Please read and if you have ever heard of a similar situation or lived through or lost someone in a similar fashion please reply all information will be greatly appreciated
We just had a funeral for our brother who just died from Blastomycosis on January 28th 2007. He was 29 and he left behind a 27 year old wife with 14 month old and 4 year old sons. We are a family of 8 and he was the youngest.
He started getting flue like symptoms around New Years and it progressed to vomiting, high fever, very bad cough. He went to the ER around the 2nd week of January and they gave him antibiotics. He was only able to work the first week of January. I must also mentioned that he had been type 1 diabetic for the last 8 years.
Then he went again about 5 days later he was barely able to talk he was out of breath couldn't sleep or eat and a fever of 102 F. My sister who is a registered nurse was sure they were going to admit him since he sounded like he was getting pneumonia. But no, he was sent home again with antibiotics,with no blood work, no x-rays what so ever. They said since he's vomiting so much the other antibiotics weren't taking effect. I figure when a healthy, very athletic young diabetic man goes twice to the ER in a week they should at least pay attention. We come from a very small town and they know who the "regulars" are in the ER for him to go to the ER was a big thing.
Then on Tuesday January 23 2007 he went again, vomiting, fever and having lost 15 pounds and very weak, he said it felt like his heart was going to come out of his chest it was beating so fast. Now they admit him with a pneumonia but they still thought there was something else. On Wednesday me, my husband and one of my sisters went to see him in hospital. We had to get all gounded up and masks and gloves and he had a one on one nurse with him. He was just sitting there almost lifeless, with his heart rate never going under 130 and he had started to swell. It took all he had to look up at us and to spit up blood in his little tray.
I'm so glad I went that night because I got to tell him I loved him and my husband and I prayed with him, which we were very surprised that he accepted that we did. That night he was flown to Thunder Bay, Ontario Regional Health in ICU on a respirator. We were relieved that he'd go to a better hospital and that he'd get to sleep for a couple days and regain his strength while they'd treat his pneumonia, which is what the doctors had told us. That would be the last time we saw our brother awake and alive.
Thursday morning January 25, his wife calls me in a panic, she had called the hospital to see how he was doing and to advise them to call her when they'd take him off the respirator..(Thunder Bay is a 6 hour drive from where we live) so that she could be there when they did. Instead they tell her to come here as quickly as she could and that if the family could come too that they should. He was in critical condition and may not make it through the day. So we all made plans and left that day on our trip there my sister, the nurse, kept in contact with the hospital and advised us that it was Blastomycosis.
When we got there the sight was horrifying, he was placed on his stomach, we could only see the one side of his face which was so swollen and red he wasn't recognizable. He also had a chest tube and all sorts of other lines going through him. The respirator was going but his whole body was quivering from his fast heartbeat. His oxygen saturation was in the 60's and at that time we didn't know but his blood gas levels were in the 40's. When I touched him I felt he wasn't there anymore and so I asked the doctor who had just came in...If he comes out of this how will his brain function be and he just danced around it and never really answered me. Then the doctors held a family conference that night, we were 25 in that ICU waiting room. They informed us about everything that was going on and questioned us about what he did in the last few months and how he was feeling. They had never heard of Blastomycosis from someone living in Northeastern Ontario. But we told them that he was a truck driver and that he hauled wood chips and that the first week of January he had hauled to Thunder Bay. They still didn't know what to make of it because usually they see Blastomycosis in the Kenora, Dryden area.
That night we all took turns staying with him during the night so that he would never be alone. Hoping that everything would be fine
The next day Friday the 26th 2007 the doctors told us expect the worst but pray for the best, he is young, athletic, he has never smoked and he is not needing any medication to maintain his blood pressure but he is very sick. They turned him on his back which increased his saturation a bit. They were seeing a bit of improvement. On the Wednesday on his X-rays it showed that his left lung was infected by half but the ones on Friday morning showed that his whole left lung was infected as well as half his right. The outcome was grim. Then they called late on Friday night saying that his organs were failing and his kidneys were not functioning properly that he was "systic or septic" I'm not sure of the wording, they were giving him a last ditch effort medication that is very expensive and that he needed to be on it for at least 96 hours and that it reduces mortality buy at least 20% but that there were risks of bleeding and he already was having trouble with the coagulation with his blood at this point which could cause a stroke.
On Saturday, the doctors say that they noted some improvement how ever little they were and that if things were going to improve it would be a matter of days and the same if they were to deteriorate. But they said out of 6 cases they had seen only 1 person had survived and that his odds were more than likely 20-50%. They had taken him for a cat scan to see if there was any improvement with the antibiotics but none were really noted but it wasn't worst. What hit me the most is that they say usually a normally healthy person resists the fungus but a person with diabetes is considered to be a person with a suppressed immune system and that most persons with diabetes after 10 years usually have some kind of problem with their kidneys. That hit me even harder because my 3 year old daughter is also type 1 diabetic since last year. Had he not been diabetic he might have not even gotten sick.
Anyways most of us were planning on returning home on Sunday afternoon and return on shifts to stay with his wife at the hospital. That day the hospital staff never really let us in to see not wanting to stimulate him too much and then they said we are going to wash him and shave him which we found odd since they said that that medication would affect his coagulation. Why take the chance of cutting him with a razor??...now we know they were preparing him for us to see him a last time. We were all hoping for a recovery...but at 1:30 a.m. January 28th, my husband calls me saying hurry up and get here they are performing CPR on him and that he had been taken to the room to hold his hand while they tried to revive him...he had to get out after the second time they shocked him. We all got there and my mother and father and his wife and her mother got to be there when he finally died a 1:57 a.m..
A new doctor which we hadn't seen before came in to talk to us after my brother passed away and said that he had seen my brothers charts on the Friday and that he had known he wasn't there anymore, at least that his brain had been deprived too long of proper oxygen levels...which is exactly what I had been asking all along.
We are trying to get this noted with Health Canada and to have it marked as a work related death and that all those men that work in the Forestry Field whether it be hauling, harvesting or even the mill workers be aware of this Blastomycosis and that safety guidelines be in place. This should be a reportable disease.
Within 5 days we lost a young family man that was recognized for his "joie de vivre" , and extremely gifted and involved in sports as a goaltender in hockey, shortstop in baseball and renown for his sense of humor.
But after all this is done. I comfort myself in the fact the he is no longer suffering and that he doesn't have to battle with diabetes anymore and that we have someone watching over us and if he tends to us like he did his nets, we will surely be well guarded. When our turn comes he'll be there to greet us.
In memory of Ghislain "Gaga" Saucier
Thank you
Near Hearst, Ontario
Author
Topic: Blastomycosis in Northern Ontario (Read 4328 times)