Overcoming Rabies: Health Story
Aired on Superstation WGN
Saturday, August 6 and November 26, 2005
Show 222
Worldwide, 40,000-70,000 people die of rabies every year. Rabies is spread by contact with infected animal saliva.
A year ago in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Jeanna Giese found a bat in church during mass and picked it up. A month later, she fell sick with symptoms of rabies. When she arrived at the hospital it was too late.
"No one had previously survived who hadn't been vaccinated before symptoms developed," says Kelly Tieves DO, Pediatric Critical Care Specialist at Children's Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
"She was declared dead, but the brain was anatomically fine. So we put her into a coma to shut down the brain and administered a cocktail of drugs not tried before. We gave her Ketamine, which fights rabies in animals. We also gave her several antiviral drugs," says Dr. Rodney Willoughby, Infectious Disease Specialist at Children's Hospital.
Miraculously, Jeanna survived. "She opened her eyes and looked at me, and it was the greatest," says her mom, Ann.
"When Jeanna started showing reflexes, she would give us a gift a day," says Dr. Willoughby. Today, Jeanna still puts in a lot of hours in physical therapy.
"When she came here, she could hardly walk or eat and it was difficult to understand her," says Wendy Dille, Supervisor of Physical Medicine at St. Agnes in Fond du Lac. "She's come a long way. Just to see her smile, brightens everything," says Ann.