West Nile Survivor Speaks

For gardeners and other outdoor enthusiasts, mosquitoes warrant more than a slap on the wrist. Here’s why.

Taking a break from humanity, mosquito on an orchid plant. Photo: Kiley Riffell

Taking a break from humanity, mosquito on an orchid plant.
Photo: Kiley Riffell

In a quiet moment during the April get-together of garden writers here in Austin, Vive Griffith owned up to the horrible truth. “It’s the mosquitoes!”

Yes, we gripe about heat and limey soil, and stuck-up college kids, but what really make this city intolerable, especially for gardeners, are the hungry insects. In our neighborhood near Blunn Creek, they swarm like twenty-year-olds. And on a summer evening, you don’t have to be cool to be covered with backyard tattoos within half an hour.

“Get over it!” you ironmen and ironmaidens may be saying. Well, our neighbor Margaret Adie had to do just that. A gardener, as well as a professional bowmaker, sculptor, and photographer, Margaret contracted West Nile Virus last October.

She survived to tell the tale, and was good enough to let us buzz her with questions about how it all went down.

“It was a bit confusing at first,” Margaret says. “I had received a flu shot on a Monday and by Tuesday evening was feeling like I was getting sick. By Wednesday, I was certain I was having a reaction to the flu shot, because I felt just like I had the flu.

HFP: Did you see a doctor?

MA: I talked to many medical people about this and was told there was no way it was a reaction to the flu shot (it’s not like the vaccine has a live virus in it, but there are so many stories out there to bring up fear of a bad vaccine, etc.).

HFP: Did your symptoms persist or change?

MA: I was sick with “the flu” for about six days. Then I felt almost normal for about a day and a half. But on the morning of the second day that second week, I awoke with a rash all over—on my arms, trunk, legs, face, even the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet. I had to remove my rings on my fingers.

I still thought it was a flu-shot reaction and waited a few days, but by Sunday, the rash was still there So I went to a Doc in a Box. He saw my rash, drew blood, told me he didn’t know what I had—probably some kind of virus. My blood count was okay and he sent me home and told me to rest. I knew nothing more than I had before I went but I was $216 lighter.

HFP: So did resting clear up the problem?

MA: My rash finally disappeared and I felt fine for a week. Then it really hit me hard. I woke up with a high fever (102.5) and a very bad headache. I went to my regular physician and she checked me out to make sure I didn’t have meningitis. After a series of tests, she told me I had a virus and to go home and rest.

Margaret Adie, artist and bow-maker, back in the pink.
Photo: HFP

Boy, did I rest! I think I slept for about two weeks. Absolutely no energy at all. I would start to feel a bit better and then another wave of flu-like symptoms would come on me and I would sleep some more.

HFP: How long did all this last?

MA: It seemed as if I would never get over it. Five weeks had passed and I went back to my doctor, feeling like a whiny patient. I was pretty stressed about it all. Then she told me that she believed I had the West Nile Virus. The way the virus came and went was typical: the rash, the fever, the headache, achy joints, all the symptoms of the flu.

HFP: Did you ever get tested for West Nile specifically?

MA: No. The test is expensive, and by this time my health was improving. The doctor said there had been a lot of cases in Austin last summer (2007), probably lots more than we knew because most people had very mild cases. Mine was pretty severe.

HFP: What treatment, if any, did you receive? Did your doctor advise any change in diet or prescribe medicine?

A slit between sections of bamboo: mosquito haven.
Photo: Margaret Adie

MA: Honestly, the only thing I could do was rest. I took Advil for my headaches.

HFP: If you’re willing to share this, how much did the treatment cost?

MA: Well, when everything was said and done, it cost me around $500

HFP: How long was it before you began feeling better?

MA: It lasted about 6 weeks.

Margaret’s certain that she picked up the virus from a mosquito bite.

MA: “The mosquitoes are terrible where I live. There is so much bamboo growing around my house, and in the neighbors’ yards on both sides. I have been told that the brackets where the leaves sprout on bamboo hold enough water for mosquitoes to hatch!
“Also there has been construction two houses from me, where they dug a hole for a swimming pool and stopped work. It would be full of stagnant water for weeks, even had tadpoles in it.”

HFP: Have you recovered fully now?

MA: YES!!!!

That’s clearly so. Praise be! And according to the Centers for Disease Control, having contracted West Nile Virus, Margaret likely now is immune from further infection. Still she’s mosquito wary.

“I have always been careful about standing water around my house and try to keep the bamboo at bay,” she says. “I spray myself with repellant when I go outside and come back inside when there are a lot of mosquitos around. Evenings are the worst time.”
Her advice for others who’d like to avoid six weeks of bug-induced flu – or worse? “I’m not sure what to tell people,” she says, “but to keep standing water at bay and don’t plant bamboo.”

Gulp. Too late. We didn’t plant it, and/but we sure haven’t been able to get rid of it.

(Originally published: HFP June 4, 2008)

Update: 

West Nile incidence by U.S. county, 1999-2025. Darker = more cases.
See CDC link for key