I had a friend whose husband had this after being diagnosed with CFS, and
his case may indicate why CFS is not listed among predisposing, immune
compromising conditions.
For what it is worth, here is the story. Anyone needing to know a source
might contact me and try to talk it out of me. I probably would only
reveal it to inquiring physicians or people with CFS and chronic
respiratory infections or encephalitis. I have posted this to
bionet.virology, since virologists are doing CFS research, and it is
thought to be a related condition. Patients have many virally related
findings , which they do not share with healthy controls, and physicians
need to know where to refer patients should symptoms of Valley Fever
develop:
I met G. when she owned an arts related business in town. She is about my
age and her father is a delightful man who has being doing journalism on
the experience of having cancer and looking one's death in its face. G.
was raised on a remote island where her father was a military journalist
who got most of his information by radio.
P. developed CFS in Florida. P. was G.'s husband and he went through many
experiences that we all would recognize as common in PWCs. His eyes began
to bulge and an opthamologist diagnosed a hydrocele--there was a hydrocele
in Doctor Peterson's cluster of 150?-250 patients. I have written the
numbers from memory but I think they are approximately correct. There
were the same number of patients in Yerington, Nevada, approximately, and
some in Truckee.
The woman with the hydrocele in Doctor Peterson's cluster was previously
an Olympic athlete and was treated at the University of Utah. This
treatment may have been successful but did not abate her CFS.
P. went home to his family in a neighboring state, where the Valley Fever
was diagnosed, and a brain shunt to treat it was put in place. When it
was scheduled for emplacement, P. had the physicians call his wife, who
lived in another state near her children. She had joint custody of them
there and was unable to leave the state permanently. Her husband was
asleep when she arrived, so she stole his chart and read it all the way
through, sitting in a bathroom stall while she was repeatedly paged.
P.'s family was very unaccepting of her, and though they tended P. with
non-medical diligence, they were unwilling to give her something to sleep
on or blankets. She was a late third-year RN student. The doctors said
that P. would die and everyone had accepted that. G.'s insistence that
something more might be done for him was not accepted well. Being a woman
with a will who may have not ever wanted to be separated from her husband
by the joint-custody decree she shared with her first husband, she
arranged medical transport home for herself and P., who said that he
wanted to go with her.
He was treated at a medical facility in the Northwest with fast-track
doses of an antifungal--according to G. and my memory, a triple dose. P.
was very very sick and completely unable to recognize either G. or her
children, when he began to recover. He decided to go back to his family
to completely recover. G. was infuriated and distressed, not less so when
P. divorced her and remarried another woman who nursed him through the
last leg of his recovery. When he was recovered, he entered a medical
school and is attending there, though not entirely free of pain. He is
preaching there the gospel of karmic illness and the ability of the mind
to triumph with karmic cooperation. This makes him a very important man
indeed.
The major clinic involved participated in a court trial suing his initial
doctor, as I have heard the tale only, for initially diagnosing CFS. We
have many people with CFS and encephalitis who are NOT being told, either
through our support network or through their physicians, that they are at
added risk for this treatable potentially fatal disease, or may already
have it.*****
This is also interesting. My parents
had a friend who died from this in the 50's. I didn't realize that it
killed so many people in Arizona...J. Nash
COCCIDIOIDOMYCOSIS (VALLEY FEVER) - USA
=======================================
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996
From: ProMED-mail <promed at usa.healthnet.org>
Via: Angela Lee <finchley at aol.com>
Source: Media Reports
The US Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) reported on Thur, 12
Dec, a sharp
increase in the number of cases of coccidioidomycosis, commonly known as
Valley Fever, in the Southwest region.
In Arizona the rise was 144 percent between 1990 and 1995, with 623 cases
and 134 related deaths last year.
Valley Fever is a flu-like disease which can cause severe respiratory
illness, even pneumonia. People over the age of 65 and those who are
immuno-compromised from HIV or cancer are particularly vulnerable. Symptoms
are body aches, fevers, coughs and chest pain.
The agent of coccidioidomycosis is a fungus found in the soil. Heavy rains
after drought have been found to increase the growth and spread of the spores.
--
Angela Lee
ProMED-mail Reporter
<finchley at aol.com>
.....................................................dp/jw
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