A Scholes Series of Unfortunate Events: Mold

My name is Rachel, and my cover photo shows one of the last family pictures that I have. This was taken several years ago before my son's illness was so severe. My son was a typical child until age 12...actually, he was anything but typical. He was goofy, fun-loving, full of spunk, and had a heart for helping others. Then he was struck with neurological issues. Vocal and motor tics began, closely followed by OCD and other physical symptoms. Our boy's personality completely changed. His OCD morphed to the point that he can no longer be near one of his sisters. He can not see her, speak to her, hear her name, or have anything to do with her. They were best friends before this illness. Our family can not ride in a car together, have meals together, have a family conversation. It has all been stolen by a mystery illness labeled as Pediatric Acute Neuropsychiatric Syndrome or PANS. We have spent the last four and a half years going from specialist to specialist trying to help our son. Most of these specialists do not take insurance, so we've had a steady drain on our finances year after year.

A year and a half ago, my husband and I decided that in order to help ease the tensions in our house, we would put an addition on. That would give our sick son some relief from the noises, smells, stimuli that had kept him sitting isolated in the far end of our house. Our plan was to also offer a place where our other children were free to be kids. Where they didn't need to worry about how loud they were or if their bedroom fan was on (OCD makes the afflicted person need to control EVERYTHING). We began the project, and things were going smoothly for the first couple of months. Then our contractor collected a $50,000 installment and never came back to finish our job. He stole from several other families and took his life. We will likely not see that money again. What is a person to do with a partial structure? We could demolish it or pull money from retirement and keep building. Either way we were out a lot of money. We decided to finish building. We knew that this project would take much longer than originally planned now.

A few weeks before Christmas, we were so close to being able to use our new space, but our son was still not well. My husband and I had been researching, and read that if a person is living in mold, than treatments are often ineffective. We decided to purchase a mold test for Christmas (super romantic, right?) We thought we were simply crossing that possibility of of our list and moving on to the next option. However, our test came back with high mold counts. We are talking toxic mold and mold that can cause neurological problems. Bingo! Maybe this is the cause of our son's illness or holding him back from recovering. In order to get well, we had to move out of our house and leave almost all of our belongings. Thankfully a doctor has gifted us a place to stay for a few more weeks. Unfortunately, after years of hemorrhaging money to cover doctor's bills, to cover money stolen from our former contractor, and to cover the underestimating of our project by our former contractor, we do not have the money to cover mold remediation. Our estimated cost is $20,000 and that is for exploratory remediation (we still don't know the exact source of our problem). I am hoping to raise enough money to cover the remediation costs and to help us fix what is destroyed in the process. If you are unfamiliar with remediation, these costs only cover removing and treating mold, not fixing drywall, laying flooring, etc...after the job is finished. Insurance does not cover mold removal. In addition, we will need to purchase clothes, furniture, mattresses, and other porous items like towels, because the mycotoxins embedded in them can not be removed, and we will have to throw almost everything away.

If you are able to help us financially, please know that your support will be immensely appreciated. If you can not help us in monetary ways, please consider praying for us. Thank you for reading our story! ❤