COBB COUNTY, Ga. — Sarah Wunderluck keeps a bedside vigil every day, praying that her mother will walk and talk and dance again.
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A mosquito bite infected her mom with the West Nile Virus, and she’s been in the hospital for more than two weeks.
“She has so many people that love her,” Wunderlick said. “She is a very strong woman. She works out four times a week. She’s so healthy.”
Her mother is 62-year-old Patti McCoy, who lives in Marietta. She’s an energetic grandmother with a radiant smile. McCoy underwent a kidney transplant 11 years ago and takes medication that weakens her immune system. Other than that, her daughter says, she was healthy.
Then came late August. McCoy suffered a persistent high fever, fatigue, body aches and nausea. On Sept. 2, she went to the hospital with symptoms resembling a stroke, such as difficulty speaking. A test of her spinal cord fluid showed she was infected with the West Nile Virus – and it attacked her central nervous system, which happens in less than one percent of infections.
“We’re hoping her neurological function returns and she’s able to walk and talk again,” Wunderlick said.
Her mother remains in the intensive care unit at Piedmont Atlanta Hospital and has at times relied on a ventilator to breathe. There is no cure for the West Nile Virus, and survivors of the illness have told the family that recovery could take months or longer.
“She’s making little baby steps of opening her eyes,” Wunderlick said.
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Meredith Gionnoni, another daughter, said the severity of the illness caught the family by surprise.
“We never thought this would happen to us,” she said. “We would see news reports like this and think that applies to other people. That’s not gonna happen to us.”
She’s urging people, especially those with weakened immune systems, to take simple precautions: Wear insect repellent and remove standing water, which attracts mosquitoes for breeding.
“Our lives have been turned upside down because of a mosquito,” she said. “And it’s really easy to prevent this.”
Doctors say most people who contract the virus will not experience any symptoms, but babies, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems are especially vulnerable and at greater risk of serious complications.
In Cherokee County, Lorre LaMarca’s father has been in the hospital with the virus for three weeks. She declined to give his name to protect his privacy but said he’s 76 years old and had no serious health problems.
“If I’m in his shape at 76, I’ll be pretty lucky,” she said.
But then came the high fever, dizziness, chills and body aches. “He could not stand up; his legs got very weak,” she said
The virus had attacked his nervous system.
LaMarca suspects her father was bitten by a mosquito while mowing his grass in Woodstock.
“I do believe we’re gonna be able to take him home, but I do not know if we’ll ever get my dad back to where he was the day before the bite,” she said.
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She thinks had county health officials warned the public that the virus was in the area, her father would have “covered up.”
Jennifer King, a spokesperson for the North Georgia Health District, said in a written statement that district and county environmental health programs “are usually unable to provide mosquito testing or spraying because it is not included in our operational resources.”
She said counties and health districts will generally do a property assessment to help a resident identify standing water and other potential breeding areas.
Valerie Crow, a spokesperson for Cobb and Douglas Public Health, said current trapping is in partnership with the state Department of Public Health. Local techs trap the mosquitoes and the agency identifies the species. “While surveillance without disease testing may seem questionable, it can guide us in how to approach population reduction by targeting a species’ breeding pattern, and it’s also surveillance for expansion of known and newly emerging mosquito species in Georgia,” she wrote in a statement.
The Georgia Department of Public Health reported Wednesday that one person has died from the West Nile Virus so far this year and expects more infections. Mosquitoes are usually active in Georgia through October.