Help Steve recover from mold & BPA poisoning

Our friends Steve and Tina need your help. Steve has been diagnosed with severe environmental poisoning and is in immediate need of medical treatment - the lion’s share not being covered by health insurance. Now they have learned their home of more than 25 years needs treatment for toxic mold.

We are raising $42,000 to help Steve and Tina cover their out-of-pocket medical expenses and costs of mold remediation of their home. Steve has been accepted into a medical program that specializes in treating environmental and mold poisoning. If successful, our GoFund.me will cover their expenses for this program and his ongoing medical costs for one year, conservatively totaling $29k. There are additional immediate expenses of $13k in mold removal and cleaning, which is essential for them to remain in their home.

This is their story.

An American dream turned nightmare.

For over thirty years, Steve and Tina Flood dreamed of a log cabin in the woods. Early in their relationship, the high school sweethearts had watched a TV show about getting back to nature. “Someday, we are going to do that,” Steve said to his then-girlfriend. Steve smiled. He knew he could pull it off.

Flash forward to 2021, Steve decided it was time to make good on their shared dream. With COVID impacting his cabinetry business, he decided to retire and close up shop. Tina, who had risen through the ranks at Milwaukee Public Schools, was ready to retire as a principal. With two grown kids on their own, their waiting was over. Now was the time for this accomplished cabinetry maker and beloved educator to build their dream home.

In the Spring of 2021, Steve moved to the land and worked full time on the cabin. Stripping the logs day in and out, treating them with pesticides himself, and assembling the log cabin by hand. Their dream home was coming together fast. By October, the log level was done. He was now racing to get the roof on before winter.

The first symptoms were easy to ignore. Steve is a tough guy - a fourth-degree blackbelt. Just a couple of years prior, his doctor had showcased him as an example of exemplary health to a bunch of medical students. In his fifties, he was a textbook example of optimum health.

By October, the symptoms were slowing him down considerably. Tina convinced him to come back to Milwaukee and see the doctor. That’s when the medical merry-go-round of misdiagnosis started.

While a parade of different doctors scratched their collective heads, Steve lost thirty-five pounds. He was unable to absorb any nutrition. The former picture of optimum health began to waste away in front of his family.

In January, out of sheer desperation, they found a Functional Medicine Doctor, Steve finally got a diagnosis that made sense - mold and environmental poisoning. The levels of BPA in his system were the highest his doctor had ever seen. The logs of their dream home had been the immediate culprit, but in fact, he had been suffering from poisoning for some time.

It was discovered that Steve has a gene variant - MTHFR - which impacts his body’s ability to uptake folic acid and makes him more susceptible to toxic loads. MTHFR is as bad as it sounds, worse even. A typical person can process deadly toxins and release them; for Steve, they accumulate in his body, causing his organs to start shutting down. But it wasn’t only the logs that were causing trouble, they soon discovered their home of over 25 years also had toxic mold.

And then he got the bad news, his insurance would not cover the medical treatment.

The good news is that Steve can fully recover with the proper treatment. Even with Tina working two jobs, this is an overwhelming expense for the Flood family, and time is of the essence. Every last dollar raised will go directly to Steve & Tina. We have two donors who have agreed to pay for the banking transaction fees so that the Floods will receive the total amount of your gift. Please consider making a gift to support Steve and Tina. Thank you.