My 19-Year-Old Son's Experience with West Nile Virus

My 119-year-old son, Danny, is just getting over West Nile Virus. It was quite an ordeal, although not as bad for him as it would have been for an older person. Ah, the wonderful recuperative powers of youth.

The problem with Danny's experience with West Nile was that it was so non-specific and that he refused to let it slow him down. He got up on Saturday morning and was very lethargic. He told me later that it actually hurt just to get out of bed. He said the first thing that he noticed was that his skin hurt. Ok, go to the doctor with that symptom! I imagine it was from fever. He said his throat hurt too. Not a sore throat but like it was bruised. Danny actually sat on the sofa and had to make himself get up. When he did get up though he went to work on his motorcycle. He spent the afternoon working on his bike but he was also coming in every so often for Tylenol. My son does not like to take medicine so that was setting off alarms. He continued to push himself through Saturday saying at times that his back hurt and his thigh muscles hurt. I finally had him take his temperature and it was 99.9. This continued through Sunday and Monday, low grade fever and body aches.

On Tuesday morning Danny came downstairs with a rash all over his chest, back and neck. That sent us to the doctor. We went to one of the Immediate Care clinics in our area as our family doctor has recently retired. It just so happened that the doctor that we saw specializes in outdoor medicine. He suspected West Nile right away and took a picture of Danny's chest with his cell phone and sent that to the CDC. They did a blood test and sent it off to the CDC in Atlanta and they also did the standard complete blood count. It took about a week and the CDC confirmed that Danny had West Nile. Luckily it took much less time than that for Danny to recover. The doctor gave him an antibiotic and by the next day his fever was gone. They also gave him prednisone which cleared up the rash.

My son was extremely lucky to have had such a mild reaction to this disease. The doctor actually congratulated Dan on getting it because now he is immune to it. That's why he's out mowing the lawn now. We've got so many mosquito's this year he's the only one who can risk going outside!

Symptoms for mild West Nile are; fever, headache, back pain, muscle aches, lack of appetite, sore throat, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea.