New Beginnings

Today is my birthday. I honestly never thought I would see 44. This year has been … the hardest year of my life. I have been fighting for my life for 3+ years. Why? Because the apartment we currently live in, almost killed me.

As I left my friends house, the first thing on the agenda this morning was go to the postal office, and get my address changed. I tried changing it online last night, but it required I do an “in-person verification”. After a quick 10 minute wait, I was off to the new apartment.

I went to our new place this morning right away to drop off the check, and collect the keys. I did a quick glance around. Loved what I saw. I headed back to the old apartment to pickup what I call my “datacenter”. The server that hosts the blog, router, modem, and my RAID array. I wanted that stuff out of the old apartment as soon as we got the new one. I slowly made my way up the stairs, and got into the apartment. I could smell the mold. Being away for those few days, I can tell a difference in air quality 100%.

I quickly shutdown everything, unplugged everything, and carefully put everything in a tupperware bin. I had to take my time getting to the Jeep. I am absolutely NOT supposed to be doing this, but I needed to make sure none of that stuff was damaged. I’m only going to trust myself to move it.

Took me about 20 minutes to get back to the Jeep, get loaded up, and headed out to the new place. Our apartment is on the first floor which is awesome, but my parking spot is in the basement, which is fine. I made my way slowly into the apartment with the bin. Stopping every 200ft or so to rest. I made it into the new apartment, got everything hooked up and everything is working. I spent more time than I should have, but I wanted to make sure stuff was working before I left to see infectious disease.

I went to infectious disease right after. The main concern was my WBC going back up. When Dr. Kaufman came in, I told her whats going on. She couldn’t believe it, but she did. She agreed 100% that the mold found in my head, the source is the apartment. I told her I left 2 days ago, and that I am starting to feel better. That the symptoms are starting to calm down.

She told me that I will be staying on the Posaconazole for the rest of my life. Sucks, but it is what it is. They upped my Vancomycin to 2g every 12 hours, which I was looking forward to. She will keep me on both that and the Ceftriaxone for awhile. She understands how much my body has been under attack for a very long time.

I then asked her to write a letter describing the surgery, what was found, observations while I was hospitalized, and her observations once we were told “it was safe to return” to the apartment. You can literally see since 12/5, my bloodwork looking worse and worse week by week. I’m just glad I caught onto all this. She will write the letter with everything, with a recommendation that all occupants of the current unit vacate immediately. I was ecstatic. Why?

Because now the property has 0 ground to stay on. Now they look like they are trying to force me to stay in a hazardous environment that will probably kill me eventually, but the only way out will be if I sign their stupid settlement. This is going to look quite poorly with them in court.

I told her I had the apartment retested, as well as showed her that the crew being sent in were not mold remedition people. She immediately asked “Where is their PPE?”. I replied “Great question”.

She fully gets it now. She said that she will do whatever it takes to get me back to where I should be. She knows and understands that my CVID is real. Couldn’t ask for a better birthday gift.

The plan is to get me, and the cats into the apartment tomorrow. Since I have the internet, I’ll be just fine. Just need to bring an inflateable mattress, some sheets, some clothes. I’ll be good. The plan is to get everything out of the apartment by the 28th, and turn the keys into the night box on the 29th. I will have 0 interaction with the office staff.

Let’s be real, they have endangered our lives for too long, and ignored things. Negligence is the only word I can use. My attorney asked me for a number yesterday, that number has now gone up, significantly. I also sent my attorney the scenario of if/when this goes to court. The way that Colorado law has been written for damages guidelines, is that I can sue for what was billed to insurance, and this is on top of pain & suffering. I won’t be disclosing any of this on the blog unfortunately, as most likely when this is all said and done, I’ll have to sign an NDA once a settlement is reached.

Of course I never got a response from the property manager about the balance on your account. I’ll email her tomorrow and basically cut her off tomorrow.

I’m done with this place 1000%.

My friends took me out to dinner last night. It felt really good to get out, and be social again for once. I cannot remember the last time I got out. Since my diet restrictions from the heart attack, and also my CVID on top of my teeth, that somewhat limits the amount of things I can eat now. Again, sodium being #1, but I also have to watch out for sugars, fats, processed foods, etc. So I picked a sushi place thats near downtown, that way everyone could find something on the menu that wasn’t cardboard. I am not supposed to eat white rice, but I bent the rules a bit last night, because its my birthday. I also ordered low-sodium fried rice w/ no butter. At least the kitchen was able to accomodate my weird diet.

As my friends rolled in, Neil handed me a bag. We were so deep in conversation, and just the moment, I sort of forgot it was there. We all ordered, and then I turned to the bag and started opening stuff.

I got a flipper zero. Most people don’t know what this is, but its a hacking device. Can pretty much be used to hack anything, from USB attacks, RFID, anything that communicates wirelessly. I was ecstatic. I cannot wait to play around with it :). I also got a replica of my Jeep in hot wheels, which honestly was really cool and thoughtful. I’m probably going to leave it in the packaging, but bring it to work to display once I come back. Lastly I got Gun Butter. This is probably one of the best lubricants for guns. Since we go out a lot, it will come in handy once I get one of the parts for my gun back that literally exploded 2 months ago.

I’m really lucky to have friends in my life that truly care about me. I’m glad that I felt healthy enough tonight to get out there, and just be “normal” for once.

After dinner, we stopped by the old apartment to see my wife. No joke, not even 2 minutes into the apartment, and I felt the sickness of the apartment hit me like a ton of bricks. Anies went and got my respirator, and I wore that while we were at the apartment. We started to formulate a game plan on how tomorrow will go, since tomorrow, I’ll be evacuating the cats to the new apartment.

I also told her to pack my bathroom up so that I can shower and stuff at the new place. So tomorrow I’ll get the cats, their stuff, and my bathroom moved over to the new place. I also need to ship out some stuff tomorrow, so I’ll have to yet again return to that fucking hell hole of an apartment to grab things.

This is so unnecessary, but at this point, it is. The property is doing nothing to help. They are so focused on getting me to sign their pathetic settlement agreement because they know the storm is coming.

Unfortunately, there is going to be an F6 tornado that hits them. I will be relentless in getting what I deserve, for what they put us through, and continue to.