Help the Starkey family recover from toxic mold exposure

We know our story is long. It’s 2 years in the making. Thank you for caring about us and taking the time to read it.

Imagine going to bed at night struggling to remember what you had done that day. Imagine being woken multiple times a night to severe stomach pains and nausea. Imagine losing so much weight in a 6-month period that you go from a size 12 to a 0. Imagine going from a person who could organize and manage many things at once to struggling to remember what order you use to clean your body in the shower. Imagine falling asleep midafternoon because your body is simply done for the day. Imagine having such crushing chest pain that relief can only come from lying down. Imagine your 4 children having random symptoms that don't make sense almost every day. Imagine having doctors offer empty promises and empty solutions. Imagine canceling plan after plan for 2 years because there’s oftentimes a sick child in your house. Imagine watching them be so sick, sometimes for months on end, but not knowing how to help them or who to turn to. Imagine spending $70,000+ trying to save your life and heal your children but failing. Imagine wanting to die but only because you feel abandoned by our countries broken health care system and you fear no one will ever be able to fix you.

My name is John Starkey and these are just a few of the things my wife, Carly, endured over the past 2 years. She and our 4 children have experienced chronic illness with random symptoms that include, but are not limited to, severe stomach pains, diarrhea, nausea, night sweats, memory loss, difficulties processing new information, brain fog, loss of time, difficulty with word finding, extreme fatigue, chest pain, heart palpations, weight loss, migraines, severe allergies to most foods, sound and smell sensitivities, emotional instability, anxiety, OCD like behavior, tics, sharp wandering pain, joint stiffness/pain, hormonal imbalances, tinnitus (ear ringing), difficulty hearing, and muscle cramps. We tested our home for mold and our well water for impurities in the summer of 2023, all of which came back normal. We considered anything and everything as a possible cause for their illnesses.

We went from doctor to doctor but were given little to no solutions. When the solutions (prescriptions) didn’t fix the problem, we were passed on from doctor to doctor. Carly alone had 9 different doctors/specialists along with multiple ER visits. She had MRI's, CT scans, invasive discovery procedures, and many blood draws, all without a single diagnosis or idea of what was going on. In total, Carly lost 65 lbs. in a 6-month period. I remember in October of 2023 I brought up Christmas gifts for the kids when she interrupted and said, “I don’t know why we are discussing this. I might not be alive for Christmas.” At that time, she was right. She didn’t have the energy to stay awake for more than a few hours a day, she wouldn’t stop losing weight and cognitive issues with her memory made day to day life very difficult. I felt to my core that we were losing her. It seemed we had run out of doctors until we found one from California who agreed to take on her case. He specialized in a type of medication that isn’t covered by insurance. It saved her life but it was only a band-aid. After 9 months, we could no longer afford the treatments and her symptoms slowly started to return.

Through our illnesses we discovered how toxic our environment can be. Our family did a complete overhaul of our diet and lifestyle. Replacing unsafe products and foods with their safe counterparts is a daunting and expensive task but one we felt was necessary given how ill Carly and the children were.

In August of 2024 we experienced some flooding in our basement so we hired a mold remediation company. The tests in the basement and our bedroom, which is directly above where the flooding occurred, came back as highly toxic. As they began the demo work, they realized that our issues in the basement went far beyond the flood damage. The opposite side of the basement had a mold issue that had been growing for many, many years. While detox and recovery will take a long time, the discovery of this mold explains why my family has been suffering for so long and we are thankful to finally have answers. Cleaning up our food and lifestyle, spending tens of thousands of dollars to save Carly's life and heal our children, taking out part of my retirement to cover medical treatments, and many other factors, has forced us to make the difficult decision to sell Carly's childhood home and downsize our lives. Any money donated will go towards repairing the basement, covering the cost of the mold detox treatments for my family, and paying off debt caused by out-of-pocket medical expenses. Any donation amount will help us accomplish this.

These last 2 years have brought us closer together as a family but more importantly, closer to God. Romans 5:3-5 says "We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead us to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love." We are grateful for this journey and everything we’ve learned along the way. We trust God’s will for our lives. Thank you for taking the time to read this and if you can offer nothing else, please pray for us.

"Look at the birds in the sky! They don't plant or harvest. They don't even store grain in barns. Yet your Father in heaven takes care of them. Aren't you worth much more than birds?" Matthew 6:26