a free consultation with her this week, and we ended up talking to her for over 2 1/2 hours. As she and Stephen shared their similar experiences, he found out that she had experienced the same weird symptom of "adrenaline rushes", for lack of a better description. She described them as feeling like she could shoot electrical pulses out of her fingers, and like everything in her body was running at 100 miles per hour. Her heart would be racing, her mind would be racing, but all she would want to do was curl in a ball because it felt so awful. Once she said that, Stephen said, "I never would have described it that way, but that's exactly how I feel." Then towards the end of the visit, she started talking about how she has a hard time accepting help, didn't want to be labeled the "sick person", and many other things that Stephen is and has definitely struggled with, expressed to me, and still deals with. We were both laughing because then she went on to tell him several of the things that I've been telling him over and over throughout the past two years. Like, the fact that people genuinely want to help. (And we are SO thankful for that.)

By the end of the visit, we had heard several success stories about HBOT, and heard a lot of benefits. It was nice to know that the owner of the clinic had actually been through mold illness and used HBOT to come through it, instead of being completely removed from the mold experience and just using anecdotal evidence for it's cures. As of right now we're still thinking it over, as it's a big upfront investment to make. The HBOT protocol for mold starts at 40 dives, and can go up to 60 or 80, depending on the individual. You take dives every day starting out, for an hour each time. But it also takes time to get to the right pressure and then to come up, so they said it usually takes about an hour and a half each time. The best way to pay is to pay for all forty visits up front, which is always a little scary when you aren't sure if it's going to help or not. From what we learned at the consultation, HBOT helps flood the entire body with pure oxygen, and therefore helps detox, repair, and regenerate tissues and so much more. It also increases your stem cell production by 800%. We were also told that HBOT doesn't allow any pathogen to hide. Many detox methods can cause the pathogen your body is dealing with to go into hiding into tissues and depths that the detox can't get to. HBOT doesn't allow this, so it's very beneficial for Lyme, mold, and many other debilitating illnesses.

Stephen's pre-paid year with Dr. Randy will be up this month, so we have a lot of decisions to make about our next steps for Stephen's health. We thought Dr. Randy was our answer, and while we have made gains from this year of visits, we still aren't where we want to be. Stephen has definitely become a little disenchanted with trying new things with the hope that it will be the answer to his health problems, because so far they haven't healed him completely. But we know that God is still hearing our prayers, and that eventually His will is going to be accomplished, even if that means his health is never fully restored.