Though a Largo man keeps hearing talk of mild flu-like symptoms, he has been ravaged by the disease. He still can't walk.
By LISA GREENE, Times Staff Writer
Published August 23, 2005
[Times photo: Douglas R. Clifford]
Jim Becker, 55, finishes dinner at HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital in Largo. He fell ill on July 28; doctors later diagnosed West Nile.
LARGO - Just a few weeks ago, Jim Becker spent hours outside every day, working in the yard and walking 7 miles a day.
But Becker, 55, never wore mosquito repellent. He didn't spend time worrying about West Nile virus.
He does now.
Becker still can't walk. He can barely raise his left arm. He has lost 16 pounds. And he remembers little about the last few weeks - the fever so high he was packed in ice, the delirium, the tremors.
But he wants everyone to know just how bad West Nile can be. The news reports he has seen on TV, the ones that talk about mild flu-like symptoms, don't begin to describe what he has gone through.
"I'd like to have everybody know this is not like getting the flu," he said.
What happened to Becker is one of the puzzles of West Nile, a virus that showed up in the United States in 1999. Scientists admit they still don't know enough about it.
Most people who get infected with the virus, carried by mosquitoes, never get sick. Most of the rest get sick for a few days or a week, with symptoms that doctors describe as flu-like.
But a few are unlucky. About one in 150 people develop far worse symptoms. They become too weak to move, lapse into comas, even die.
Nobody knows why.
"It's one of the most intriguing and important questions we face," said Dr. Ned Hayes, a medical epidemiologist with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "It's a complicated and difficult question to answer."
Doctors know people are more likely to get really sick if they're elderly, or have immune symptoms weakened by cancer or other diseases. Diabetes and high blood pressure might be risk factors.
But could there be something else? A genetic difference that makes it easier for West Nile to invade cells? Some research indicates that some mice have a gene that helps them resist the disease, Hayes said. But that resistance has never been demonstrated in humans.
In many diseases, people have immunity built up because they've been exposed before. But few U.S. residents have been exposed to West Nile.
"You're not dealing with widespread immunity," Hayes said.
Sometimes, the virus changes rapidly so that some people get infected with a stronger variant. But strains of the virus found in different parts of the country have been very similar, Hayes said.
"At this point, we need to advocate that everybody take precautions against mosquito bites," he said. "We don't have all the answers."
That's the message Becker hopes to send. Although his memories of the last few weeks are fuzzy, his wife of 32 years, Gail, remembers it all.
He first felt sick on a Thursday, July 28.
By then, health officials had warned the public that some of Pinellas County's sentinel chickens had tested positive for the virus. But the county's first-ever human case wasn't confirmed until the day after Becker fell ill.
Pinellas now has eight cases of people with the virus. Health officials say all are recovering.
Health officials can't warn the public with specific details of patients' cases because of medical confidentiality rules, said spokeswoman Jeannine Mallory. But she says they want people to realize the disease can be serious and take precautions.
"You walk a fine line there, because the majority of people don't know they have it, or have flu-like symptoms," she said. "We don't want people to be overly alarmed, but we want them to be alert and conscientious."
At first, Becker had chills and fever. On Friday, he was worse. Saturday, he went to the doctor, and came home with antibiotics.
Sunday, he tried to get out of a chair and couldn't walk.
"The only thing that clicks in my head ... is falling against the furniture," Jim Becker said.
His family took him to the hospital, where an infectious disease specialist told Gail Becker he suspected West Nile. It would take more tests to be sure.
"I was scared to death," she said.
She tried not to show it around her husband. She waited until she got home to cry. They had been together since she was 17, and she had never seen him so ill.
It's still strange to her that he got such a bad case of the disease. After all, Becker, a retired electrician, was fit. He walked around Taylor Park so much that a police officer recognized him when he arrived in the Largo Medical Center emergency room. He doesn't drink, doesn't smoke.
"He's Mr. Healthy Guy," she said.
Jim Becker smiled.
"Luck of the draw," he said.
After 11 days in the hospital, Becker was moved to HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital in Largo. On Wednesday, he will have been there for two weeks.
When he arrived, he looked much worse, said his brother-in-law, Gregg Frangipane.
"He looked like he'd had a stroke," Frangipane said.
In physical therapy, Becker at first lacked the finger strength to open a clothespin.
Now, he can lift his right arm above his shoulder. Doctors aren't sure how much he'll recover, but Becker has set some goals.
"First, to kill every mosquito in the world," he joked.
What he would really like is to be home, able to walk, by Aug. 31. Even with a walker. It will be his 56th birthday.
He wants a party, the kind where normally he would be the chef.
"We can have a little barbecue, and I can tell people what to do: "You over there! The chicken's burning!"'
Then he'll work on the long-term.
"That's my next goal," Becker said. "To be back to 7 miles at Taylor Park."
His sister, Peggy Frangipane, hopes he'll do things a little differently.
"Wear OFF! this time," she told him.
[Last modified August 23, 2005, 04:45:04]
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