Day 42 | Driven Away by a Plume

Well… Today was a much better day… until 10:30pm! I had enough energy to do the laundry and take a short walk. Brett was able to get some work done and we even got to talk to my family over the phone.

Unfortunately, things took a dramatic turn for the worse as we started getting ready for bed. I got this stabbing pain in my heart. Oh dear! A classic biotoxin exposure symptom. Again a sharp pain in my heart. Then over and over. As many as five stabs in 30 seconds.

We decided to drive away from our campsite to see if changing locations would make it go away. We drove 10 miles up the road but the stabbing pains continued and I got scared. I started praying really hard!

Brett suggested I try getting out of the car to see if I was reacting the car itself. I didn’t have any new stabbing pains while I stood outside for a minute so we decided to get back in the car and start driving to our campsite. Maybe it was the car and we could sleep in the tent instead? But why did the car go bad all the sudden? That didn’t make any sense.

But as we drove in the direction of our campsite the stabbing chest pain returned followed by throat swelling. Then I started feeling like my brain was being squeezed over and over. Ouch! Another classic symptom. It seemed to be getting worse the closer we got to our campsite. Maybe it was the location? I took a Benadryl and we turned around again.

We didn’t get very far before we decided to stop and make sure it wasn’t the car after all. I got out of the car, walked 30 feet away, took a few deep breaths and waited. This time my symptoms did not improve. At this point, we had no idea what to do so we decided to keep driving away from our campsite. Then it struck me, today was a really windy day! Could it be a plume of mold spores and biotoxins from a bad city? Other mold avoiders have reported plumes traveling several hundred miles.

“What direction was the wind blowing today when you were sitting up on the bluff?” Brett asked.

“It was blowing into my face, but from the left side.” I said.

“I think that’s southwest.” Brett said. “But let’s stop and see what direction it’s blowing now.”

We stopped, pulled out our iPhone compass, and stuck our fingers up in the air. We both agreed, it was still blowing from the southwest. Were there any problematic cities within “pluming distance”? I pulled up a map. Sure enough Phoenix and Tucson, both reported to be problematic by mold avoiders, are directly southwest of El Malpais National Monument!

It seemed bizarre but we decided to try driving east, out of the wind’s path. Sure enough, my symptoms began to lessen! We found a spot by the side of the road, about 40 miles away from our campsite and settled down to sleep. I should have decontaminated like a good mold avoider but it was 2:00am. The whole ordeal had lasted over 3 hours and we were exhausted! We’d start being good mold avoiders again in the morning.

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