West Paris family molded by mold

WEST PARIS —  It has been, says Judy Lewis, the most harrowing experience of her life.

In January, 1999, she and her husband, Scott, along with their two-youngest children, moved into a new home they’d just purchased in Central Maine.

The move from Lewis’ native West Paris was made to put Scott closer to work, and for a time, everything seemed to work out fine.  Then, each member of the family began to get sick.

“It was awful,” recalls Scott. “It was like a cold that just would not go away.  We all felt just awful, all of the time.”

In time, Scott lost his sense of smell, while Judy’s memory became so poor that she could not even remember her son’s birthday, when asked.  Eventually, she had to give up her job in an assisted living facility.

“I just was not with it at all,” she says.

Eventually, the family found out that their home was infested with toxic mold.  When they fled the home in June, 2000, they left everything behind.  Even a washing machine, metal and scrubbed with ammonia, made them sick until removed from temporary quarters back in West Paris.

The mold, the product of a backed-up sewer in the home’s finished basement during the tenure of a previous owner, had turned to what Scott describes and a “thick, black goo” inside the walls.  The Lewises thought for a time that it could be cleaned, but as their health grew worse, and mold from the now opened walls began to migrate, they knew it was a lost cause.

“We just left everything,” recalls Scott.  “And then we threw away the clothes we wore when we left, so we literally did not even have the shirts on our backs.”

Charity from fellow members from Auburn Baptist Church got the Lewises back on their feet, while a settlement from a lengthy court battle gave them enough  for a down payment on a new home and chance to start over.

However, health problems linger.  Scott has “multiple chemical sensitivity” while Judy says she waged a daily battles with brain injury.  The children, she says, struggle with weakened immune systems, getting sick easily and often.

Now, Judy has written a 264-page book chronicling her family’s ordeal.  In “Mold to Molded” she expands upon notes originally taken during the worst of her heath failure as proxy for her failing memory.

She recounts her family's long-road to recovery, along with the seeming chance encounters that led her to the Florida church group which printed her book, the woman who would put in countless hours editing it and even the prior owner of the toxic home — who also suffered health problems until leaving the home, but never knew why.

Subtitled, “Being Molded in His Image,” Lewis’ book also tells how the harrowing experience strengthened her family’s bond with Christ.

“This book is the story of how God used a difficult situation to bring our family closer to Himself,” she says.

Lewis will be available to sign copies of her book and answer questions abut her family’s experience from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, February 21, at Books ‘n Things, in Norway.

Copies of the book also may be ordered from Lewis’ website, www.moldtomolded.com