For four nights, Julie Barron stayed awake by her daughter's bedside. Kiley Lane, 27, had been in the intensive care unit for two months, fighting hantavirus. Barron was afraid if she slept she'd miss the chance to see her daughter awaken. But Lane never regained consciousness and died April 18 from complications from the extremely rare illness.To get more Health News, you can visit shine news official website.
“I was hoping against hope,” Barron told TODAY. “She fought the good fight until there was nothing left to fight for.”Barron is sharing Lane’s story to honor her memory and raise awareness of the dangerous respiratory infection which is spread in rodent droppings. “We wouldn’t want anyone else to have to go through this,” she said. “We had the absolute best caregivers. I don’t know that we got her to them soon enough.”In the middle of January, Lane, a preschool teacher, started experiencing stomach cramps that became so bad that her husband, Kevin, took her to their local emergency room in Farmington, New Mexico.
Doctors believed she had a “blockage” and sent her home with laxatives. But that didn’t help. Soon, they returned to the ER. Doctors kept her in the hospital for observation, but were puzzled by her symptoms. After a few days, they released her. Her husband was struggling to care for the severely ill Lane and their 2-year-old daughter, Dawson, so he called her mother for help. Barron was stunned by her daughter’s appearance — Lane was swollen, with oozing sores under her breasts.This is not right,” Barron remembered thinking. “I don’t know what is going on, but I am going to get some answers.” From her home in Lubbock, Texas Barron tried calling doctors to understand Lane’s symptoms.
But before she discovered anything, Lane was back in the hospital on a ventilator. Doctors ran loads of tests and on February 5 — weeks after her symptoms began — she was diagnosed with hantavirus.As of January 2017, there have only been 728 cases of hantavirus in the United States, since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) started tracking the infection after an outbreak in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona in 1993. Hantavirus has been reported in 36 states and 36 percent of all cases are fatal. An outbreak of hantavirus in Yosemite National Park in 2012 killed three campers.
People contract hantavirus from touching saliva, urine or feces from the cotton rat, deer mouse, rice rate or white-footed mouse. The CDC recommends avoiding rodents to prevent it. There is no cure and doctors can only treat symptoms.When Lane didn't improve, doctors in Framingham sent her by air lift to University New Mexico Health System. When she arrived she went into distress. Doctors stabilized her and used an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine (ECMO) to circulate her blood outside the body and oxygenate it before returning it to her system.
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