| | Issue #20.05 :: 08/27/2008 - 09/02/2008 | Affected by mold: Iris Harden’s story
| BY MORGAN RINEY
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AUGUSTA, GA The CSRA’s most outspoken crusader on the subject of mold and the illnesses it can cause is Iris Harden. She blames mold for depriving her of her home, belongings and health.
In June 2003, she and her husband Tommy lived in Harlem, Ga. She was already immune compromised. Soon after they moved in, Iris began experiencing strange symptoms including acute abdominal pain, hurting lungs, muscle pain.
Iris Harden's health has been debilitated by mold.
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“I didn’t think anything of it but it got worse and worse and worse,” she said. “I remember after it got really bad I looked in the mirror one day. I always took good care of myself, and I started screaming and called my husband in there; there were indentions in my face.
"There was a weird sensation in there. It scared me to death.”
Iris said there was a water leak in the home that had been there about a year. “It was just a small leak, though, not too bad. We told our landlord about the leak, didn’t tell him it was making me sick, I didn’t realize it. It never got repaired.”
Tommy, who had always been healthy, began to experience different symptoms.
“He coughed up tons of mucus — literally a Coke can of mucus a day,” Iris said. “He still does.”
In fact, it has worsened. “His stomach is all swollen. They think something is leaking in his gut.”
The couple went to and from the emergency room. Iris looked at an X-ray she had taken after being in the house for 11 months. She was diagnosed with a lung disease that usually comes from toxic exposure. There is no cure for it.
The couple moved out of the house they believed caused their illness in March 2005.
“I thought it was insulation,” Iris said. “I had blood coming from my eyes… and the burning... I could feel the pain in my chest, in my stomach. I could just feel it. It was the most pain I have ever been in my life.”
The couple moved to a nearly new double-wide home in Harlem, where it got a little better, but soon the symptoms were back, and they were just as sick as before.
Toward the end of the year, Iris began to believe it had to be mold.
She believes that when they moved from their old mold-infested house, spores clung to all of their belongings. Spores can lie dormant for years, resting like dust in buildings or floating in the air. When they find the right conditions — moisture and nutrients — they bloom again. That’s how mold could follow them to their new home.
“I was spending nights down at the Huddle House because I had nowhere else to go,” Iris said. “We were homeless for a while.If I can prevent anyone from going through this, I want to. People don’t understand about cross-contamination. We took everything with us and that was the mistake we made.”
None of the doctors were helpful, according to Iris. She told doctors that something in the environment was causing her health problems, but they turned away from her, she felt.
“I remember sitting on the table with blood coming out of my eyes and blisters on my eyes and contortions on my face and they wanted me to talk to a psychiatrist.”
Iris saw the psychiatrist, who told her it could very well be something in her environment. But still, no one helped her.
When the Hardens had their house tested, they found high levels of several different types of molds. After deep-tissue skin samples, Iris was diagnosed with trichothecene poisoning.
Trichothecene is a poisonous mycotoxin released by some types of mold. It’s used in biowarfare. Iris said she was diagnosed with the most extreme case her doctors had ever seen.
Six months later, her husband received an identical diagnosis.
Iris suffers attacks that debilitate her. She talked about one in 2006. “Toxins attacked my central nervous system; my face was all twisted; I couldn’t speak; I couldn’t think. The pain was horrible. My husband just started crying to see me in that condition.”
Iris considered what has been most difficult for her in her toxic poison fight.
“Chronic pain is one thing, but this pain you can’t even imagine,” Iris recalled. “Your flesh feels like somebody beat you up with a hammer. Nobody takes it serious. They think you can just paint over it. … Somebody has to have the courage to speak out.”
To find help, the Hardens had to go to North Carolina for six months. “We almost froze to death,” said of her time spent in a rickety van as they were being treated.
They had no money, but the doctor treated them at his own expense. Iris is convinced that if those doctors hadn’t helped, she wouldn’t be alive today.
At one point, Iris had gone to MCG Health. She met with people in emergency medicine. A doctor there told her that they would be an “asset to their research,” she said, and related his understanding of how dangerous invasive fungus could be. When she left that day, she gave the doctor all of her information. He never called her back.
Later, after Iris’ story was picked up in the media, MCG Health disputed Iris’ claims about mold. MCG Health told television station WJBF that doctors declined to make themselves available for interviews about mold. “There is no such thing as toxic mold,” the hospital spokesperson said. “People are allergic to mold and that varies by person.”
“It’s weird to me that they would go on the news [on WJBF] with Mary Morrison and say toxic mold didn’t exist,” Iris said. “That just blew my mind.”
To learn more about Iris Harden, you can visit one of her Web sites, myspace.com/faceoftoxicmold or survivingyellowrain.blogspot.com.
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