Get out the Deet

[Sande J]

County gears up for W. Nile season

Kerry Fehr-Snyder
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 23, 2005 12:00 AM

A Scottsdale man who was paralyzed last year after contracting the West Nile virus and still uses crutches to walk complained Tuesday that neither doctors nor health officials were prepared to deal with the most severe cases of the mosquito-borne disease.

"It's not a very pleasant experience to go through, " said Kaley Parkinson, 58, who was an avid runner, hiker and outdoors enthusiast before being stricken with the disease in July.

Parkinson told a Maricopa County committee preparing to fight the upcoming West Nile virus season that it took doctors several days to diagnose his ailment, which began one night after he began to feel paralysis moving down his legs.

He was in and out of consciousness while neurologists and infectious-disease doctors conferred and tested his blood and spinal fluid for West Nile virus, spinal meningitis and St. Louis Encephalitis, another mosquito-borne illness.

"It's not a very painful experience," Parkinson told the committee, which includes Fulton Brock of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and several city and community representatives.

The committee is working on strategies to fight the virus through public education, enforcement of green pool ordinances, monitoring mosquito-breeding sites, and using larvacide to kill mosquitoes before they infect animals and humans.

Parkinson said he couldn't move from the waist down for two months after infection.

He has been "slowly and surely getting better" since then, he said, adding that he was proud he could make it to the committee meeting Tuesday.

But he said he is frustrated by the lack of information about the disease, from doctors treating it to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the county's West Nile virus hotlines.

It is "surprising how little is known," he said. The medical community, he added, "is very unhelpful."

Even worse, Parkinson said, is that residents infected with the virus have little, if any, contact with other patients going through the same illness.

He said he finally found a woman from California who had recovered in about six months.

"It was very helpful to talk to someone as you're staring at the ceiling (to know) that you're going to get better," he said.

Alisa Diggs, a county vector-borne epidemiologist, said she knows of 10 to 15 individuals in the county still inflicted with "severe weakness or paralysis" after contracting the virus last year, when the county was the epicenter for human cases.

Diggs said she would like to share information about individual West Nile virus victims but is prohibited by law and would lose her job if she did.

Parkinson said he wanted to volunteer for an experimental treatment after doctors diagnosed his illness but that he was too late to meet the study rules.

"I wasn't really aware of what was going on," he said of the initial days after his illness, which he at first thought was a symptom of dehydration. Parkinson's fitness level is the one thing that probably saved him from dying, his doctor told him later.

"The guy next to me in the hospital died," Parkinson said.

The recent rains, health officials said during the meeting, are both good and bad for the mosquito population and potential for West Nile virus illnesses.

The rain has been flushing storm drains of mosquito larvae and debris, Al Brown, director of the Maricopa County Environmental Services Department, said before the meeting.

"The downside is there's a lot of water accumulated in people's back yards that won't dry up for a long time," he said.

In the past several decades, Arizona's population boom has transformed the once-dry desert into an oasis of swimming pools, ponds and man-made lakes.

Poorly maintained swimming pools breed mosquitoes that feed off infected birds and then bite humans, passing along the virus.

But any object that can hold rainwater, from birdbaths to irrigation ditches, can breed disease-carrying mosquitoes.

Although doctors reported 391 human cases of West Nile virus last year, Craig Levy, manager of the vector-borne disease program at Arizona Department of Health Services, said the number is likely "very conservative" and a gross underestimate since most people have no symptoms or suffer a mild flulike illness.

"2005 is very much up for grabs," he said.
_________________
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stone, good in everything..
-William Shakespeare-

[oriole_scott]

I wouldn't worry too much. The pattern has been for there to be a big outbreak in the first year or so that the disease is in an area, and then it fades away. We had a huge outbreak in Illinois a few years ago - the next year it was practically nothing.

California, on the other hand, may be in for a good outbreak.
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"We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place" - Annie Dillard

[ck1]

I was thinking about this very thing on my run the other night...the full moon was out and lighting the trail, so I could see the swarms of bugs hovering over the standing water between the trail and the horse properties nearby...pretty sure a few went up the nose....yummmy...
_________________
-Colin

"The Journey is the Destination"

[Arizonaheat]

[ghoster]

Meat without bones

[evenstar]

I used to run thru swarms of gnats in Walnt Creek, hoping to spot them before I hit them and make sure I was exhaling......often didn't work....chew, spit, swallow! I'd get home with dozens of gnats plastered to the sweat on my face and head, some still living, and tell my daughter, "Hey, come give your old dad a hug and kiss".......You can imagine the response!
_________________
John Richardson and Richie Rich, El Perro de Playero
http://members.tripod.com/~evenstar/index.html
http://www.arizonahikers.com
When the Man waked up he said, "What is Wild Dog doing here?" And the Woman said, "His name is not Wild Dog anymore, but the First Friend, because he will be our friend for always and always and always. Take him with you when you go hunting."
--Rudyard Kipling, from Just So Stories, 1902

[mike]

[Nealz]

Channel 12 had a blurb last night about stagnant back yard pools and their potential for mosquito breeding. The county will fine the owners/renters but only if they don't comply in 48 hours. The upshot was that the county is going to rely on neighbors turning in other neighbors. Hmmm. I also heard what Scott mentioned. Maybe we've seen the worst of it already... maybe.

Some folks are naturally immune to the virus as well, although I'm not volunteering any of my epidermis for testing.

-Nealz

[evenstar]