She Owned a Plant Store. It Was Slowly Killing Her

Pots and Plants has become a neighborhood staple in Ohio City, a place to get foliage to brighten your day and complete the decor in a room. It recently welcomed new owners, but not because former owner Lori Switaj wanted out. Turns out, she needed to get out.

Being around plants reminded Lori of her mother, who passed on her affection for greenery. When she started Pots and Plants, Lori was looking to invest her time and money into work she could enjoy on a deeper level than just another job.

“My entire business plan is one sentence: Don’t lose more than $500 a month,” she said. She achieved that easily and more. “I wanted a fun store,” she said. And it was fun for her, until she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Now, she can’t look at plants the same way.

“I probably should have gone to the doctors years before,” said Lori. She had become too comfortable with getting recurrent pneumonia and having it treated with antibiotics. “I’ve had pneumonia so many times I can tell you like what lobe it’s in. I used to just go to the urgent care and say I’ve got pneumonia and they’d take an x-ray and they’d give me some [antibiotics].”

People can have underlying lung conditions which make them more prone to pneumonia. Or someone without a lung condition can be unlucky and get a bout of pneumonia, but the disease should not strike again and again. Lori only had very mild asthma, which never limited her from running or playing ice hockey for years. Something else was going on with her recurring infections. Her lungs were changing since she started the store. This past winter, Lori’s cough seemed the worst yet, making her short of breath, and lasted way too long.

After consulting with her doctor, enough red flags were raised to pursue a consultation with a lung specialist. At the pulmonologist, with blood tests showing a spike in a specific antibody called IgE, her lung doctor and Lori looked at each other and almost in unison thought, “ABPA.” Maybe Lori wasn’t thinking ‘ABPA’ specifically, but they were both suspicious that the plants might be involved.

ABPA stands for allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis — a condition where the body overreacts to doses of aspergillosis (a type of mold) spores found in the air. Those spores are ubiquitous in our environment, found in soil and dust and are unavoidable. Certainly the ‘dose’ that Lori inhaled on a daily basis in her store was higher than the average person. But, this doesn’t mean we are under constant threat from soil. Lori developed an allergy to it, and it wreaked havoc on her lungs. With all allergies, you can develop one at any time even if you’ve been exposed to the allergen many times before.

When she received the diagnosis, Lori said, “it was kind of devastating. You’re just like, what am I supposed to do now?”

Lori’s story has other unique corollaries in medicine, where a person in certain trades or hobbies is constantly exposed to a trigger and are unlucky enough to develop a reaction. It’s called hypersensitivity pneumonitis, with nicknames like coffee maker lung, pigeon breeders lung, farmer’s lung, or malt worker’s lung. There are nuances to these treatments, but without a doubt, eliminating the exposure in all cases is the first measure that has to be taken.

Lori confirmed this ABPA diagnosis by getting a bronchoscopy, where a camera is advanced into the trachea and deeper into the branches of the lung tree. A small amount of water is squirted and then sucked up so the contents can be studied. It confirmed she had aspergillosis mold in her lungs, coating the lining in her bronchi (branches of air tubes). Lori had to stay at a local hospital after that procedure. In a twisted moment of fate, she realized she was on the same floor she gave birth to her son and jokingly sent him a text that read: “I think I’m going to die on the floor that you were born on.”

When she got discharged from the hospital, she needed a plan for the store. To start, she wasn’t even allowed to go inside of it. Lori recalled her first course of action.

“I just put up a post saying 40% off all the plants. And it was like a riot… I passed by later. People were just like, we’re grabbing plants. It kind of felt like, oh, she’s dead. Let’s go take her stuff.”

There was a line around the corner of the block that day, and her employees came to the rescue by staffing the store. Despite the flash sale, and confusion of what to do after, Lori came to terms with her realization. “It has to be a plant store,” she said. It just wouldn’t be hers from now on.

As her breathing is restored, Lori misses her plant store. In the boredom of her recovery, she asked herself, “How many times a day can I take the dog on a walk?” While on high doses of steroids, and not sleeping well, she made an impulse decision to buy 60,000 pieces of jewelry, thinking some niche retail like she had done before could be a good fit.

Expected to make a very good recovery, her only limitation moving forward is not being trapped in a room with a plant. She’s embarking on some serious soul searching for her next long-term endeavor, jewelry or not.

“I’ve been around the block enough to know that at some point I’m going to have some kind of idea or going to see something and I’m just going to do it,” she said, biding her time. Part of what she is grappling with is seeing the world of greenery in a completely new light. Never would she have thought that looking at a plant could spark fear. In the meantime, she cleared out the many plants she had at her house. Actually, she still keeps a couple small ones.