It’s a sunny day and you decide to take your son to the playground. Children have fun on the swings or just run around the park. Some of the children are playing with the birds that congregate around the bread they are feeding the birds. Everyone is having a great time and then you go home. Everyone is happy, including the well-fed birds. You are happy your son did not have an allergy or asthma episode while he was out in the park among the trees and grass.

That night your son starts coughing and you don’t think anything about it. Give them some cough syrup and they go back to sleep. You think it’s just another allergy attack or that his asthma is acting up again. The next day he is worse, so he decides to make an appointment with the Doctor. You take them to the Doctor and they decide to run some tests to see what’s going on. A doctor says it’s an allergy attack. Another says it’s asthma from him acting out. This scenario continues for weeks with other doctors and no one can diagnose your child. They give them antibiotics for ten days and it still hasn’t gone away. He is worried about his son due to her compromised immune system due to his asthma and allergies. You start to think that all doctors are charlatans at this point.

Meanwhile, his son is getting even worse, he doesn’t know what to do at 2 AM, so he goes to the emergency room of the local hospital. Tonight is her son’s lucky night, he will get a real doctor who has a lot of real experience with exotic diseases. He first asks questions about what his son was doing before she got sick. You tell him that your little boy was in the park playing with the birds with the other children. The Doctor asks more questions and decides to run a series of tests that the other doctors didn’t do. He also wants to perform a test called Serology. This is a blood test that checks the blood for antigens and antibodies. Finally, he is relieved that this doctor knows what he is doing. The lab tests are back, his son has been exposed to Histoplasma.

Now the treatment begins.

Histoplasma, what is that you ask.

According to Wikipedia: Histoplasmosis, also known as Darling’s disease, is a disease caused by the fungus Histoplasma capsulatum. The symptoms of this infection vary widely, but the disease mainly affects the lungs. Occasionally other organs are affected; this is called disseminated histoplasmosis and can be fatal if left untreated. Histoplasmosis is common among AIDS patients due to their weakened immune systems. This type of infection is especially dangerous for someone with a compromised immune system. It can be found in soil and materials contaminated with bird or bat droppings. It is especially common among pigeons and where they hang out in parks and on the roofs of buildings.

I once inspected an office building in Boca Raton, Fl. because all the occupants had flu-like symptoms on a regular basis. There was no mold or allergens, but a bird dropping test on the fresh air vent (there was a pigeon nest) in the building was positive for histoplasma capsulatum. We informed the owner of the building, he cleaned himself up, then all problems with the building stopped after that.

Remember, it’s not always mold that’s causing the problem.

In conclusion, keep your child away from pigeons and the places where they nest. Do not feed the pigeons, because a large flock will descend on your area and Histoplasma spores may be on the pigeons. Breathing in the spores can infect your lungs, so avoid pigeons. If you are concerned about histoplasmosis, the New York City Center for Disease Control and CDC have an extensive library on the subject. If you think you or your child has been exposed to histoplasmosis, contact your doctor right away.

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