Symptoms of Mold Sickness: Is Mold Sickness causing your chronic illness? Join me as I interview holistic health coach and chronic illness advocate Carrie Baquie about her journey with mold sickness, lyme disease and more. Discover why mold sickness may be causing your chronic illness and much more.
Email her at: carrie@carriebaquie.com
Transcript from podcast
?Hello, this is Anna Laura Brown, host of the Autoimmune Rehab Podcast, where we explore ideas, solutions, and helpful hints to help you in your autoimmune healing journey. We strive to transform your health and inspire helping in you so that we can help you with your emotional healing and self-care, and some of your physical healing.
Things like diets, that kind of thing, which you know, you would find on any kind of podcast on an autoimmune. Find all the episodes with show notes@autoimmunerehab.com. And now without any further delay, let’s get started.
Hello ladies and welcome to this podcast. Today I have with me Carrie Baier, who is a holistic health coach and chronic illness alley, and I have her here to be interviewed. So Carrie, why don’t you start out by telling me a little bit and us rather a little bit about yourself and what you do. Yeah. Well, thank you so much.
I’m so glad to be here. Um, As you said, I am a chronic ally, which means I use holistic coaching to empower women facing and struggling with long-term health challenges to move out of the fear, the isolation, the overwhelm that is so common when we’re facing these struggles and move into hope, healing, and thriving so that, um, they can reclaim a life that they.
On a more personal note, I am a mom of three teenagers who keep me on my toes and a survivor of simultaneous brain injury, Lyme disease and mold illness. Oh wow. That’s a lot. That’s, uh, that’s really a lot to handle. So did you tell us a little bit more about your story then? Did you like all three of those at.
Or how did that go down for you? Yeah, it was, I’m about four years out, uh, and I’m still still trying to get to that optimal health, but it’s so much, so much better. It started out, uh, as a dementia diagnosis. They didn’t understand what was going on. I was having memory issues, cognitive issues, all sorts of indications.
and I was told it was early onset Alzheimer’s at the age of 43. And then as we proceeded with diagnostics, one of the diagnostics actually resulted in a stroke, a rare form of stroke that left me consumed with pain. Unable to talk hypersensitive to light sound in motion. With debilitating fatigue and exhaustion, and at that point I did not know that it was not dementia.
I thought I was facing the end and I thought I was facing a very rapid end. It took a year and a half to understand that it was actually a. and then another year out from that to understand that Lyme disease and mold illness were impeding my recovery well. So it’s been quite a journey . That would be for sure.
Yeah. So did anybody else in your family struggle with mold? Did you guys have mold toxicity in your house or how did that happen? Yeah, so what happened is, Once I was made aware that the mold was in my system and I wasn’t, my body wasn’t able to detoxify. We had the clue that there was a mold source somewhere in my life, and so we started testing the house and found for, for people like me, the safe medical level is uh, two and.
When we did the testing, each number was exponential, and my basement was a 34. The first floor was a 26 and the second floor was a 28, so we were in a whole heck of a lot of mold and didn’t even know it. Yeah, that’s actually pretty common. I’ve actually noticed, and I’ve actually been told by several people actually, that sometimes if you have some kind of an illness and you can’t figure out why, you know you go to doctor after doctor and they never know what’s wrong.
That mold actually can be one of the top reasons why. Yeah, and it’s so common. It’s so insidious in our environment. It’s everywhere. Mold is everywhere. There’s different ranges of levels of toxicity, and then there’s the, the portion, there’s about 23% of the population that cannot detoxify the mold out of the body.
It’s actually called something specific, which is chronic inflammatory response syndrome, and it leads to an autoimmune response, mass cell response. All of these things. as the body is trying to fight the mold that is not leaving the body and is accumulating over time. Wow, that’s crazy. So did you have to actually move, or how did you get it out of your environment then?
We took about nine months, you know, in this housing market. I don’t know about where you are, but the housing market was. Has been a little bit nuts, so, oh, yeah. , we could not actually leave and we didn’t wanna leave. We’ve been here for 16 years and we loved where we are. Um, and we didn’t have anywhere to go.
We, it’s almost like the w you know, versus w you don’t know. Uh, so we spent about nine months, um, rehabbing, rehabbing the house level by level, uh, test by, , they would do some work. They’d pull back all, like, basically it was back down to the bare bones, you know, they stripped the basement of all the walls.
Um, and then they’d test, they, they. Take a little bit more and they scrub a little bit more and they sterilize and do all the things and test. We did about five rounds of testing, five or six rounds of testing in the basement to get it to safe levels. Then it was more, uh, probably three rounds in the second floor, our first floor, and then what we found in the top floor is, More, we thought we knew the source and as we tried to remediate that source, we found that the other bathroom had a leak that we didn’t know.
So it rapidly expanded. So it just became an all-consuming, uh, experience. And we went, we actually went, um, four months, I think four or five months without a full bath. Uh, for showering and we had really great friends who helped us, you know, bridge that gap. So it was just a really challenging time to try and navigate.
At the same time that I was trying to recover, I was still quite sick, you know, I was still trying to get the lime outta my body. I was still trying to get the mold outta my body. And it’s, it’s kind of like at that point, since the mold wasn’t gone, I was trying to. Create some level of maintenance in my.
until it was gone, my exposure was gone and we could really go hard into eliminating what was hanging out in my, in my bloodstream. Well that’s, that’s really something else . That’s, yeah, that’s crazy. So far as the line goes, do you remember being bit by a shaker or anything, or did you have any warning signs that said, Hey, I might have a line coming on, or anything like that?
I didn’t have any apparent signs, but with Lyme, the signs can be that blatant bullseye or it can be flu-like symptoms. Mm-hmm. And who doesn’t have flu-like symptoms every now and then. Like how do you know that it’s from Attic Bite? You know, for example, my husband, uh, really. Very astutely. Um, he had been out in the field and he did Atic check, um, the day after he’d been out in the field and he found a tick in a very hidden space behind his knee.
There’s no way he would ever see it because it was behind his knee, right? So, um, these things, lime can be very subtle and if you don’t catch it early, it can be very, uh, Debilitating and, and the chronic Lyme is just. So insidious and so challenging. It’s just mind boggling for sure. Absolutely. Yeah, and I have some firsthand experience with it cuz I have a sister who actually had lying, but she actually did remember getting bitten by a tick, but didn’t catch it till a few months later because she didn’t realize, oh yeah, that thing, that bit me is probably what got me sick.
you know? Yeah, yeah. And she’s fortunate to have made a full recovery, but, oh, I’m so glad to hear that. I know that when she first got diagnosed, it was really hard for her to figure it out as well too. It’s, they tell, it can be really hard to figure it out, and not everybody necessarily gets bitten by a tick or even remembers seeing a tick as part of their catching the line.
You know, some people do it, they just kind of, somehow they come and hit ’em and they. Ever remember an incident with a tick? So Well, and it can be it, and it can be from you going out and doing a hike or working in the yard or any of those things. But it also could be from your dog. Your dog can bring the tick in.
Mm-hmm. and then, and there’s a transfer there. So I mean, you don’t have to be an outdoorsy nature girl to you. Be bitten. Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. So maybe now that we’re on this topic, you share a little bit about how you got yourself into remission. Then from once you had that mold toxicity and that line, what are some of the things that you did to overcome it?
You know, as I look back, This is probably not the answer that people want to hear, but as I look back, some of the most important things that I did was change my mindset. And what I mean by that is there’s some essential things. That I needed to come to acceptance of. I needed to accept that I wasn’t alone and learn to ask for help.
I needed to understand that my voice mattered, no matter how much the doctors tried to ignore me or tried to treat me like a number, when I accepted that my voice mattered and that I had power within me to stand up for what I needed. That was so, so powerful and helped me move the needle in terms of getting the solutions that I was needing and wanting.
Um, there is, there’s the power in. In accepting where you are. I think part of, part of what gets us so stuck, at least what got me so stuck is I was lost in the grief of who I no longer was and who I no longer could be. And because I was so stuck in the past and the future, I couldn’t be present to what was happening now.
and it was in the, now that I could control things, it’s in the, now that I had the power to take action. And so when I was able to make those shifts, it allowed me, then as my mind shifted, my behaviors shifted, and as my behaviors shifted, , I continued pushing, continued asking for help, continued saying, no, there’s gotta be an answer.
I did not give up when the doctors looked at me as scans or when they said, threw up their hands and tried to come up with some explanation just to get me out of the office. That wasn’t, I wasn’t gonna accept that, and maybe that’s part of my inherent nature. But this whole process, I’m sure you can attest, can really run you down and wear you out as you try to get answers.
Especially with autoimmune, which so much of that can be a mystery for so long. It can be so hard, so, oh, absolutely. I mean, it definitely is. It’s, and I haven’t had one. Lyme, at least not that I’m aware of. And probably maybe a little bit of mild, bold toxicity, if you will. But nothing super severe like what you went through.
But my backstory, in case you weren’t aware, but some of the listeners will know cause it’s in my bio and I mention it, is that I have Hashimotos. Okay? And so, you know, my thyroid. autoimmune is off the charts and well not officially diagnosed, you know, have gone through some things that made me think, you know, I may even have like fibromyalgia, I have some arthritis issues, have, you know, other autoimmune issues like that.
And it’s really tough because there’s not one size fits all. Mm-hmm. . There’s not just this magic diet or this magic pill, this magic thing that anybody can give you and you can’t just. In my experience, you can’t only focus on just the diet or just the supplements. I feel like a lot of times your mindset is really, really important.
It’s so true and, and what do you do on the days where the diet and the medicine just isn’t enough? You’re gonna have hard days, and you have to have ways to maintain your buoyancy and mindset is key to that. , it absolutely is your mindset, what you think, you know, you believe you achieve or however that statement goes.
But yeah, . Yeah, it’s absolutely true, for sure. So what would you say that you would tell somebody who’s still in the thick of it, if you will? They’re really struggling with their chronic illness and they’re trying really hard to have a positive mindset, but they’re just like, Sticking out of order sticker on my face, I’m done for the day.
You know, what would you tell them to do? ? You know, I think there’s, there’s a couple of things. One, um, I think one of the things that’s so important is to get grounded and to, to reconnect with your inner power, your inner wisdom that helps you know what’s true and, um, I think when you’re sick, it’s easy to say, I don’t know what’s happening to my body, because you probably don’t know all the answers, but there are things that you can tap into by listening to the whispers.
Shouts and everything in between that your body is trying to tell you. And so on those hard days in, in those moments when you’re, um, at the beginning maybe, or you’re having a flare up, it’s, it’s allowing yourself the grace and the compassion to get quiet and to listen to what your body’s trying to tell you.
You. Yeah, that’s good. Absolutely. Because the thing is, the reality is that our bodies do tell us, they do give us morning signs and truth be told, that’s one of my big pet peeves, if you will, with I feel like a lot of traditional allopathic medicine, if you will, is I feel like a lot of times, The doctors don’t wanna listen when you tell ’em, Hey, I have this problem.
Like I look back to before I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s several years ago, it took me three or four doctors, which is pretty typical. And the first couple doctors I told needed to run, you know, more detailed thyroid labs because I could just tell something was wrong with my thyroid, not just. based on Google symptoms, but based on just other things.
Although they didn’t wanna listen to me, they didn’t wanna listen to me. Oh, no. What did you think? No, no, everything’s fine. You know, and it’s like there’s a certain hubris. Now, I can’t say this, I can’t paint across all doctors, but I think the medical field in general carries this hubris and this barrier.
That prevents the doctors from partnering with the patients. Mm-hmm. And those doctors that really are good, those are the doctors who look you in the eye and say, how can we partner together? They get curious, what do you know? What are your symptoms telling you? They wanna listen to your stories. Mm-hmm.
We need more of those doctors. We do. Absolutely. And you know, you can tell me a little bit more about your experience with that. But my experience with that has been that unfortunately, or, you know, fortunately, however you wanna put it, typically a lot of those doctors are gonna be more, you know, outside of the insurance network, they’re gonna be more of like your chiropractors, your acupuncturists, your, you know, alternative.
And providers, if you will, naturopathic doctors. Mm-hmm. rather than MDs, or, you know, if they are like a traditional MD or d o, they’re gonna be one who’s been in practice for a while and who’s really studied more of nutrition and is more open-minded too, you know, like supplements and functional medicine and things.
Yeah. And a lot of times you’re more traditional. MD, if you will, is there. A lot of times, unfortunately, they’re kind of stuck in that system, if you will, and they’re typically not gonna be the ones that are the best listening. Yeah. And you know, I wanna note that some of it is because of the doctor themselves.
Some of it’s their arrogance. Their impatience, they’re caught up in the system, and part of it is the system itself. Yeah. The health insurance that requires no more than 15 minutes. What can you actually do in 15 minutes when someone comes to you? 10 to 15 widely ranging symptoms that you, you know, you need time to process.
You need time to like, yeah. Look at how it fits into the whole body. These doctors aren’t given enough time to really be with the patient. So it is both the doctor and the system that, um, are causing a breakdown in the service to the patient. Oh, absolutely. for sure. Absolutely. And when I did finally get my diagnosis, it was from an actual MD naturopathic doctor, not an MD, MD medical doctor that diagnosed me.
Okay. Well, I’m so glad you finally got answers. Yeah, for sure. Sam. So why don’t we move on to this next question then. So what advice would you have about the process of trying to find the right doctor or doctors or getting the most out of doctor’s appointments? For somebody who’s, you know, maybe stuck Yeah.
In the system a little bit, you know, they’re still having a lot of issues and they haven’t really been able to find the right kind of doctor or healthcare professional to help them. So I think there’s a couple of different things to do. Uh, one of the things I teach is about becoming an empowered advocate, and the approach to being an empowered advocate includes taking steps before, during, and after your appointment and in preparation for the appointment.
I believe it’s important to carve out some time to really focus on what are your goals, what is the succinct story that you’re gonna tell? Because stories sell and doctors want it in a quick, concise, um, framework. Mm-hmm. . And that framework is gonna catch their attention. or not. So you wanna be able to identify your goals, identify your story, and identify your questions.
So often we make the appointment, we do all these things. We have these hopes, dreams and expectations, forgetting answers, getting solutions. But we forgot, forgot to do the preparation. And so I think that is really pivotal when you’re struggling to get answers. So that’s part of my answer. Um, to your question.
The other thing is, going back to what I was saying about that inner wisdom, I’ll give my, um, my trouble with. Vestibular migraines, uh, vestibular is the motion orientation system. Mm-hmm. in your, in your head. And, um, I was having problems with my vision. I was having problems with my hearing. I was having all these symptoms that the doctors up until this point were saying, you know, You know, you, you need to go see a psychiatrist, right?
I’m like, oh gosh, this is, this is real stuff. And so I took the time to say, okay, these are the symptoms and how do they tie together? What, what is the system that connects them together? And you know, I don’t encourage too much Googling, but when you, when you can have the symptoms and you’re asking questions like, what is.
Body system, and I figured out that it was a vestibular system. And then I Googled vestibular doctors. And when I did that, I found some in the area and it took me some trial and error to get in. But when I went in and I talked to the doctor, oh, she was like, this is slam dunk ERs. This is a slam dunk.
There’s no question in my mind that this is Manila’s disease and this is part of what you’re dealing with. And so I feel very empowered by that and I think it’s something that is very accessible to other people. What do you think about that? No, that’s good. That’s great. I love that. And the other thing as you were talking that was coming to mind too, is potentially maybe even also trying to come up with all the different things that could be going on.
So that you can come to the plate with the doctor and say, Hey, you know, I’m having these symptoms. Here are all the different things that could potentially be happening. You know what, what do you think is happening? In other words, you’re not trying to self-diagnose yourself, but you’re trying to at least be educated enough that you have some good ideas about what could be going on.
Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s really important when you come to the. With this, this kind of information that, um, I was talking with one of my clients yesterday and it’s kind of like you have your value. What do you value, what do you want to, um, see represented in your relationship with the doctor? What is your reason?
So I want a partnership because I think that’s the most effective way. To, um, get solutions and then you give your question and you give an open-ended question, like, so how do you see our partnership working? Instead, do you believe in partnership with the patient? Do you see the difference there?
Yes, absolutely I do. And I love that. And I think the other thing I’ve heard too, and I’m sure you would agree with me on this too, is don’t be. To fire a doctor if they’re just not giving you what you need, fire them and go get another one. I mean, a hundred percent there are, you know, I, I think it’s a little.
I live in a suburban area. I don’t live in a country area, uh, um, in the country. So I have the privilege of having access to more doctors. So I don’t want to negate the very real challenge for people who live away from the suburbs, away from the cities, uh, to access a multitude of doctors. But in this day and age, There is a broadening opportunity for initial visits to be telepathic, uh, tele telehealth visits, and to, um, connect with more and more doctors.
So I do think the importance of firing a doctor is critical because you deserve the respect. You deserve to be seen. You deserve to be heard, and you deserve to be in a partnership with your doctor. Yeah, absolutely. And it’s a must. I mean, if you, if you don’t succeed at having that kind of relationship, you’re not gonna have true healing.
That’s just all there is to it. You can’t. Expect to, you know, not get what you need out of the healthcare system, whatever you call it. Even if you’re, you know, you’re going outside of traditional MDs, at the end of the day, you know, you’re still seeing some kind of a healthcare professional and, you know, if you don’t get what you need from them, then you know, it’s, you’re not gonna be able to, to get to the point that you want in most cases, especially if you’ve got something really severe going on.
You know, it’s so interesting because you made it. Remember something that helped me and that people may not be aware of, but within the healthcare system, within insurance, most insurance companies have a navigator. When you’re dealing with a. Medical crisis, and you need help navigating the medical system you can call in and there’s specific people who will be assigned to you to kind of be your companion and help you navigate the doctors who, who do you need to see next, and who is the person within the system that you can go see?
So I found that a very valuable resource. That’s awesome. That’s cool. That’s amazing. Okay, well we’re starting to almost get outta time. We still got a few more minutes. So let’s tackle a couple of these others I had here. So what would you say would be the number one most important VI advice that you would share with somebody who’s, you know, maybe they’ve had their illness for a while, and they just feel like they’re just not making any progress.
What would be the number one piece of advice you’d share with them?
I would say that the number one piece of advice coming from a holistic coach is to remember that wellbeing is achieved beyond the physical. It includes the emotional, mental, and spiritual, and so that, To get true healing, you need to be taking actions towards, um, wellness in all four of those areas.
That’s awesome. Yep. I love that. Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so then how, what, what, uh, how would somebody get in touch with you and what, uh, how do I wanna phrase this? What would you say are some of the main things that you do for people? How do you help? Yeah. So, um, first the best way to get in touch with me is carrie baier.com.
Um, and my socials are Carrie Baier. And I can spell that out or, uh, will it be in the show notes? It’ll be in the show notes for people to find, absolutely. Okay. But let’s spell it out anyway, just cuz as people are listening. So, yeah. Carrie Baki, go ahead, spell your name out. It’s, uh, c a r r i e. Mm-hmm. . And it’s B as in boy, AQUI.
Awesome. Yeah, so Carrie and her emails also Carrie, carrie bk.com. We’ve also got her phone number in here. I don’t know if you want me to put the phone number in the shell notes or not, but we’ll have, yeah, that’s fine. Okay, awesome. So we’ll have all of her contact information in the shell notes if you wanna get in touch.
You know, I am sure her website’s got some additional information above and beyond just her coaching and things like that. Probably some other useful things. People can check it out. It’s in progress. . Ok. But I do, oh, that’s always good. One of the things I have is a flareup recovery plan. So when you sign up for my newsletter, you get a customizable flareup recovery plan, which helps you take the, um, the panic out of a flare up and helps you be prepared to know who to talk to, what medicines you need to take and uh, what kind of actions you need to take.
That’s awesome. I love that. That’s amazing. That’s cool. Thank you. Awesome. Well, thank you Carrie, for talking to us, and I hope that those of you that are listening to this that really have a need for some help, that you will contact her, get in touch with her. She’s definitely one of, you know, many options out there to help you, but, you know, take action, get some help
Yeah, and I, I can’t wait to, um, Hear from you from those people who need help. I’m here and I am just, I just, one of the things I wanna say is I’ve been there, I know how it feels and I know how to shift from surviving to thriving, and I wanna help you to do the same. Awesome. Great. Amazing. Thank you.
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