A Connecticut dad sadly passed away after contracting a mosquito-born virus in his own backyard. He passed away several years after getting bit.
49-year-old Richard Pawulski was removing brush from his backyard when a mosquito bit him. He contracted Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) as a result. It's a rare illness with potentially deadly effects. It can cause longterm disabilities since it targets the brain and can be deadly.
"I'm not joking when I say your life can change in the blink of an eye, because that was what happened to us," his daughter Amellia Pawulski told The New York Post. He passed away after entering hospice.
According to his daughter, he died from a staph infection that couldn't be treated with antibiotics. He also had a bacterial infection in his heart as well as damage to his liver and brain. All this is a far cry from the man he was. He fell ill after doing yardwork at his home. He got bit by a mosquito and developed headaches and began vomiting.
Surgery landed him in a coma for two months. Doctors were confused what caused the sudden downturn in health, but they soon realized it was a mosquito based virus.
Initially, doctors believed he would die, saying the brain damage wouldn't allow him to wake up. However, Richard later woke from the coma and regained consciousness. Unfortunately, he would end up in and out of the hospital over the next five years. Mentally, he struggled to stay lucid.
Man Dies From Mosquito
"It's very hard. We don't have a lot of family here," his wife Margaret said.
"None of this stuff would have come up if he didn't get it," Amellia added. "He always tried to look at on the positive. I remember people being like, 'Oh, how's your day?' And he was like, 'My day is great. I woke up - I can breathe on my own - I can talk on my own - I can go to the bathroom on my own - I have no reason to be upset.'"
Medical professionals have noticed an uptick in the disease
"This one is thought to be the most severe of them all," Dr. Roy Gulick, chief of infectious diseases at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, sadid. "It's usually sporadic and it's not clear why. One year we see more than another."
He continued, "This year there have been both mosquito pools testing positive and horses testing positive as well, so the presence of this virus is more so than we've seen in previous years. Cases are kind of scattered throughout New York — people really need to pay attention to this and do everything they can to avoid mosquito bites."
