Hi, my name is Anastasia Grey and I’m sharing my story because I’ve gotten to a point where I can’t do this on my own anymore.

Everything flipped upside down for me on May 27th of 2024. My son had been sick for two weeks straight, nonstop coughing, congestion, just not getting better. I decided to deep clean his closet thinking maybe something in our home was making him sick, and that’s when I found it. An old car seat in the back of the closet completely covered in mold. And it wasn’t just that. I started checking everything and it was like every other thing I touched had mold on it. My clothes, my son’s toys, our couch, furniture, cabinets. It was everywhere.

I immediately went to my leasing office and told them. I begged for a professional mold inspector to come out and test my unit because I was already seeing how bad this was. They kept refusing, they kept minimizing it, and even told me it was just mildew and that I could clean it myself with some cleaning products. I was literally told to clean it myself while me and my son were both getting sicker.

Eventually it got so bad that I hired my own mold inspector. Around that same time, the apartment complex decided to hire an HVAC inspector, and that is when the truth came out. For the six months I had been living there, my HVAC unit was never installed properly. The home health meter was never even set up. The damper above my HVAC was left completely wide open, so every single day the Texas humidity was just flooding my apartment and making it a breeding ground for mold.

The humidity levels inside my unit were at 65 percent, which is dangerously high due to the failed HVAC unit. My kitchen mold spore count came back at 960,000. For comparison, the mold count outside was only 3,800.

My apartment was basically a toxic box that we were trapped inside of. It was safer for us to sleep outside than it was for us to sleep in the place we were trying to make a home. The complex tried to put us in another unit and when that unit was inspected, it too had a severe mold issue. Our only option was to leave at that point.

We had to throw away 90% of our belongings and start completely over.

Not long after the inspector confirmed the HVAC issue, I ended up hospitalized for a week because of pneumonia. The coughing was so severe while I had pneumonia that I actually tore a disc in my back. I thought that was going to be the end of it, like once the pneumonia healed everything would go back to normal. But little did I know, that was just the start of everything falling apart.

From there it turned into appointment after appointment, more specialists, more testing, and more diagnoses. I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, autonomic dysfunction, a traumatic brain injury from inflammation, fibromyalgia, CIRS which is mold illness, and stage 2 beta cell dysfunction. The inflammation from the mold is so severe that it is directly affecting my pancreas and causing it to start failing. I have to wear a CGM 24/7 to catch severe cases of hypoglycemia that cause me to pass out. My doctors have made it very clear that my pancreas is not functioning properly because of the constant inflammatory response in my body from this exposure.

And it hasn’t stopped there. I’m allergic to the mold that was inside my own home, and it caused so much swelling in my stomach lining that it ruptured an ulcer which led to internal bleeding and emergency surgery. Now I can’t even go outside in Texas without having breathing issues, or having to wear a double mask. If I’m outside for longer than 20 minutes I start struggling to breathe or I trigger an asthma attack because of how bad the humidity is here. My doctor told me directly, if I want to survive, I cannot live in Texas anymore.

But I am a full-time student, a single mom, and I’ve already been in and out of hospitals with all these medical bills piling up. Now I’m being forced to relocate just to have a chance at getting better. Meanwhile, the apartment complex, Broadstone Cross Creek Ranch in Katy, Texas, managed by Greystar Management, has done nothing. They ignored me, they downplayed everything, they let my body get destroyed, and now I am stuck with the consequences of their negligence while trying to rebuild my life from scratch.

I am a very independent individual, but I have enough decrement to know when I’m drowning and when it’s time to start asking for help. I’m asking for help because it’s just too much to carry on my own. I need help getting out of Texas, I need help with these medical bills, and I need help building a safe home for me and my son because this completely tore our lives apart, along with any chance of building a home, or surviving in Texas.

From the bottom of my heart, I thank you for listening to my story.

Even just sharing my story with others helps in more ways than one.

Anastasia Grey