The House of Dreams and Dragons 

By: Matthew T. Corbitt

2013: The House of Dreams and Dragons

Within six months of marriage, my wife decided that my small, window-starved bachelor apartment was unfit for two. To be honest, she was right—it only had a few small windows and radiated the atmosphere of a bachelor pad. It wasn’t a place where a family could grow. Wanting to be wise with money, I started looking for a house that would fit two criteria: it had to be modest enough to keep us within budget, and it had to hold the potential for profit through appreciation. That was when I noticed a home in my parents’ neighborhood. It had been abandoned for two years, but it seemed to check all the boxes. I have always wanted a family compound, and here was the perfect place right next to my uncle, grandparents, and parents!

After a few months of wrangling with the bank, we finally took possession of the HUD house. We began renovations right away, though only at the surface level at first. I didn’t know it yet, but something far more sinister than peeling paint and dated tile was lying in wait. I remember evenings when I would come home from work and tear out the old tile by hand, while my wife scraped away popcorn ceilings and painted the walls. Those days were hard, yes, but they were also magical—newlyweds shaping a home together, turning brokenness into beauty.

But within three days of moving in, the dream soured. Out of nowhere, I was struck by a migraine so severe it left me bedbound for four days. Nothing could touch it—no medicine, no steaming shower, no ice packs, no caffeine. The pain was relentless, unyielding. When it finally lifted, I thought it was a fluke, a one-time storm. But I was wrong. These headaches became regular, overpowering, and merciless. They came like waves in a storm tide, always returning, always consuming.

By the end of that first year, the physical torment gave way to something darker. Nightmares began to creep into my sleep—disturbing, twisted dreams that felt like more than just imagination. They were heavy, suffocating things that clung to me even in the light of day. It was as if the house itself was breathing down our necks, whispering in the silence, reminding me that the dragon I had awakened was not yet done with me.

2014: Erosion

By 2014, my health had begun a slow but steady decline. When my wife and I first moved into the house on Meadow Pond, I was in peak condition—198 pounds of solid muscle, lifting and running regularly, and feeling stronger than ever. Life was good, and my body reflected the discipline I had maintained for years. But as the months passed within that home, something began to change. The longer I stayed there, the worse I felt. What started as subtle shifts became an undeniable pattern: my strength was fading, and my weight was rising.

At first, I chalked it up to married life. Everyone jokes about gaining weight after marriage, and I convinced myself this was all it was. But the truth was harsher. No diet I tried, no fast I undertook, could stop the relentless creep of pounds. My body seemed to resist every effort, as though it had turned against me. The nightmare was not the weight alone—it was the helplessness of fighting a battle I could not seem to win.

Even in the midst of this decline, I pushed forward. I continued to minister, to preach, and to pour myself out for others. Yet behind the sermons and the smiles, I was struggling. High blood pressure had entered the picture, forcing me to slow down when I wanted to run. Breathing became difficult at times, as if my lungs were learning to breathe sand. And the allergies—those were perhaps the most bewildering of all. I had gone from a man with hardly a single sensitivity to someone allergic to what felt like the entire world. Grass, dust, pollen, foods—everything seemed to conspire against me.

It was as though my body, once my greatest ally, had turned traitor. And yet, even in that season, I refused to retreat fully. I pressed on despite the weight of my own affliction. 2014 was not defined by a sudden collapse but by a slow erosion—a steady unraveling that I did not yet understand but could no longer ignore.

2015: Collapse

In 2015, everything seemed to fall off a cliff. In March, I was rushed to the ER in Las Vegas for my first episode of AFIB and POTS. The trigger was most likely an unsanitary hotel room, but in that moment, none of the details mattered. My pulse was soaring over 150, and every symptom pointed toward a heart attack. It was one of the most terrifying moments of my life. I could barely walk, and to make matters worse, the nurse who finally placed me in a room was clearly high, leaving me with little confidence in the care I was receiving.

After returning home from Las Vegas, the nightmare only deepened. I couldn’t sleep more than forty-five minutes at a time. Each time I woke, my heart thundered violently in my chest, often throwing me back into AFIB. For three long months, I scraped by on no more than two to three hours of broken sleep each night. The exhaustion hollowed me out, and my body betrayed me further as I steadily gained weight and felt worse with each passing day. On top of my physical decline, the ALJC District was facing serious problems, the church itself was mired in struggles, and my health—body, mind, and spirit—was unraveling all at once.

2016: Broken Investments

By this point, I was both physically and mentally spent. Ministry had become impossible; I could no longer serve effectively. Even walking was a struggle, and I was weighed down by a cabinet full of prescriptions. Doctor after doctor examined me, yet none could explain what was happening or offer a way forward.

Relief only came when I began to let go of the bad investments in my life—the habits, places, and relationships that drained me instead of giving life. That lesson, though hard-earned, became one of the most valuable I will ever carry. It was around this time that I started searching for a house in Little Rock. That decision, simple as it seemed, likely saved my life. Why? Because I wasn’t just fighting for myself anymore—I was about to welcome twins into the world.

2017: Bed Rest and Blindness

My wife’s pregnancy was incredibly difficult, and she was eventually placed on bed rest. She, too, had been affected by the mold, though her body seemed to clear it more easily than mine. Still, the strain of being confined made her a handful to care for, and to this day I insist the mold had as much to do with her restlessness as anything else.

Meanwhile, the more I worked on the house, the easier it became for me to walk and breathe. At the time, I couldn’t quite connect the dots, but something about the process was working. By the time we finally moved in, I was operating at about 80% of my normal health. I had managed to shed 20 pounds, was able to work out lightly again, and for the first time in years, I felt like myself returning.

A friend eventually suggested that I was dealing with mold illness, but I dismissed it as nothing more than hocus pocus. Looking back, I can only shake my head—I was stubborn, and in that moment, more than a little foolish.

2018: The Dark Days

Everything seemed to be improving until a July hailstorm brought a small leak into our home. Without a dehumidifier, that minor leak quickly turned into a superficial mold problem—but that “small” problem triggered the most devastating collapse of my health. One day at work, I suffered a transient stroke. A coworker had to drag me out of the office and force me into my wife’s waiting car; the ambulance would have taken too long. That moment marked the beginning of the dark days.

The timing could not have been more cruel. Earlier that year, I had been offered a position I had dreamed of my entire life. Yet when the opportunity finally arrived, I was too broken in body to accept it or even be of use. By 2018, I was using a wheelchair or rollerchair regularly. My wife would open the door before I arrived home, with a chair already waiting. She parked my jeep for me, then pushed me inside and guided me to the bed where I would collapse, utterly spent. It was awful.

2019: Crawling

This was the season when I began passing out even while lying in bed. My body was so weak that I had to crawl the short ten feet to the bathroom. I spent so many days and nights in the ER that I came to know the staff by name, even recognizing their shifts and rotations. Yet in the midst of this decline, I still tried to press forward with my doctoral program. It became increasingly clear, however, that when the time came to walk across the stage at Regent University, I would not be walking at all—I would need a wheelchair.

2020: A Breath of Air

This was one of my better years. I spent much of my time outdoors, and inside we had filled the house with air purifiers that were constantly scrubbing the air. Still, we knew nothing about mold or mycotoxins. The house itself wasn’t in bad shape—in fact, it was in good condition—but my body was already burdened. It simply couldn’t clear out what had been stored up over the years.

2021: The Rot Within

We sold our house and moved in with my parents while building in another city. During that season, I kept working and doing the best I could. Everything seemed manageable—until COVID-19 hit. My case was so mild I didn’t even know I had it. But two weeks after it passed, my body collapsed. I now understand it was because my detox pathways were clogged, triggering a post-viral illness that sent me spiraling.

When I got sick, construction on the new house ground to a halt from May through September. Left untended, the structure was swallowed by mold and rot. The workmanship itself was some of the poorest I’ve ever seen. By the time we finally moved in, the house should have been condemned. On the outside it looked pristine, but inside it was rotten to the core.

2022: Bedbound

We moved in that January, and by March I was already being rushed to the ER in an ambulance. Nearly all of 2022 was consumed by emergency rooms, doctor visits, and the kind of exhaustion that feels worse than death itself. In May, during a time of desperate prayer, I stumbled across Mary Ruddick’s work on POTS. By October, I had committed to her program. In August, I had also started the carnivore diet, grasping at any hope of relief.

By late 2022, I was essentially bedbound—twenty-three hours of every day spent lying down, the twenty-fourth often just a painful shuffle to another room. On rare occasions, my wife would bundle me into the car and drive me around simply so I could feel the world outside those walls. That blessed angel—those drives were lifelines when my world had collapsed to a bed.

2023: The Depths

This was perhaps my darkest year. I had followed Mary’s program faithfully, yet among my cohort—who resembled gaunt survivors clawing their way back from the brink—I was the only one who had not experienced a miraculous recovery. It was during this time that I first heard about CIRS and mold toxicity. The symptoms fit me exactly, so I had my home tested five different times by different companies. Two-thirds of them told me the house should be torn down. Only one man said it could be salvaged, though at great cost. He was right on both counts.

I didn’t want to fix the house. But when the doctors found mold in my son’s blood, I knew I had no choice. That discovery pushed me into the deepest shadows of this season. For two months, the only people I saw were my wife, children, and father. It was a time of suffocating darkness, isolation, and loneliness. My sense of consciousness, already fractured since 2013, grew even spottier between 2022 and 2024. Each day felt like torture—wracked with relentless pain, my organs failing, my body betraying me. Dignity was stripped away piece by piece, until even the smallest measure of pride had vanished.

2024: The Trailer and the Light

We moved into a fifth-wheel beside our house as they began gutting the home. Within just twenty-four hours of stepping into that trailer, my muscles began to release. I can’t fully explain it, but it was like the burn that follows long-held tension finally letting go.

Within a month, my hair stopped falling out, and my mind—long dulled and fragmented—began to return. Memories I thought were gone started coming back, pieces of myself I hadn’t seen in a decade. Yet with that remembering came grief. The world had marched on since 2013, but I had been an unwitting prisoner, trapped in the wreckage of illness. Even today, I grieve for the lost years, for friendships strangled by distance, and for the family life that might have been.

Still, light began to break through. My episodes of afib became fewer, and my POTS symptoms slowly started to loosen their grip. Friends returned. Though I remained in a wheelchair, the horizon no longer looked so bleak. For the first time in a long while, hope seemed possible.

2025: Slow Steps Forward

So far, progress has been slow, but steady. My hair is regrowing, and I’ve begun walking again—just a little. I’ve already worn out my first electric wheelchair and am on my second. But each step, each improvement, carries the weight of a miracle.

I’ve set my eyes on 2027. My hope is to be back in the shape I was before 2013. It’s ambitious, maybe even foolish, but it feels within reach if I keep on this path. Lord willing, I look forward to slaying this dragon, with my hope for a full restoration in this life or at the resurrection.