How could a miniscule pest slay a giant?
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He stood over six feet tall. I thought nothing could bring him down. Then a little red bump appeared on his leg and everything crashed at our feet. My Granddad was conquering cancer but a mosquito could bring my favorite person in the world to his knees.West Nile Virus is something people only hear about in the news. We hear of people getting sick from the disease and young children, the elderly and people with suppressed immune systems dying from the disease. In 2003 the CDC stated that there were 9,862 cases of the disease in the United States and from that number 264 were fatalities in the United States[i]. Of those 264 only 40 were in Texas[ii]. Only one death was in Wichita County, my Granddad Jerry Evans.My Granddad was probably the healthiest member of my family. He was constantly doing something. From working in the yard, to playing racquetball with our pastor, to working (even though he had been retired for two years) or coming to watch me playing in a golf tournament or my sister and cousins playing softball or baseball he was always active. However, in July of 2003 my entire family got the shock of their lives. Granddad was diagnosis with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. As soon as we found out we immediately went to M.D. Anderson in Houston for his treatments. Everything was going well. The doctors let him come home to Iowa Park for treatments and the cancer was shrinking. Then August 26th, my sisters 13th birthday, arrived.My granddad had started to feel sick the weekend before. He was running a slight fever and felt like he had a mild case of the flu. They had noticed a red bump on his leg and were watching to see what happened to it. It slowly started to get bigger and look infected. On the 26th of August my Grammy decided to take him to the emergency room at Kell West Hospital. They admitted him and found that he was septic and that the port in his chest was infected. They thought that the red bump on his leg was just some sort of scratch that was infected because of the sepsis’ that was running through his blood stream. The next day they decided to remove the port and treat the infection. The entire family thought he would get better. That once the infection was gone he would be back to his old self, but we were all wrong. Before he went into surgery all of us went one by one to talk to him. The last coherent conversation that I had with him was right before he went into surgery. Once the surgery was over they started to treat his infection which started to get better but he did not. He started to have stroke like symptoms and the doctors in Wichita Falls did not know what else to do. So my family converged on Kell West Hospital to decide what to do next. It took us all day but we finally came up with a plan. My dad, Sonny, and I were to stay in Iowa Park and take care of my sister and two cousins while the rest of the family, my mom and her two sisters Michelle and Jayna, my Grammy and my Uncle Tim would all head back to M.D. Anderson in Houston to be with Granddad. They ended up flying my granddad to Houston on August 30th, my grandparents wedding anniversary. Once they arrived at M.D. Anderson they got to work and trying to find out what was the matter. They found out that he had encephalitis but did not know what the cause was. One of the tests that they ran was the West Nile test that would take two weeks to get back. Once they put him up in the ICU area of the hospital Grammy decided that they would give the doctors two weeks to identify what was the matter. My Granddad never wanted to be put on life support and they were going to have to at M.D. Anderson so she gave them the two weeks to find out what was the matter and if he would ever get better. So the waiting began. My mom and Aunt Jayna came back after a week of staying at the hospital. The septic infection had been treated but he was still not really getting any better. On September 9th the two weeks was up. The doctors came to check on my Granddad to see if his brain function had improved and found that even though he could breath some on his own he would probably be in a vegetative state or have to relearn everything if he survived. My Grammy was forced to sign the paper to end my Granddad’s life. We found out three days later that it was West Nile that was the cause of his death. Who would have thought miniscule pest could slay this giant of a man?
[i] CDC: West Nile Virus. 23 Feb. 2007. Centers for Disease Control. 05 Aug. 2008
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/westnile/surv&controlCaseCount03_detailed.htm.
[ii] CDC: West Nile Virus. 23 Feb. 2007. Centers for Disease Control. 05 Aug. 2008
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/westnile/surv&controlCaseCount03_detailed.htm
