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Friday, Sep. 14, 2007

Man on mend from West Nile

He may have been infected by mosquito when painting house

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Jim Ruffolo probably didn't feel the mosquito bite, but his wife believes it happened as he was painting their north Modesto home in August.

The fever started Aug. 15 and his worsening symptoms prompted a trip to the emergency room four days later. A doctor said he might have the flu, and sent him home. But that night he became confused and extremely weak, and his wife, Ginny, gave him cold baths to bring down his 106-degree temperature.

The next morning, an ambulance took him to Memorial Medical Center, where he was put in an isolation room. Doctors thought the symptoms -- fever, confusion, body aches and loss of muscle control -- could mean contagious meningitis. On Aug. 24, a test of his spinal fluid showed he had West Nile encephalitis.

Because it isn't contagious, the 66-year-old Ruffolo was moved to an intensive care unit, where he spent weeks in a semiconscious state, breathing with the aid of a ventilator and was fed through a tube.

The illness, striking the central nervous system, immobilized the muscles in his body, and doctors kept him heavily medicated to deal with the brain swelling, the family said.

"He would open his eyes and not be aware of what was going on," said his wife of 42 years. "It was a matter of sitting here praying that he would get better. They did not know if he would survive this."

Ruffolo, who is retired after working in purchasing for food companies such as Safeway and Zacky Farms, started coming out of it late last week. He has regained some muscle control, allowing him to swallow and move his arms and legs a bit.

His daughter, Jamie Ruffolo, said he can use gestures and notes to communicate, and after nearly a month of suffering he learned the cause of his mysterious illness. When Ginny told him it was West Nile virus, he nodded and rolled his eyes.

West Nile virus is known to have stricken 13 people in Stanislaus County this year, an illness rate of less than three in 100,000 residents, but Ruffolo's case is a reminder of what the illness can do.

County still recording cases

The mosquito-borne virus, which usually emerges in the summer, has infected 230 people in California this year, causing 10 fatalities. Stanislaus County continues to record cases in the latter days of summer, including a 54-year-old woman who has suffered from West Nile fever since Aug. 20.

That case, reported by public health officials Monday, prompted the East Side Mosquito Abatement District to spray the residential areas around Briggsmore and Rose avenues Thursday morning and fog the woman's back yard.

Her illness started with bad leg cramps, a fever and a sensation that she was going to faint, she said. For two weeks, she took Tylenol to bring down the fever so she could work as a licensed vocational nurse, then the fever came back on the weekends, she said. Her other symptoms were low back pain, body aches, joint pain, sensitivity to light and severe headaches.

"It hurts," said the woman, who declined to be identified. "It feels like your head is so swollen you can't carry it on your neck."

She recalls getting mosquito bites at the Graceada Park community concerts last month, but believes she likely was infected by a mosquito in her back yard, with its 150 varieties of plants and a small pond.

The pond has mosquito fish, but large trees in this area of Modesto attract crows and other large birds that can carry the virus and pass it to mosquitoes when they are bitten.

Neighborhood sprayed

Rhiannon Jones, a vector biologist for the East Side district, said she put a trap in the woman's back yard this week and it caught 70 mosquitoes. None tested positive for West Nile, but the abundance of mosquitoes convinced the district to spray in the neighborhood.