West Nile’s vicious summer: Insidious pathogen strikes Ottawa-area man

At slightest 5 days a week during a summer, Robert Gibeault would conduct out fishing nearby his home in Crysler, Ont., about 50 kilometres southeast of Ottawa.

At his favourite spots along a Ottawa, Nation, and St. Lawrence rivers, he’d tilt in pickerel, drum and perch.

The fishing trips finished in Aug when Gibeault contracted West Nile virus.

‘I wasn’t wakeful of a earnest of a disease.’
– Michelle Gibeault

On Aug. 22 he was certified to a Civic campus of a Ottawa Hospital where his condition worsened. On Thursday he was changed to a complete caring section and placed on a ventilator to assistance him breath.

His mother Michelle Gibeault has been by his bedside each day. 

“I wasn’t wakeful of a earnest of a disease,” she said.

Best case, misfortune case

Now her husband’s deteriorating health is constantly on her mind, Michelle says.

Robert Gibeault enjoyed fishing along a rivers nearby his home in Crysler, Ont.

“You can suppose a thoughts that go by my head. You consider of a best box scenario, and we consider of a misfortune box scenario, and we wish it’s somewhere in between.”

Robert has Type 2 diabetes, though was differently clever and healthy, his mother said. Now a pathogen has influenced his suggestion as good as his body. He’s told her he doesn’t know if he’ll travel again.

“He’s worried,” Michelle said.

3 reliable cases in Ottawa

In Jul Ottawa Public Health reported mosquitoes in Ottawa had tested certain for West Nile, and warned a pathogen had arrived early this year, formulating the risk of what a group called “higher than common West Nile activity.”

So distant this year there have been 3 reliable cases of West Nile pathogen in humans in Ottawa. In 2016 Ottawa Public Health reported two confirmed or illusive cases, and there were no cases reported in 2015.   

Robert Gibeault is not enclosed in a 2017 figures because he lives outward Ottawa.

First told he had flu

The 61-year-old retirement woke adult on Sunday, Aug. 20 feeling irrational and told his wife his legs felt “wobbly.” The integrate had attended an outside unison a prior dusk where he remembered receiving some-more than dual dozen mosquito bites, though Michelle said her father had already been feeling fatigued  and “out of sorts” for days.

Robert Gibeault poses for a sketch nearby a Great Wall of China in healthier, happier times.

The subsequent morning, after holding a shower, Robert began jolt so badly his mother suspected he was carrying a stroke. He reluctantly concluded to go to sanatorium in Winchester where he was told he had a bad box of flu. He was sent home and told to come behind if his condition worsened.  

After a integrate pulled into their driveway Robert collapsed removing out of a car, revelation his wife he couldn’t feel his legs. Michelle called for an ambulance and Robert was taken behind to Winchester District Memorial Hospital.  

By midnight Robert had a high heat and aches all over his body, and he was eliminated by ambulance to sanatorium in Ottawa. Staff with a Ottawa Hospital’s neurology unit suspected West Nile virus, and 4 days after tests reliable a diagnosis.

Confused, agitated

Michelle said her father has turn confused and agitated, that stirred him during one indicate to slice out his intravenous line.

“He’s a tiny bit mislaid and not coherent, and his debate is slurred,” she pronounced progressing this week. “Yesterday he didn’t know we was his wife.”

Dr. Kathryn Suh, an infectious disease dilettante during a Ottawa Hospital, said only a tiny apportionment of those who agreement West Nile develop symptoms so critical that they end adult in hospital.

The many critical form of a infection is West Nile encephalitis, where a pathogen attacks a brain. Suh said 10 per cent of those cases are possibly deadly or leave the studious with some long-term disability.

In a initial bit of good news a Gibeaults have perceived given Robert became ill, his tests for encephilitis came behind negative. 

No vaccine

There is no vaccine or specific antiviral pill for West Nile, Suh said.

“There is no specific therapy.”  

Instead, patients are given pain remedy and intravenous fluids until a pathogen runs a course, Suh said. Once a studious becomes stable, their liberation from paralysis or cognitive spoil can begin.

“It’s only a doubt of time either that resolves fully,” Suh said.

Michelle knows her father has a prolonged road ahead of him. She’s been told by sanatorium staff Robert’s reconstruction could take six months or more.

‘I’m an optimist’

Michelle is grateful for a support of their children — hers from her first matrimony and her husband’s from his — and from friends and neighbours who have called to offer help.

Michelle and Robert Gibeault poise for a sketch while travelling in China.

“I’m an optimist by inlet and that’s what keeps me going, and I’ll be by his side no matter what,” she said.

She’s also becoming something of an consultant on West Nile virus, researching a illness and training what can be done to control a butterfly population.

She’s warning others to wear insect repellent — something she says her father never did — and propelling municipalities to mist for mosquitoes.

“I wish to inspire a internal supervision to mist for mosquitoes some-more aggressively now that it’s in this area,” Gibeault said.

Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/west-nile-virus-ottawa-1.4279722?cmp=rss