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Scientist Keira Simmons
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(Editor’s Note: Frontiers, a UC Davis television production, will broadcast a segment on the West Nile virus in March 2007. Host Paul Pfotenhauer of Frontiers interviewed molecular lab technician Keira Simmons and research entomologist William Reisen of the Center for Vectorborne Diseases.See the Frontiers Web site for broadcast information. The show focuses on faculty research, teaching and public service. )
DAVIS, CALIF. —Keira Simmons knew something was wrong the minute she woke up that fateful morning in mid-June 2005.
A strange red rash splotched her inner arms and torso. Within four days, the rash covered her entire body, even between her fingers and toes. A knife-splitting headache, coupled with crushing muscle pain, projectile vomiting, neck stiffness, fatigue, dizziness and nausea ensued.
Her normal 98.5 degree temperature spiked to 102 and then raged to 106.5. She dropped 20 pounds in 10 days.
The University of California, Davis scientist remembers four trips to the hospital emergency room, a three-day hospitalization to treat the raging fever, worsening pain, dizziness and dehydration, and a three-week recovery period at home. The illness incapacitated her for seven weeks.
It nearly killed her.
“The doctors thought I had the flu,” recalled Simmons, then 27 and a post-graduate researcher in a UC Davis School of Medicine lab.
It was not the flu.
Only after she’d accepted a research position at the UC Davis Center for Vectorborne Diseases in November 2005, did a routine blood test confirm her worst suspicions: neuroinvasive West Nile virus (WNV), the most severe virus spread by Culex mosquitoes.
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William Reisen |
“Keira’s blood test proved strongly positive for the West Nile virus,” said CVEC research entomologist William Reisen, who researches Culex mosquitoes and their ability to transmit arboviruses, including WNV.
Simmons, a 2001 microbiology graduate of UC Davis who grew up in Sacramento, tells her story to alert others to the disease, its symptoms, and to encourage precautionary measures. She addressed the Mosquito and Vector Control Association of California at its Feb. 5 conference in Fresno. Frontiers, a UC Davis TV production, will broadcast a segment on the West Nile virus, featuring Reisen and Simmons, in the coming weeks.
Simmons speaks from the unusual standpoint of scientist and a victim. As a scientist, she’s involved in both research and surveillance, testing mosquito pools and dead bird tissue submitted from throughout the state. As a victim, she knows the havoc that a tiny insect with a brain the size of a period at the end of this sentence, can wreak.
“Her story puts a face on this disease,” said UC Davis medical entomologist and CVEC director Gregory Lanzaro, who also directs the UC Mosquito Research Program. “What happened to her can happen to any of us. This is a reality check.”
Looking back, Simmons speculates that the infected mosquito bit her when she and her fiancé were hiking along Putah Creek on the UC Davis campus. “My fiancé and I like to hike along the creek,” she said. “We’d do so every evening after work during the spring and summer. So it was probably dusk when I was bitten. And, no, I was not taking the precautions of wearing repellant or long sleeves and pants. I learned the hard way.”
Initially, Simmons attributed the symptoms to the flu. “But the headache got worse and worse and wasn’t alleviated by any medication.”
“Later, I had a pretty good idea that I had West Nile virus,” said Simmons, whose parents, now retired, worked in the medical field; her father, as a nurse practitioner and her mother, as an oncology nurse. “I had all the classic symptoms and I knew that something was seriously wrong with my body and my central nervous system.”
Despite her medical and scientific background, Simmons said she couldn’t convince the physicians who treated her that “I was sick, very sick and in need of more serous attention and treatment.”
Hospital technicians drew her blood, but Simmons learned later “it was never tested for West Nile virus.” She repeatedly asked that it be tested for WNV. “They ran a few non-invasive tests and some cultures. When none of them was conclusive, they simply gave me IV fluids and sent me home. They said I had the flu.”
The illness alarmed her family and friends. “No one around me had been sick and no one was getting sick from exposure to me. It was quite frightening for my mom, dad, sister and fiancé to stand by, powerless and watch me deteriorate.”
“Four or five days after my first ER visit, my personal physician admitted me to the hospital,” Simmons said. “I wasn’t real aware of my surroundings or what was going on at that time. I had literally started to mentally check out. I was quite fortunate that I had my fiancé, family and my physician advocating on my behalf.”
“When I was admitted, I had a fever of 106.5, tremors, I’d lost 20 pounds and I was severely dehydrated. I couldn’t turn my head or move my eyes to trace objects. I couldn’t keep my balance. I was completely disoriented to time, place and location. Just before I was admitted, I lost consciousness.”
During her three-week recovery period at home, she battled chronic vertigo. “I was unable to leave the house or walk on my own,” Simmons said.
Had she not changed jobs and taken the mandatory blood test, she believes the disease may have gone undiagnosed. Her reaction to the positive blood test? “Vindicated. Validated. I knew there was something wrong with me.”
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| Keira Simmons in the CVEC lab. (Photos by Kathy Keatley Garvey) |
The medical profession and general populace, she said, need to know the symptoms of the relatively new disease, identified in California only since 2003. Traced to the West Nile region of Uganda in 1937, it was first identified in the United States (New York) in 1999.
“From a public health standpoint, the medical profession failed to serve as the frontline of observation for reportable diseases in their community. There was no good reason why I wasn’t tested. I had a proper history, accurate symptoms, and my condition was worsening visit after each visit.”
Today side effects still persist. “I feel generally healthy,” Simmons said, “but I still have about three or four headaches of migraine-intensity a week. I also still have some weakness in my arms and hands, also affecting my manual dexterity. I have transient spells of vertigo that leave me unable to work in my capacity as a researcher.”
“I have no idea when these symptoms will resolve. West Nile virus is so new to our population that they really don’t have any idea how it may affect people or their quality of life.”
The UC Davis scientist credits what happened to her in that summer of 2005—her illness, her recovery, and her survival—with a renewed sense of purpose in her research. “Daily I help conduct surveillance of the state for emergence of WNV within our communities. My efforts here help dictate policy in counties throughout the state. That’s a pretty powerful thing. I’m quite fortunate to find such purpose in my work.”
Advice for the general populace? “Don’t take your good health for granted. Protect yourself and those close to you who may not know better or who resist. Wear protective clothing, use repellant. I think we may have underestimated the severity of this disease. I think that it’s led to nonchalance in prevention and improper assumption on the part of medical professionals as to who gets sick with West Nile virus. Know thy self and be your own advocate. Always.”
“I hope my story will help others be their own advocate when they know there’s something wrong with their body and when those that are charged with their medical care don’t listen well enough.”
The scientist strongly supports preventive measures, including aerial spraying to disrupt the virus transmission cycle. “People seem unwilling to support aerial spraying, and I think it's due, in part, to people not having a clear and personalized picture of the effects of this disease,” Simmons said. “We are willing to vaccinate our children against diseases like polio, hepatitis, and measles because of the horrible effects and side effects of those diseases. We overlook the minimal risk to receive the enormous benefit of being protected from these debilitating diseases.”
“If people knew that West Nile virus could cause long-term side effects, if they knew that vertigo and chronic headaches and paralysis could be their fate IF they survived an infection, perhaps they'd think differently about protecting their children and themselves through aerial spraying. People are willing to support such policies only if they can see and feel a personal threat.” Reisen, a noted WNV researcher who helped identify the presence of the virus in California in 2003, agrees. “West Nile virus is here to stay and we must learn how to live safely," he said.
More information on the symptoms of West Nile virus is at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site, http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/westnile/qa/symptoms.htm. —Kathy Keatley Garvey
Links:
West Nile basics
Mosquito control
Prevention
Repellent information ~ CDC updates
Identify and report dead birds in California
Current West Nile activity in California
2006 West Nile virus activity by counties in California
Find your local mosquito control agency in California (by zipcode)
Contact:
Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications
UC Mosquito Research Program
Department of Entomology
396 Briggs Hall
University of California, Davis
Davis, CA 95616
Phone: (530) 754-6894
E-mail: kegarvey@ucdavis.edu
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