Full Transcript Podcast Intro and Episode Setup 0:00 And mold is not taken seriously in the traditional medical model. 0:05 It's not even acknowledged. 0:06 And I think that is people's overall response to mold. 0:09 They shrug it off as mildew or something when in reality it is absolutely devastating. 0:15 So we began the process and I feel like our life is literally before mold was our live and then our lives is now after mold And it has completely changed 0:27 the five of us forever. 0:28 But honestly, forever for the better. 0:30 Welcome to the Deeper Healing Podcast. 0:33 I'm your host, Danielle Howley. 0:35 This is for everyone who's been dismissed, misdiagnosed or told to just live with it and refuse to accept that answer. 0:42 You're going to hear amazing patient recovery stories, raw and real in their own words. 0:47 People who found answers after everything had failed them. 0:50 You're going to hear from medical experts we trust that are pioneering new approaches to healing the body because we deeply know we're designed to heal. 0:58 Let's dig in. 1:05 This is a really special episode. 1:08 This the full interview of Ashley talking about her daughter, Ava, that was featured in the Body Burden documentary about deeper healing.
Ashley Introduces Ava's Mold Illness Story 1:17 It has never been seen before and it's unbelievably powerful. 1:22 I was in a room when it was filmed and I know her mom was tears. 1:28 And it is just an amazing story that needs to be heard in full. 1:33 So I'm going to let you listen to it now. 1:35 And we're so happy that they're doing so well. 1:39 I'm Ashley Chakaris, and we had a deeper healing story that began with my daughter, who at the time was a senior in high school. 1:49 We were normal and normal family doing our thing. 1:54 And in hindsight, things actually weren't normal. 1:56 It's just I didn't have the lens to actually see. 1:59 And then one day she passes out in the bathroom and a few days later is covered in rashes. 2:07 Thankfully, I've been in a functional space for some time and knew better than to go the traditional route. 2:14 So I actually texted Danielle over at Deeper Healing and was like, listen, something's up. 2:19 I don't know what, but something is wrong. 2:22 And thus began our journey here.
Early Symptoms and First Warning Signs 2:25 Remember thinking a lot, like she's just so stressed all the time, just stressed. 2:31 So, I would try to talk her off the ledge, so to speak. 2:35 She started manifesting actually a bunch of anxiety in hindsight. 2:39 That was something that I When somebody would talk about anxiety, I didn't really know how to fully define that. 2:47 And then at the time, she was a senior in high school, like college, all the things. 2:51 So there was lot on her plate, but I started noticing her coloring actually. 2:56 Her coloring started looking grayer and grayier. 3:00 And I'll never forget this one night. 3:02 This was definitely a pivot point for us. 3:03 My husband and I were taking her out to dinner. 3:06 She came out of her bedroom. 3:07 And, I must have looked at her strangely because she asked me, what, do I not look pretty? 3:14 I said, no, you look great. 3:16 You look, great, let me go grab dad. 3:18 And I went and grabbed my husband and took him aside. 3:21 And then I told him that day, something's up with her. 3:23 I don't know what, but something is definitely up her coloring. 3:27 Literally that Monday, I got a call from the school that she had passed out in the bathroom and to come get her here. 3:35 She won homecoming queen on a Saturday for her school. 3:41 You fast forward just 14 days later, these rashes that are covering her face. 3:48 And I'm not talking about like a little patch, I am talking, it looked like kind of red panda bear circles on the eye. 3:55 It was an unusual rash. 3:58 She had been in the hospital, we rolled out appendicitis, came in, the next day we met with Jules.
Testing, Mold Discovery, and Home Investigation 4:05 And Jules asked, are you fasting? 4:07 She said, yes. 4:07 So we said let's just run every test there is. 4:10 She's very laid back, which I really appreciated during that journey because we were nervous enough. 4:16 Taking on her countenance of just, hey, we're in good hands. 4:20 We're relaxed here. 4:21 That meant a lot to me as a mom. 4:23 So we got the tests back within a matter of days, and it was wild to see the insane imbalances in what should have been a healthy 17-year-old kid, 4:34 18- year- old kid. 4:36 One of which was her entire immune response was sideways, which usually is an indicator of mold. 4:43 So when we saw that, the next step is we're going to test for mold and we are going test your house for a mold, Once you start down this rabbit hole of mold, 4:56 it takes on... 5:00 its own pattern of becoming, I mean, essentially a monster because not only are you dealing with, in this case, my child, 5:10 you're now dealing your home and you are dealing, do we move out? 5:16 Do we stay? 5:16 Who do hire? 5:17 All the things and it is extremely stressful on a family and unless you've walked it, You kind of, I noticed people just shrug their shoulders at mold 5:28 and they dismiss it. 5:29 And mold is not taken seriously in the traditional medical model. 5:34 It's not even acknowledged. 5:37 I think that is people's overall response to mold. 5:40 They shrugs it off as mildew or something when in reality it is absolutely devastating. 5:46 So we began the process. 5:49 I feel like our life is literally before mold was our live, and then our lives is now after mold. 5:57 And it has completely changed the five of us forever. 6:01 But honestly, forever for the better. 6:03 So I'll never forget we had them come in, the mold guys. 6:10 He walked around and he was like, I think you're good. 6:12 I don't see anything, but we'll see what the test says. 6:17 Test comes back and Ava's room had quadrupled the amount of spores in her room compared to anybody else's in the rest of the house. 6:27 Okay, well now we have something going on in our room.
Moving Out and Supporting Ava's Recovery 6:30 We have an inverted floor plan. 6:33 So, and I say that for a reason, that night we had a basketball game. 6:37 My contractor was there, told him everything that's going. 6:40 He said, I'm going to come over tomorrow, we're going cut open her ceiling in So he did that at 8 a.m. 6:46 the next morning and I was coming down the stairs and heard him say to my husband, well there's your problem right there. 6:54 And right in the space there had been a leak in our shower and there was no sign of water anywhere. 7:02 We had zero signs of any kind of damage, nothing. 7:07 There began the whole process of the home component. 7:12 We thought we could stay there with everything that we were going to do, which was a lot. 7:16 We really thought that could live there. 7:18 And long story short, what happened was, a duct got cut barely underneath the house. 7:28 Because mold attaches to dust that's microscopic, it was getting filtered back into her duct system that was blowing directly into the bedroom. 7:37 So she and I had to move out for a few months. 7:42 she had to leave school for a while because she, not only as a teenage girl, you're already super self-conscious and think of what you look like, 7:52 but her rashes were so substantial and the mold had done a number on her whole energy. 7:58 So she was, I remember her iron was at three when it should be 60 to 100. So she was literally just circling the drain and had just, 8:09 you know, it's one thing on top of the other. 8:12 And they'll say this at Deeper Healing because it is so true. 8:14 It's never just one. 8:15 You know we want it to be one, but it usually three, four things that are working synergistically together to essentially make the patient throw their 8:26 hands up and like, what's wrong with me? 8:28 And Ava slowly started getting better. 8:31 But one that was glaring, really interesting with mold, First of all, many people have the respiratory issue because Ava's was external. 8:39 I felt like as a child, she was more apt to dealing with it. 8:42 Had it been internal, I wonder really where we would be right now, frankly. 8:46 So I'm grateful that it was externally, even though that was hard. 8:50 But because mold attacks your neurology, the anxiety and everything that I had seen at the front end of the school year, 8:58 it just all started making sense. 9:01 That was another reason I took out anything that would cause her cell's anxiousness. 9:06 I wanted her entire physical body to experience as much calm and peace during this as possible. 9:13 And because it takes a while to pull out the mold, I knew the neurology component of that with her anxiousness, it would take time.
Healing Progress and Final Takeaways 9:20 But I could put in clean food, clean air, clear water, no EMF. 9:26 I can provide an environment for her to heal. 9:29 And it was very hard as a mother. 9:32 And she kept saying, I'm not getting better, and that's one thing with mold. 9:37 In really any journey with health, it takes time. 9:40 You have to be patient with your body. 9:42 Didn't take one second to get there. 9:44 It's not going to take a second and get out of there, praise God she's better. 9:47 She's in college living her best life. 9:50 But man, oh man. 9:52 it took a minute to go there and I think as mom, We do tend to run the household and we make the decisions for the fork and everything else that is bought. 10:07 We're usually the ones doing this. 10:09 So do the things to help your body to heal, is what I would say, and educate yourself. 10:16 Meet with people that have walked through it. 10:18 There's such value in other people's stories. 10:20 And to see, like Danielle had showed us, this woman who came in, similar story but different than Ava's, rashes on the face. 10:27 I remember that day she showed us this woman, but then she show us what the woman looked like after and she was healed. 10:35 And that I was like, AVA is gonna be fine. 10:37 Like my daughter's gonna to be okay. 10:39 It's going to take a minute to get there and I'm gonna live to tell the tale and so is she and we have and it's over. 10:49 Thank goodness. 10:52 That is an amazing story of recovery. 10:56 Ava's at college now. 10:57 She's thriving and an incredible mom to stay on it and figure it out and get her to deeper healing. 11:04 So for them, they were close by. 11:06 It was easy for him to come in here and to get everything that they needed. 11:09 For anyone who's listening to this episode, who knows that they are suffering with mold illness, mycotoxin illness and need help, 11:17 we have created a comprehensive mold course, mold recovery course that will be in the show notes, but also it's right on our website. 11:26 And we want to help as many people as possible never have to suffer like so many do with the mold. 11:34 So stay well friends till next episode. 11:37 We hope this episode inspired you. 11:39 Here's how to go deeper. 11:40 Visit deeperhealing.com to become a patient. 11:43 Online, we have loads of courses and a free toxin quiz. 11:47 Subscribe and please, please share this with someone who needs it. 11:51 It's always that one-on-one support that really gets people to find deeper healing. 12:03 Remember, this is educational content, not medical advice. 12:07 The information shared here should be discussed with your own personal healthcare provider. 12:11 If you're excited by listening to the medical experts or the personal recovery stories on here and you want to start your deeper healing journey, 12:19 go to deeperhealing.com and start the process.
Comments