A Big Black Tub Of... Hope?

Sometimes life tosses a surprise your way.  Sometimes that surprise is bad.  Sometimes it is black and moldy.  Why would there be any reason to be happy about that?

At least the P5 got it's Grand Traverse Bay Photo Op.

I have been mentioning ever-increasing breathing problems in my posts.  Things on that front kind of came to a head last week when the shortness of breath not only prevented workouts but normal daily activities as well.  I went over the the clinic associated with the hospital to get some answers.

A one way ticket to jitterville...

Make that a round-trip.

While everyone could tell that my breathing was definitely impaired the test just kept coming back normal.  This actually raised some concern that there might be a clot in the lungs, a pulmonary embolus.  Fortunately, that test also came back clean.  The conclusions were that I do not have any of the big "terribles" associated with the lungs, clots/cancer/etc, but that I have high level of inflammation and irritation, not to mention asthma.

The beautiful Michigan coastline.
It's killing me to not be out there all day every day!

As all of this was conspiring to ruin another training block, I have been doing some work on the camper as well.  I found a great RV repair guy that would work on the camper here in the park and had him come out and get started on a list of long overdue repairs.  I also made more progress on the floor.

One of those long-overdue repairs was to address the fact that the AC wasn't clearing it's condensation properly.  I really hadn't since before I owned it.  As we took the AC apart, we discovered a horror.  The entire inside of the unit was covered in mold with the largest concentration on the fan blades.  In other words, the tactic of controlling mold/mildew in the camper by using the AC as a dehumidifier was actually causing massive amounts of mold spores to be blown into the camper.  By halfway through the clean up process, I was so ill that I had to sit outside in the grass and just focus on breathing.

The mold is all the dark color to the liquid.
The foam is the stuff they used to clean it.
This was just a portion of what came off.

 I won't ever know for sure if the mold is the cause of the breathing issues, but 24 hours after it's removal, I was as sick as I have ever been and 48 hours after it's removal , I had the best workout day I have had in a long time.  They think they got it all, though it will remain to be seen if it tries to grow back.  I won't hesitate to replace it if I start to have difficulty again.  I am not 100% and can definitely feel that damage has been done but this body is surprisingly strong in it's ability to heal itself whenever I stop torturing it, so I am optimistic right now.

This is what I have been missing in favor of clinic walls and nebulizers.

I have blogged so many times about feeling like there had to be a root cause for the sudden downturn in my health about a year ago (fatigue, chronic hives, asthma, etc)... I can only hope I have that answer.  The timeline and symptoms certainly fit but at this point I am hesitant to declare anything solved... largely because I am afraid to jinx it.  Hoping though....

In the meantime... LET'S RIDE!