I needed a cheaper way to breathe clean air before our lease ended in three weeks so I moved from the hotel to a sublet before finally settling into our new apartment, where you’d be forgiven for thinking I’d feel better. Instead? Worse. My thoughts were murkier, my muscles sorer and my mood more volatile. I remember looking in the mirror and wondering how my ballooning face could swallow my eyes like that. Or why I needed to get up to pee countless times in the night. A $400 urine test showed I had high levels of ochratoxin A and aflatoxin living in my body, both of which are mold species, not Björk albums. My boyfriend felt fine, which makes sense for a few reasons: I have an autoimmune disorder called Hashimoto’s disease, a thyroid condition that apparently makes my body a seductive home for mold; he has no such condition. My digestion is sluggish; his is high-functioning despite a college dorm style of eating. I’m considered a ‘sensitive patient’; he is a man. According to Neil Nathan, MD, a leading authority on mold and the author of two well-regarded books for mold-affected patients, Toxic and The Sensitive Patient’s Healing Guide, sensitive patients experience “an increased reaction to light, sound, touch, chemicals, smells, food and EMFs [electromagnetic fields].” I was that; that was me. Eating ushered in third-trimester-type bloating. Perceiving any kind of perfume made my frontal lobe twitch and my legs walk out of coffee shops. Bike-riding on sunny days felt not lovely but sincerely dangerous because it was just so bright.
