Chad Pyeatt, KS

Eudora teen and his family struggle with West Nile virus

Small bite, big worries

By Joel Mathis (Contact)

Monday, February 27, 2006

Eudora — After an autumn filled with headaches, nausea and mind-bending medications, 16-year-old Chad Pyeatt could be forgiven for thinking that his West Nile virus couldn’t get any worse.

But it did. A couple of weeks ago — for one night — he went blind.

“My vision started blanking out,” said Pyeatt, a junior at Eudora High School. “Little spots would disappear out of my vision. It ended up progressing — one morning I woke up and my right eye was completely blind. That night, after that morning, the other eye went completely blind.”

Pyeatt knew, from Internet research, that West Nile could cause temporary blindness lasting up to a month. His parents took him to a hospital in Olathe for observation; the next morning, though, his eyesight had returned.

Still, Pyeatt said, “it was pretty scary.”

The vast majority of people who contract the West Nile virus don’t know it — they never develop symptoms. Others get mild symptoms but recover quickly. Pyeatt is in a third category, stricken severely enough that he’s missed roughly 50 days of school since fall.

Photo by Nick Krug

Kim Ens, disease control program coordinator for the Douglas County Health Department, said such cases were uncommon. Four laboratory-confirmed cases of the virus were found in the county in 2005.

“It’s around, we know it’s around, and it can cause people to get sick,” she said. “For most healthy people, if they get West Nile it’s not going to be a serious illness or anything. There are some people who get sick from it. In rare cases they can get very sick.”

Pyeatt developed the illness in August, though his family doesn’t know how. The family has two fish ponds on its property in Eudora and lives near a creek. But mosquitoes that spread the disease could have found Pyeatt during the family’s summer float trip in central Missouri.

“He got sick just as we were starting the school year,” said Pyeatt’s father, Marty. “We took him to the doctor — he had headaches, aches and pains, flu-like symptoms, and we took him to the doctor.”

Photo by Nick Krug

It took until November, though — and a battery of tests, including a spinal tap — before blood work revealed the cause of Pyeatt’s sickness.

“He was sick that long ... I was thinking he was just having trouble at school or something. ‘Why are you staying home?’” Marty Pyeatt said. “It turned out to be West Nile. I felt bad I was upset with him.”

Chad Pyeatt said the disease had caused him to miss time at school and with friends. His A’s and B’s in classes have turned into F’s. His research tells him the symptoms could last up to a year.

“I’m pretty unlucky,” he said, “to get what I got.”

Guy Lawrence Lozowski-NV

Guy Lozowski

Services for Guy Lawrence Lozowski, 54, who passed away Jan. 9 from complications due to the West Nile virus, will be held at 10 a.m. Feb. 18 at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on Wilson Road.

He was born Oct. 22, 1951 in Honolulu, Hawaii. He was a Pahrump resident since 1997.

He served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War. He later owned and operated Wild West Video. He liked working on cars and oil painting. He also loved to count cross-stitch, a hobby he shared with his wife.

His wife Gloria of Pahrump; parents Lawrence and Jacky Lozowski of Pahrump; brother Bradley Lozowski of Las Vegas; sister Susan Carter of Maui, Hawaii; and four wonderful dogs survive him. (01/09/06)

Mike Seiler, ND

· West Central Tribune ·
Retiring Kandiyohi city clerk recovers from West Nile virus
Anne Polta West Central Tribune
Published Saturday, February 04, 2006
KANDIYOHI — More than 100 friends and neighbors gathered around Mike Seiler last weekend to help him celebrate his retirement as the longtime clerk for the city of Kandiyohi.

For Seiler, it was a double milestone: Not only has he wrapped up a long tenure as one of the town’s key employees, he’s also making a recovery after being severely stricken last summer with West Nile virus.

“It’s great to be home,” he said. “You realize the goodness of people in small communities. There’s a lot of good heart in these people.”

Seiler, 65, has been a fixture in Kandiyohi, population 555, for more than three decades. As the town’s city clerk — only the second person since 1939 to hold the position — he kept the minutes at City Council meetings, wrote out all the electric bills and helped ensure the city ran smoothly.

Craig Aurand, the mayor of Kandiyohi, has known Seiler for more than 20 years.
Seiler does physical therapy at his home in Kandiyohi. (Tribune photo by Bill Zimmer)
Seiler
“Mike was exemplary. I can’t say that enough,” Aurand said. “The books were balanced to a T. He could tell you where every penny was at any given time. He took care of the city like it was his child.”

Like the city clerk before him, Seiler ran the office almost literally from his kitchen table, Aurand said. “People were very accustomed to calling him at home.”

After the death of his wife, Cheryl, in 2002, Seiler decided it was time to turn over the city clerk position to someone else. He announced his intentions to the City Council at the beginning of 2005, giving the council a year to find his replacement.

At the end of July, five months before his last day on the job, he began having severe headaches. His neck hurt. His temperature rose to 105.

He doesn’t remember the ambulance trip to Rice Memorial Hospital in Willmar, nor the trip to Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, where he was to remain for the next several weeks.

“I was out of it. I was extremely, extremely sick,” he said.

At first, the doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Finally, after more than a week, they found the answer: Seiler had West Nile virus. His was the eighth case of the mosquito-borne disease to be confirmed in Minnesota last summer.

Most people recover from West Nile virus with little more than flu-like symptoms. Two percent, however, end up becoming severely ill when the virus attacks their brain and nervous system.

Seiler’s brain had swelled. His limbs were paralyzed. He was unable to swallow. He had hallucinations and unrelenting pain.

“You never would have thought that one little mosquito could take you down so far,” he said.

He thinks he survived because he was determined to live — and because he had so much support from his family, friends, neighbors and medical team.

“Thank God for family and friends,” he said. “I didn’t realize how sick I was most of the time. Several times I wasn’t supposed to make it. You need the desire to live and the people around you to encourage you.”

His daughter, Robin Winterfeldt, a registered nurse, was at his side almost every day. Sons Mark and Jay visited nearly as often.

Word about Seiler’s condition spread quickly through Kandiyohi.

His years of public service had made him well known and liked, said Sue Kidrowski, the city clerk for Pennock who stepped in to replace him.

“It was just like a parent or grandpa getting sick,” she said.

Many friends and neighbors made the 100-mile trip to see him in the hospital.

Aurand visited several times. It was clear the situation was grave, he said. “There were times when I didn’t know if I would see him again.”

It also became clear how much Seiler contributed to the operation of Kandiyohi, Aurand said.

“A lot of people know Mike and know him well but aren’t aware of what it really takes to run a small town,” he said. “There were six weeks there when I missed Mike terribly. I realized even more what it takes.”

Medically, Seiler was in uncharted territory. West Nile virus, which is native to Africa, spread to North America less than a decade ago. There’s little data on the best medical treatment for those who become seriously ill from the virus. Even less is known about how survivors fare in the long term.

As Seiler recovered, he faced a long, slow rehabilitation. The damaged nerves in his arm and legs are expected to eventually grow back, but in the meantime he’s had to learn how to walk again.

It wasn’t until January that he was finally able to go home to Kandiyohi.

“It’s great to be home,” he said. “Through it all I was determined to get better. That was key. It would have been real easy to be discouraged.”

Recovery from West Nile virus can take a year or longer. Seiler still has physical therapy two days a week to help strengthen his legs and his left arm.

He’s optimistic he’ll be well enough by summer to garden and fish. He also hopes to return to his full-time job with Swift and Company in Willmar.

“I’m a firm believer that when your number is up, it’s up,” he said. “I got a second chance. You find a way to do something you didn’t think you could do. I’m going to get better yet.”