Help My Mom Escape Her Mold-Infested Home

Hi everyone, I’m Daniella, and I’m organizing this GoFundMe page for my incredible mom, Lilly.

For those of you who don't know her, my mom is what I call a pathologically optimistic person... insanely upbeat, happy, and as full of energy as I am.

However, for the past six months, she’s been in a nightmare situation from an ongoing infection that affects her, as well as our three dogs. We think it may be some sort of fungal organism, and perhaps other things, that eats at her skin, caused by an infestation out of her control in the apartment where she lives.

Here’s the backstory… In 2017, when it looked like college was off the table for me financially, my mom sold everything she had and moved us 3000 miles from Pennsylvania to Washington state, so that I could attend my dream school. While in Washington, she worked hard to build an online business, one she hoped would restore her finances. To grow that business, a few years later, my mom moved to Chicago, where family had a place for her to live and promised to help work in her business… more hands on deck would be a win for all.

They prepared a small apartment in the basement for her, and she moved into what appeared to be a clean and remodeled space. However, about one month later, the apartment developed plumbing issues - slow drains, overflowing toilet, and the tub backfilling with drain water while showering.

During one of her showers, she encountered a dead earthworm in the water she was standing in. A few weeks later she saw long, white worms on the floor and dark stains on the bathroom walls. That’s when it occurred to her something worse was at play in the plumbing.

After asking the family for help, she learned there was a broken main sewer pipe directly under her apartment. For reasons unknown to my mom, the pipe remains broken.

My mom made the best of the situation and worked harder on her business in hopes that it would allow her to move out quickly.

Days before arriving in Boston for my graduation, she developed a large, painful rash on the back of her neck, describing the feeling as an attack of insects burrowing into her skin. She awoke the morning of my graduation to a new rash down one side of her face, with raw, swollen skin, and small cuts. She was forced to stay home and miss my graduation – an intensely painful experience for both of us, but perhaps more so for her, after working so hard as a single mom to get me to that momentous event.

She visited Urgent Care in Boston for help, and on returning to Chicago, she visited more doctors because the infection had not only spread to her scalp, nose, mouth, and eyes, but she developed neurological and digestive symptoms as well. None of the doctors were able to diagnose the problem, but gave her many medicines to try to eradicate it (none of which have worked).

Conditions in her apartment also deteriorated, and the sensations and infection kept her up at night. She became intensely fatigued from lack of sleep, and emaciated from not eating, because she found the organisms in her food, too.

Even pest control treatments, believing the organism could be mites, were ineffective, and the infestation escalated. After buying a microscope to help pest control ID the organism(s), she saw what she could only describe to me as amoeba, which after researching, she found may have an association with mold and fungi. Whether this is the case, we can only speculate. But she found them all over her body, clothes, floors, and all over the dogs.

My mom has spent her savings and all of her credit buying dehumidifiers, air purifiers, a UV light, ozone generators, prescription medicines, essential oils, cleaning chemicals and other machines in hopes of stopping this infection. Literally everything she had.

Yet more organisms just keep coming from the broken drain.

In addition, all of the time she spends desperately trying to stop the infestation has made it impossible for her to work on her business.

My mom and I need to figure this out together. I fear for health and the toll it’s taking on her physically and mentally. She’s strong, but we all have limits.

Without leaving the infested apartment, she will never heal. Our goal is to get her out of the basement apartment.

To do that, we need a year’s rent to secure a new, low-income qualifying apartment in an affordable town far from Chicago. Since she is now receiving state-funded food assistance and healthcare, the amount we need is strictly for the rent and deposits.

If we meet this goal, it will allow her to escape this dire situation and put her on the path to recovering and rebuilding her life, to ultimately get proper treatment to clear the infection, and to finally move forward.

This sudden and bizarre experience is horrifying and could happen to anyone. Unfortunately, it happened to my mom. On her behalf, I’m asking for your help.

For any amount you can afford, we would be so grateful. And, if you can, please share this request with your friends and family.

THANK YOU!!

With love,

Dani