Since I started my mold-free, yeast-free, sugar-free, processed food-free diet, I’ve been more interested in food than I have been for some time. Instead of seeing this way of eating as a limitation, I see it as an opportunity, and an exciting one at that.

At first, when I realized that not eating processed foods meant I had to prepare everything myself, I was overwhelmed. Then I got over it and got to work. The diet is already improving several of my symptoms, so it’s difficult for me to complain about the work involved in making these meals. And my husband loves the introduction of so many whole, fresh foods to his diet, which is another reason I’ve been whistling, rather than whining, while I work.

Tonight, I wanted raw almond butter, but my food processor wouldn’t do anything other than grind the nuts to a crumble. I turned to my pestle and crushed the ground almonds in a bowl until they were somewhere between a crumble and a butter. The results were amazing, even on plain-old rice cakes. I highly recommend this butter-crumble spread.

Simply grind one cup of raw almonds in a food processor, then transfer the mixture to a bowl. Use your pestle or a potato masher to crush the almond crumble against the sides of the bowl until the oils in the nuts make the mixture stick together. Crush the mixture more or less depending on where you want your spread to fall on the butter-crumble continuum, then eat it fast before someone steals it from you.

The second part of my mold allergy story is that I am trying a mold-free, yeast-free, sugar-free diet for a few months to see if my symptoms improve. Those symptoms, which I’ve had off and on for years — and which worsen significantly in the winter months — include fatigue, muscle pain, joint pain (especially in my fingers), twitching, tingling, migraines, asthma and bronchitis, hair loss, dry skin and other skin issues, depression, anxiety, intermittent dizziness, foggy thinking, memory problems, insomnia, digestion issues, gastroesophageal reflux disease, yeast infections and urinary tract infections.

Eliminating molds is obvious: The molds I have been tested for and am allergic to are not only present in the environment but also grow on foods, and eating molds can create problems just as environmental exposure does. Because molds can be present on nearly any food at any time, it’s not actually possible to eliminate them from the diet, but making sound choices can greatly reduce a person’s degree of food-based mold exposure.

My decision to eliminate yeast stems from the fact that mold and yeast are closely related, so an allergy to one is correlated with an allergy to the other. It’s hard to cut sugar out as well — especially because I have such a sweet tooth — but sugar promotes an overgrowth of yeast in some people, also known as a “systemic yeast infection” or a “systemic candida infection.” A major risk factor for developing yeast overgrowth is antibiotic use. I’ve taken more than fifty rounds of antibiotics in my lifetime — more than one round per year on average — starting at age three when I got my first of many pneumonia infections. That makes a systemic yeast infection likely in my case. I also have two symptoms consistent with the diagnosis: a twenty-year history of chronic yeast infections and a five-year history of recurring fungal skin infections.

In addition, mold allergy symptoms and systemic yeast infection symptoms are very similar. If I remove both mold and yeast from my environment and diet, I should see considerable improvement. Later, I can add yeast-containing foods back into my diet to determine if they are a source of my symptoms. I have a feeling I’ll fail the yeast-reintroduction test (also called a “yeast challenge”) based on my reaction to a number of yeast-containing foods.

We’ve had the mold-contaminated area of our house cordoned off for a week now, and I’ve been on the diet for four days. I feel better so far, though some of my symptoms continue. That’s to be expected, though. I didn’t anticipate feeling well overnight.

As far as the diet goes, who wouldn’t see an improvement when following an unprocessed, sugar-free regimen of vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds, and a small amount of lean meat? (Though the yeast-free diet developed by Dr. William Crook in the 1980s includes all forms of lean meats, I am limiting myself to natural, humanely raised turkey and chicken, as well as tuna and salmon. I am also applying Mark Bittman’s VB6 concept — vegan before 6 p.m. — to make sure most of my nutrients come from non-animal sources and I don’t veer too far from my vegan past.)

Over the coming weeks and months, I’ll continue to chronicle my mold story, including the demolition of our second floor and the reconstruction of my diet. I should also mention that my background includes medical writing and editing at the American Academy of Family Physicians, the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center in Seattle, Washington, and the University of Washington. Having said that, I am not a physician or dietitian. Always consult with your doctor before you make any changes to your diet.

We didn’t connect the musty smell in our home with my illness. They seemed to be separate issues: I was ill and needed to figure out how to get better, and we also needed to deal with the musty odor in my office. They were two things, not one. My illness quickly became so debilitating that it was impossible to deal with the odor. It was much easier to close the closet door and hope that the mustiness would either take care of itself or that I would get better and be able to deal with it at some point down the line.

Last week, I was filling out pre-appointment paperwork a physician sent me, which included several questionnaires designed to screen for various chronic conditions. Several of the questionnaires asked about mold and mold allergies. I don’t know why I didn’t connect the illness and the mold in our home before filling out that paperwork, but the connection was obvious. Not only did I have a mold allergy, I knew I had a mold allergy. In January, my immunologist tested me for allergic reactions to twelve different molds. I had the most severe allergic reaction possible for Alternia, Cladosporium, Fusarium, Epicoccum, Helminthosporium, Curvularia, Pullaria, Stemphylium and Rhizopus.

Part of the reason I didn’t make the connection between the musty odor and my symptoms is that I didn’t realize an allergy could make a person so ill. I associated allergies with sneezing or itchy eyes. I didn’t realize mold allergies can cause flu-like symptoms, fatigue, hair loss, skin problems, headaches and other issues that can worsen with repeated or continued exposure.

My husband and I finally acknowledged that we needed to locate the cause of the mold as soon as possible and stop it at its source. After talking with several professionals, including a mold remediation specialist and a roofer, we learned that the problem most likely originated in our second-floor ceilings due to improper venting and lack of airflow between the ceiling and the roof. We knew what we had to do. We bought respirators rated for work around mold, got some tools together, removed all our belongings from the office space and closet, and began taking the closet down to the rafters and studs.

The professionals were right: The mold was evident on the rafters, which is where moisture that could not escape through the roof appears to have collected. All the nails used to secure the drywall to the rafters are rusted — more evidence that moisture was collecting in that area. The insulation and decking don’t appear to be affected, which is a good thing. But the fact that every rafter was affected means we might have to pull the drywall off the walls as well to see how far the mold extends. It also means we have to at least remove the ceilings from the entire second floor, since it’s all constructed in the same manner and has a high probability of being colonized by mold.

We bought this house because we didn’t want to have to do extensive renovation work, as we have with our other homes. I guess that just wasn’t in the cards for us. In a way, I am happy that this house has mold because its presence has helped me identify the source of what I believe has been a contributing factor in my chronic health issues. My mold allergy helps explain why my health became more compromised after moving to Seattle, where molds flourish both indoors and outdoors, and where cold, damp weather exacerbates symptoms. Now that I have awareness, I am developing an action plan — both for the house and for my health.

If we haven’t done it ourselves, we’ve known people who have, it seems: taken a vacation mostly to photograph a vacation, not really looking at what’s there, but seeing everything through the viewfinder with the idea of looking at it when they get home. Wendell Berry of Kentucky, one of our most distinguished poets, captures this perfectly.

The Vacation

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was having it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.

 
Notes

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2012 by Wendell Berry, whose most recent book of poems is New Collected Poems, Counterpoint, 2012. Poem reprinted from New Collected Poems, Counterpoint, 2012, and used with permission of Wendell Berry and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

It’s a difficult task to accurately imagine one’s self back into childhood. Maybe we can get the physical details right, but it’s very hard to recapture the innocence and wonder. Maureen Ash, who lives in Wisconsin, gets it right in this poem.

Church Basement

The church knelt heavy
above us as we attended Sunday School,
circled by age group and hunkered
on little wood folding chairs
where we gave our nickels, said
our verses, heard the stories, sang
the solid, swinging songs.

It could have been God above
in the pews, His restless love sifting
with dust from the joists. We little
seeds swelled in the stone cellar, bursting
to grow toward the light.

Maybe it was that I liked how, upstairs, outside,
an avid sun stormed down, burning the sharp-
edged shadows back to their buildings, or
how the winter air knifed
after the dreamy basement.

Maybe the day we learned whatever
would have kept me believing
I was just watching light
poke from the high, small window
and tilt to the floor where I could make it
a gold strap on my shoe, wrap
my ankle, embrace
any part of me.

 
Notes

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2012 by Maureen Ash. Reprinted by permission of Maureen Ash. Introduction copyright © 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

:: Shadows

:: Green

:: Nestled

:: Newbies

:: Roots

:: Bark

:: More Bark

:: A Tree and Its Shadow

If you had to divide your favorite things between yourself and somebody else, what would you keep? Patricia Clark, a Michigan poet, has it figured out.

Fifty-Fifty

You can have the grackle whistling blackly
from the feeder as it tosses seed,

if I can have the red-tailed hawk perched
imperious as an eagle on the high branch.

You can have the brown shed, the field mice
hiding under the mower, the wasp’s nest on the door,

if I can have the house of the dead oak,
its hollowed center and feather-lined cave.

You can have the deck at midnight, the possum
vacuuming the yard in its white prowl,

if I can have the yard of wild dreaming, pesky
raccoons, and the roaming, occasional bear.

You can have the whole house, window to window,
roof to soffits to hardwood floors,

if I can have the screened porch at dawn,
the Milky Way, any comets in our yard.

 
Notes

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2004 by Patricia Clark, whose forthcoming book of poetry is Sunday Rising, Michigan State University Press, 2013. Poem reprinted from She Walks into the Sea, Michigan State University Press, 2009, by permission of Patricia Clark and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

I love writing poems about the most ordinary of things, and was envious, indeed, when I found this one by Michael McFee, who lives in North Carolina. How I wish I’d written it.

Saltine

How well its square
fit my palm, my mouth,
a toasty wafer slipped
onto the sick tongue
or into chicken soup,

each crisp saltine a tile
pierced with 13 holes
in rows of 3 and 2,
its edges perforated
like a postage stamp,

one of a shifting stack
sealed in wax paper
whose noisy opening
always signaled snack,
peanut butter or cheese

thick inside Premiums,
the closest we ever got
to serving hors d’oeuvres:
the redneck’s hardtack,
the cracker’s cracker.

 
Notes

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2012 by Michael McFee from his most recent book of poems, That Was Oasis, Carnegie Mellon Univ. Press, 2012. First printed in Threepenny Review #107, Vol. 27, no. 3, (Fall 2006). Poem reprinted by permission of Michael McFee and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.