![the monster within me aspergillous the monster within me aspergillous](https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/max_1200/10f7a468896643.5b6ce8918d497.jpg)
All kinds of medicines and creams from the GP, all of which seemed to provide barely any help at all, maybe just a little relief. Lastly: regarding the recurrent infection on my back: listen up Cloud because I'd put money on this one! I had this going on for years, coming and going, mysteriously, and sometakes taking weeks or months to clear. Obviously it's a big and rather depressing job, and a big cost too, but it is crucial for me. So clothes and bedding eventually get infected and have to be constantly replaced. I think I'm sweating out something mold-related, implying that the infection has taken root at quite a deep level. I need a new set every month or two, really. But over a period of time, I did start to get the mold in my home environment under better control. Hunting round the flat and identifying little patches of mold-like growth, and cleaning them up, was another big job, and that took ages and was hard work because of course, the contact from cleaning the mold lays me out flat in itself. But the air filter made one of the biggest differences.
#THE MONSTER WITHIN ME ASPERGILLOUS WINDOWS#
Dehumidifier makes sense although I don't actually have one, I just monitor the windows and open one at the slightest sign of condensation, and I keep a window open at the other end of the flat to keep humidity down (small, and careful about the location, because fungal spores also blow in from the outside environment so a permanently open window in autumn can be a very bad idea - it's a delicate balancing act). Now, I am 80-90% functional much of the time - but I can pick up mold, or seasonally it can hit me again (as it has recently) and if I can't figure it out, work out where it's coming from, and get on top of it, the symptoms all come back, one after another, like dominos - all the kind of symptoms we all know so well. Many months of complete escape from mold were needed before I started to directly perceive the effects when I was exposed again. Only after about 1-2 years hard work on multiple fronts did I become consciously aware of all the mold sensitivities that affect me, because before that, I was so assaulted by them all, constantly, that I had no "good" state to compare the "bad", mold-exposed state with. Controlling mold and fungus exposure is the big thing - and it's really, really subtle and incredibly hard to do and hard to perceive all of the exposures, so I can easily believe that it could be fundamental for everyone and many people would never notice an effect even if they did a lot to try to control mold for just a month or two. I'm a little less bullish about that, I think, but I have to say that for me at least, that has basically been my fundamental observation over many years. Lisa might take this a bit further than I would, in suggesting that extreme mold avoidance is the fundamental underlying issue for ME/CFS generally, and that toxic mold is fundamental to the condition generally. In other words, for me, getting on top of fungus infection and exposure to fungus/mold is the fundamental means I have of controlling my condition. I would put it like this: "I have a flare when it appears, and I do well when it recedes". The basic point I would make is to reverse what Cloud said above.
![the monster within me aspergillous the monster within me aspergillous](https://i.pinimg.com/474x/ae/35/14/ae3514efe056620736d36d7257a01cb9--breast-implant-illness-betadine.jpg)
I've made really good progress with understanding how all these things affect me, over the years - without changing the underlying problem at all however - so I'll share a little of what I've learned as far as it affects me. Click to expand.Bells ringing out loud and clear here for me, Cloud! Apart from having had all the other fungal infections mentioned, starting with athlete's foot around the time of onset (and before everything else kicked in), I have had several bouts of an infection on my back.