Man fights deadly disease
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BY MARK ANDERSEN / Lincoln Journal Star
Gordon Watley's terrifying battle with Rocky Mountain spotted fever was a fight against long odds.
BY MARK ANDERSEN | Lincoln Journal Star
“Oh, I’m in Narnia.”
The spotted fever
Rocky Mountain spotted fever is caused by Rickettsia rickettsii, a species of bacteria spread to humans by ixodid (hard) ticks. The American dog tick (Dermacentor variabilis) and Rocky Mountain wood tick (Dermacentor andersoni) are the primary source of human infection in the United States.
Rocky Mountain spotted fever was first recognized in 1896 in the Snake River Valley of Idaho, making the name somewhat of a misnomer. Beginning in the 1930s, it became clear the disease occurred in many areas of the United States.
Despite the availability of effective treatment and advances in medical care, 3 percent to 5 percent of people who get Rocky Mountain spotted fever die from the infection.
The first symptoms follow an incubation period of five to 10 days after a tick bite. Early on, it may resemble many other diseases.
Initial symptoms may include fever, nausea, vomiting, muscle pain, lack of appetite and severe headache. Later signs and symptoms include rash, abdominal pain, joint pain and diarrhea.
Limiting exposure to ticks reduces the likelihood of infection. People exposed to tick-infested habitats, should promptly and carefully inspect themselves and remove any crawling or attached ticks. Experts think it may take extended attachment time before organisms are transmitted from tick to host.
Tick tips
In areas where ticks are present:
* Wear light-colored clothing that allows you to see ticks that are crawling on your clothing.
* Tuck pants legs into socks so ticks.
* Apply repellents to discourage tick attachment. Repellents containing permethrin can be sprayed on boots and clothing and will last for several days. Those containing DEET can be applied to the skin, but will last only a few hours. Use DEET with caution on children.
* Conduct a body check upon return from potentially tick-infested areas. Parents should check their children for ticks. Ticks may also be carried into the household on clothing and pets.
* Such folklore remedies for removing ticks as the use of petroleum jelly or hot matches do little to encourage a tick to detach. In fact, they may make matters worse by irritating the tick and stimulating it to release additional saliva or regurgitate.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
For Gordon Watley, 48, the delirium of his Rocky Mountain spotted fever was a cross between a Bruce Willis action movie and the “Matrix.”
It was scary, said the 48-year-old University of Nebraska-Lincoln religious studies and classics lecturer.
Over the course of the disease, he ripped a line from his artery, broke free of hospital restraints and wondered aloud why other airline passengers in his hospital room were permitted to move about the cabin and he wasn’t.
He vowed to never fly again.
His confusion was an all-too-familiar horror show for his wife, Bobbi, who had witnessed her father’s curtain calls in and out of consciousness before dying of lung cancer in 1997.
Swarms of specialists attending Gordon — gastroenterologists, nephrologists, hemotologists and infectious disease doctors — began all talks with her: If he survives …
“If he survives, this will be a long haul,” Bobbi recalled. “Those were the words I didn’t have the courage to say. Was he going to make it?”
The Watleys live on an acreage south of Eagle, and that’s probably where Gordon was bit by a tick carrying the potentially fatal bacteria Rickettsia rickettsii.
It takes time to incubate. The couple was in Portland, Ore., on May 23 for a job interview when Gordon felt like he had the flu.
That was a Tuesday.
He made it through the interview on Wednesday but then almost collapsed. The Watleys flew home the next day, he said, “but I was walking like a 90-year-old man.”
They visited the emergency department at Saint Elizabeth Regional Medical Center Friday night. He ached, had a headache, a 104-degree temperature and a blood pressure of 80/40 — normal is 120/80.
Nothing was conclusive.
Go home but come back if you feel worse or don’t get better.
“I just thought I had the flu, but I never had a flu where I could hardly walk.”
His blood platelets, which allow blood to clot, were low, and he was switched from aspirin to Tylenol. Bobbi thinks that saved his life.
But the Tylenol did nothing for his fever, which hit 105 Saturday night. As they reached the emergency room, Gordon was having trouble breathing, his blood pressure had dropped to “45 over something” and his platelet count had fallen overnight from 163,000 to 14,000.
“The minute we walked in they had an emergency room full of people,” Bobbi said.
Gordon was going into kidney failure. He went straight to intensive care, and stayed there for a week.
“I don’t remember a whole lot of it,” he said. “I was in fantasyland.”
He would flit in and out, Bobbi said. At one point he looked around and said, “Who has turned our bedroom into this toxic waste dump?”
Everyone laughed, including the nurses, but it was touch and go.
Among the visitors were his Episcopal priest and a religious colleague.
“Both came away from the hospital planning my funeral,” Gordon said.
The disease, discovered in Idaho, is more common in the southern Atlantic states and Oklahoma. Early on, it was also known as black measles, although 30 percent of victims — Gordon among them — do not develop the characteristic dense black rash.
Every year, 1 in 100,000 Nebraskans gets spotted fever.
In Gordon Watley’s case, physicians, uncertain what they were dealing with, treated him with a battery of antibiotics, among them doxycycline, the preferred medicine for Rocky Mountain spotted fever, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About 5 percent of those who get the disease die despite treatment. Mortality increases if treatment begins more than four to five days after symptoms appear. Gordon was on day five.
That Tuesday, one week after he first felt sick, marked his lowest point. Bobbi thought for sure she was saying good-bye. As the disease progressed, her husband developed pneumonia, an intestinal blockage and his eyes yellowed. Four times, machines replaced his infected blood plasma, cleaning and returning his own blood cells.
And then, on the morning of June 4, Bobbi said, “All of a sudden he sat up in the bed. He just sat up, ‘Hey guys,’ like nothing had happened.”
He moved out of intensive care hours later and went home June 9, but he’s still recovering.
“I came home 15 pounds lighter than when I went in,” Gordon said.
He never saw the tick that bit him, but he got a letter last week confirming Rocky Mountain spotted fever.
Until this year, they’ve had such dry springs he hadn’t really worried about ticks.
Bobbi recalls seeing a dark spot on the nape of his neck, but it had disappeared by the time he was in the hospital. She thinks it came from their pets.
To get rid of ticks, people used to pull or burn them, she said. But if it’s not done correctly, bacteria can be forced into a person’s body.
“You’ve got to correctly remove that tick. Get it out of there quick.”
Reach Mark Andersen at 473-7238 or mandersen@journalstar.com.
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