EEE victim's slow recovery 'excruciating'
By ANIKA CLARK
aclark@s-t.com
September 16, 2010 12:00 AM
Jeffrey Fuller's sister describes his recent fall into eastern equine encephalitis as "sudden and vicious." As Fuller remained hospitalized in Boston Wednesday, Michelle Fitzgerald is prepared for her brother's uncertain recovery to take much longer.
"The doctors are hopeful that he's going to get better, but unfortunately they don't know for sure and the process is excruciating," said Fitzgerald, 42, of Wareham, who was with Fuller on a family camping trip last month when a severe headache and high fever landed him in the hospital.
"It's not like it's going to be next week or even next month. ... He hasn't even been transferred to a rehab (center) yet."
A spokesman for Massachusetts General Hospital listed Fuller in fair condition Wednesday afternoon.
This marks improvement for the 43-year-old Middleboro husband and father of two, whose EEE case the Massachusetts Department of Public Health reported Aug. 27, when he was in critical condition.
While Fuller is this year's first and only confirmed human case of EEE in Massachusetts, his community has suffered its sting before. In 2006, the mosquito-borne virus killed 9-year-old Middleboro resident John Fontaine, and this summer, 13 of the state's 65 pools of EEE-infected mosquitoes have been collected in Middleboro. Forty-six pools have been trapped in Middleboro and bordering communities.
The town "was probably in the bull's eye" of mosquito isolates in Plymouth County this year, according to Anthony Texeira, superintendent for the Plymouth County Mosquito Control Project, who said Middleboro and surrounding towns historically have been centers of EEE activity because their cedar swamps are prime breeding grounds for Culiseta melanura.
Despite working indoors at a textiles mill, Fuller is "an avid outdoorsman, so I guess that was probably to his detriment, because that's, I'm sure, how he got EEE," Fitzgerald said. "He fishes, he hunts, he camps, he gardens."
Her brother is also an avid home brewer who made it to the semifinals in this year's Samuel Adams' Category 23 LongShot American Homebrew Contest. The contest's website lists Fuller's "Imperial Black IPA" among nine semifinalist beers that were drawn from nearly 800 entries.
"He's won gold medals for the beer that he's brewed," Fitzgerald said. "It's a passion for him."
In the period before he developed the symptoms of EEE on Aug. 21, Fuller spent time in the Middleboro-Lakeville area as well as in Wareham, according to Fitzgerald, who said he isn't believed to have contracted the virus at a Southeastern Massachusetts campground since he'd been there fewer than two days before falling ill.
By the night of Aug. 22, Fuller was in Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton and was transferred within hours to Boston's Mass. General Hospital, where he was later diagnosed with EEE.
Standing more than 6 feet tall, with a build Fitzgerald likened to a Patriots lineman, "he's not like a wimpy guy," she said. "So if he has a headache that he can't even stand up, then it's bad."
With about one-third of EEE patients dying of the rare disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Fitzgerald said the first few days of his hospitalization were touch and go and "very, very scary," and she described how her emotions have since moved from fear, to anger at the state for not being more proactive with aerial spraying, to hope.
"He's actually doing a little better, which is good news," she said. Progress is measured in baby steps — signs of improvement that might seem insignificant to the casual observer but which mean a great deal to his loved ones.
"A lot of times what they do is they'll put pressure on certain points of his body and he winces now. He was not making any facial expressions before," she said. "There's more of a reaction, and it's a stronger reaction."
Fuller "does occasionally open his eyes, and stuff like that, but most of the time, yes, he is unconscious," she said. "But they do tell us, 'Keep talking to him because he can hear you.'"
In the meantime, in addition to standing by her brother's side, Fitzgerald is rallying behind his family by setting up a fund on his behalf at Eastern Bank and organizing a benefit at the Middelboro Elks Lodge on Dec. 3.
"We're just waiting for him to wake up, and it will happen. I know it will," she said. "He's someone who has a lot to fight for."
to help
For more information on the Dec. 3 benefit on behalf of Jeffrey Fuller, contact Michelle Fitzgerald at
peaches0409@verizon.net. Donations can be made at any Eastern Bank branch, with checks made out to "Michelle Fitzgerald FBO Jeffrey Fuller." Fitzgerald said donations are accepted in person and by mail at all Eastern Bank branches.
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