Dana Anhalt, a writer from Huntington, New York, suffered from extreme pain and allergies all throughout her childhood but a diagnosis always seemed to elude her. While she was eventually diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2016, treatment didn’t help and her health continued to decline.
However, in early 2017, that all changed when her decades-long struggle was finally brought to light: she had been slowly poisoned by toxic black mold for 35 years.
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A flood in the family basement had been lurking and growing black mold but no one knew it. In fact, it wasn’t until Anhalt was 16 and got a fever that the problems began. From then on, she was sick often, plagued with constant sinus infections, repeated rounds of strep, migraines, hormonal trouble, and mounting gastrointestinal symptoms. 1
“After my mum passed, I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and did not respond to any of the standard treatments. By 2011 I was almost entirely bed bound, and by 2012 I was ravaged with muscle and joint pain so severe that I often vomited from the intensity. I was trapped in a body that could not articulate what I was going through or seek comfort in connection with others.” 2
She also developed severe allergies and dropped down to a shocking and dangerous 70 pounds in her twenties and thirties.
“I had been developing multiple chemical and food sensitivities over the years, but they skyrocketed out of control, leaving me with almost nothing left that I could eat. I became allergic to all pain medications, and had no relief from the physical agony. In addition, I was getting outrageous symptoms of histamine excess: rashes, flushing, full body itching and burning so intense that it would keep me up for 10 days at a time.”3
