By Web site Editor Admin

The Suffering of Mold

To the Editor:Early last fall I left for home with my throat red and irritated by constant phlegm and coughing. My doctor prescribed antibiotics and sent me back to bear more pain. In the next month, I returned four times and left in worst condition each visit.

Nothing improved. My symptoms, like the mold in my room, only cultivated with time. The rains came and with every storm the ceilings leaked, wetting the rug, creating the perfect spore-spreading environment. The putrid stench meant more mold-finally making the room inhabitable.

In late October I noticed a dark-red mixed with the phlegm I coughed up. Blood. I missed classes and stayed with the nurses. On the University’s letterhead I have a signed note from the head nurse saying I had a severe allergic reaction to the mold in my dorm room and that it is her medical advice I not return to the room.

The nurse said to skip my classes and take the note to Dean O’Mally. I gave a copy of the letter to O’Mally and received two options. I could move to a room with a complete stranger or stay in my infested hellhole.

I phoned my mother and she drove eight hours round trip to bring me back home. My dad called the school numerous times and while at home workers came to my suite, ripped up the infested carpet and laid down tile…only in my room. Anyone with common sense sees the problem. You would think they’d replace the suite with tile, but no – that would be too much work. They don’t give a shit if you’re living in toxic conditions, as long as you pay that $30,000 tuition.

At home three specialists examined me. I had two cat-scans that determined the mold spores from my room were lodged in my nasal cavity. I needed an operation to remove them. The four-hour procedure agonized my body.

It took me two weeks to recover from the opporation and for six months I met with my surgeon. I recovered and for six months I met with my surgeon. The mold triggered chronic pneumonia and asthma; neither afflicted me before the mold. I still do not feel 100 percent myself. The pneumonia, my doctors say, will never leave the body, so I can expect a few lapses each year.

The University severed my friendships. I can never live in a dorm environment again, never have my close friends as college roommates-my college experience is dead because of this school’s wreck less negligence.

Doctors forbid me this lifestyle. It’s too hazardous to my health now. I had to leave the University, transfer to a community college and live at home. I’m always on medication and next month I start taking shots once a week for my new allergies. I am prone to multiple sinus infections.

Why should the University care? I don’t attend anymore, but I have received e-mails from friends saying there are new mold complaints this year. I hope changes are made. No one deserves this agony at such a special time in life.

Kerri WalschWakefield, Mass

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To the Editor:The journalist who reviewed “Lesson from Soprano” should know a few things before sitting down to critique theater. First, research the type of genre in which you are about to sit down to see. The choice to have people partly dressed would have been understood if she knew Lonesco wanted the audience to understand these are not characters, but real people. They are actors and you as an audience member are about to give yourself over to the suspension of disbelief. It made Lonesco uncomfortable to watch realistic theater because he felt embarrassed for the actors. He knew they weren’t really who they said they were on stage.

Next, she should have paid attention to the lesson more clearly. If she had she’d have realized the reason why you can’t find a “character” for the pupil is because her name is “the pupil.” She’s a generic character and is suppose to stand for any innocent person who might walk through the professor’s door. Saying she can “easily relate” to the professor means she relates to the Nazis, rapist, and molesters. I don’t think she meant to imply this, but it reads that way.

Finally, Lonesco would have loved this review. Why? It’s full of cliches and doesn’t make any sense. Brittany Scott is good in the Bald Soprano because she looks like Reese Witherspoon? You just did her a disservice by saying that! What the Bald Soprano makes fun of (people using lots of words to say nothing, saying cliches, missing the point in a conversation) is exactly what this writer did. It seems like she should have taken a “Lesson” from “Soprano”.

Anonymous [email protected]