Since I didn’t want to have to repeat myself to everyone regarding my condition, I made a post about it to make it easier to explain and so I could show pictures. Hopefully, this will give you a good idea of what I have been dealing with for the past 35+ years. I’ll try to keep this short and only discuss the main issues. There are many other issues not explained here but they are minor compared to the main issues.
The main issue or what came first was being exposed to mold. My doctor suspects this happened at a young age based on my medical history, probably around the age of 5. I do have markers for black mold exposure but they are not significantly high, the mold that has been affecting me all along is Aflatoxin G1, and a few others but G1 is the main issue as you can see below.
This is where it all started, and what weakens my system so that other things can easily take me down.
While in a weak state I contracted Bartonella Virus at some point which further weakened me and complicated my health issues. Bartonella is not usually a bad virus and a normal person can beat it in a few weeks but with my weakened immune system from the mold, it has been hiding in me causing a low-grade infection for most of my adult life.
The combination of these two invaders has been wreaking havoc on my health over the years to the point where I am not able to fight them any longer without a lot of help. further complication the situation I have an allergy to the main specific mold that I am infected with.
On the topic of allergies, another complication is that I found out that I am very allergic to eggs. This is an example of how sick I am and how used to feeling sick that I am that I didn’t even know that I was having an anaphylaxic response when eating them. My body was not strong enough to have a strong response, and I am so used to having trouble breathing and inflammation that it really didn’t register as anything out of the ordinary for me.
Eggs are in everything and very hard to avoid if you’re not looking out for them, so this was complicating my condition significantly.
Between the mold and Bartonella virus, my immune system and ability to detox have almost been completely blocked causing my organs to have to overwork to the point where they can barely perform basic detoxification so anything I eat or put on my skin that has bad ingredients build up in my system and the toxic load that they cause also further worsens my condition.
Because of my poor condition I have acquired other cascading syndromes over the years due to the weaknesses all of this has caused. These are:
Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS) This one pretty much makes my immune system go haywire when I smell anything that might even resemble mold, but even typical chemical smells, perfumes, or smoke can trigger it, and it then triggers the MCAS.
Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS): This is what makes my cheeks turn really red and flare up. Keep in mind what you are seeing in from the inflammation from the sinuses under the skin, the sinuses themselves are much worse and this happens to all of my connective tissue throughout my body internally including my intestine, stomach and eyes.
Dysautonomia: This is a symptom of MCAS when you have a bad case. It basically causes you to lose control of your nervous system that controls heart rate, breathing, and just about all of the critical functions you require to live at any given moment, so it’s a big one.
Needless to say, I am in bad shape, and bad situation health wise but my body is putting up a fight where it can, and my new doctor who finally figured this all out has a good plan to build my strength back up so we can fight it. I’m not currently strong enough to fight it, but we have a plan to get the MCAS/Dysautonomia under control so that I can tolerate the supplements and medication to kill off the mold and virus and detox the toxins out of my system. It is very tricky because of all the overlapping issues. You can make yourself a lot sicker if you try to detox the bad stuff out before your body is well enough to eliminate them because if it’s not you will reabsorb them and the whole process makes you even sicker.
MCAS is tricky, trying to get your body to not react to something that it knows is bad is a bit like trying to pull off a Jedi-mind trick. I am getting better at it and I have a lot of new tools to help so it’s getting better. Between learning mental and physical exercises to control the vagal nerve response and taking some natural Mast Cell inhibitors/stabilizers we’ve lessened the Dysautonomia significantly already. It’s not fully gone but rarely triggering, maybe once every two weeks at this point where it was every other day before.
I’ll keep updating this page with new information. I still have one more test to complete but I can’t do that until the MCAS is under control.
I know it looks bad on paper, but I have been living with this for over 35 years and have overcome it before at times. It’s never been this bad, but this time I have a Doctor that knows what she is doing and has experience with these conditions.