Jason Earle

The most powerfully encouraging thing that happens to us in the mold assessment business is when a sick customer gets well. Oddly enough, it happens a lot, which is why we’re in this business in the first place.

Every now and then, we get the extended privilege of telling a customer’s story on our web site and/or in our magazine, Habitat Quarterly. This is one of those stories.

Jason Earle had done hundreds of mold inspections with his Mold Dog^TM, Oreo. But this one overwhelmed him, not so much because of the rampant mold growth, but because of how sick his customer, Gordon Mast, was.

“When I first started to look around, one of the first things I noticed in the plumbing chase between the washing machine and the first-floor bathroom was a whole wall of black mold, six to ten square feet of it,” Jason recalls.

“I said, ‘Nobody spends any time down here do they?’ But I could see Gordon’s chair, his coffee cup, his TV, six feet away.

“And Gordon couldn’t stop coughing. He couldn’t even finish a sentence. Cough, cough, cough, and go spit in the sink. He looked horrible. It was difficult to watch. He was pale, thin, he looked like he was dying.”

Gordon Mast had been ill for a long time. He had leukemia, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, to be exact. In 2004, things got worse. Gordon’s wife, Susan, said her husband suddenly spiked a fever of 105. She knew he had to get to a hospital.

Things got worse again. Gordon’s body released three blood clots into his lungs, cutting his lung capacity in half and requiring full-time oxygen. He ended up in intensive care, where he “coded” once, and spent three months there and some more time in a rehab center. All he wanted to do was get well enough to get to his daughter’s wedding.

Gordon did get to his daughter’s wedding, and his grandchildren’s births, and a whole lot more. Here’s the rest of the story.