Jim Stuerebaut-IL

Local man survives first Illinois confirmed 2005 West Nile case

BY TODD SHIELDS
STAFF WRITER

"It's like being struck by lightning," recalled Rolling Meadows resident Jim Stuerebaut, the first Illinois resident confirmed to have contracted West Nile virus in 2005.

"I enjoyed being outdoors, golf and working around the house," said Stuerebaut, 55, who works in the accounting office of a Chicago hotel.

"It all happened fast, and it has been very, very difficult. No one can know what this is like unless they have it. No one," Stuerebaut said last week in an exclusive interview with the Review.

Although the Cook County Department of Public Health has not been releasing the names and hometowns of county residents with West Nile virus, with Stuerebaut's permission, department spokeswoman Kitty Loewy confirmed his identity to the Review and his status as the state's first confirmed person to get the virus this year.

Fitted with a brace to help him walk, Stuerebaut still uses a wheelchair around his home. A yard ramp was built up to the front door. He works two days a week and attends physical therapy sessions the other three days.

He said he feels better, but the affliction's ceaseless strain on a person's will to be healthy and lively again is evident in his voice.

"I'm trying to adapt to this change and get back to a normal life," he said.

Because Stuerebaut had been camping this summer in south-central Michigan during the incubation period, the Cook County Department of Public Health cannot determine if he acquired the virus in Illinois.

Stuerebaut said he began having intense flu symptoms July 5, followed by a month's stay in a hospital, during which a laboratory for the Illinois Department of Public Health tested his blood.

Both he and his wife, Grace Gargantiel, continue to seek Web site information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, but no cures or vaccines have been developed.

"And we've contacted government offices in Springfield to no real avail. All you can do is spray yourself with bug repellent," she said. "Jim is getting better now. Before, he couldn't get out of bed, but now he can.

"It's a terrible disease, and we never really knew much about it and didn't care. Now we know how paralyzing West Nile can be."

Illinois Department of Public Health officials said symptoms usually occur 14 days after the bite of an infected mosquito, and people older than 50 years are at highest risk. The most severe cases cause paralysis or death.

In suburban Cook County, 72 cases of West Nile virus have been reported this year. Four people with the virus have died, but three succumbed to other causes, Loewy said.

In Illinois, eight deaths have occurred among 218 reported cases this year. In 2002, Illinois counted more West Nile virus cases, 884, and deaths, 67, than any state in the nation.

Todd Shields can be reached at tshields@pioneerlocal.com.