Rabies survivor wants to save others
Jeanna Giese uses singular experience to educate people
FOND DU LAC – Fifteen years after a bite from a bat completely changed her life, Fond du Lac’s Jeanna GieseFrassetto is using her experience to educate others to help limit the spread of rabies and save lives.
Each day, 189 people die from rabies, Giese-Frassetto told a packed house at the Fond du Lac Public Library Tuesday night during a presentation in which she described her story of becoming the first person to survive rabies without a vaccine and how it has shaped her life since. It is one of many such speeches she has given to groups, young and old, as part of her mission to decrease the number of deaths and advocate for awareness.
Life changed at Sunday Mass
In fall of 2004, rabies was not on the 15-year-old’s radar as something she needed to fear. A sophomore at St. Mary’s Springs High School, she played on the varsity volleyball team and dreamed of becoming a veterinarian or an animal rehabilitator.
A Sunday Mass changed her life’s trajectory.
On Sept. 12, 2004, she and her mom attended the former St. Patrick’s Church. During Mass, a bat began to swoop down, going from window to window, but never getting out, which she thought was odd, she said. Parishioners swatted at it with song books and hats. Finally, in the back of church, an usher knocked it down to the landing above the steps.
Wanting to help the bat and spare parishioners from further panic, she stepped up to take it outside. She picked it up by the tips of its wings, thinking it couldn’t bite or scratch her in that position, but as she rushed out the door and onto the outside steps, the bat’s tooth pierced her left index finger. To get it to release, she had to yank the bat off, and dropped it into a pine tree she had planned to lay it in.
When she told her mom what happened after Mass and showed her the bite “smaller than a pinprick,” her mom washed it with hydrogen peroxide, as she believed the animals did not pose a large rabies threat to people, Giese-Frassetto said. Statistically, she was correct.
Only 1% of all bats carry the virus, Giese-Frassetto told attendees. Only mammals carry the virus, which, unless treated, is fatal. In the United States, most cases come from wild animals like raccoons, coyotes, mongooses, foxes and bats. In other parts of the world, 99% of cases come from dogs, she said.
However, the bat that bit Giese-Frassetto was in that 1%, and with the bite, the virus, which travels through saliva, transferred into her body. A vaccine is available for people if bitten, but it must be administered within seven to 10 days, she said. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the vaccine is comprised of five shots given over a 14-day period.
When symptoms of the virus first appear, they are similar to many others, including the flu, and can first occur anywhere from less than a month to a year after infection, she said.
In Giese-Frassetto, it began three weeks later with tingling from her left hand to elbow that she thought was a pinched nerve from volleyball practice. During Springs’ homecoming week, running from Oct. 11 to 15, she began to feel nauseous and extremely tired. When playing in the last volleyball game of the season, she had double vision. Bits of her memory began to be lost.
That Friday, her pediatrician at St. Agnes Hospital referred her to a neurologist, who ran a CAT scan and blood work. As they spoke with him, Giese-Frassetto remembers leaning over to her mom and asking, “What about the bat bite?” They were told it was nothing to worry about, but as symptoms began to worsen, the next day, she was taken to the ER and admitted to the hospital.
The doctors tested for West Nile virus, meningitis and Lyme disease, but all came back negative, while she developed slurred speech, tremors, increased vomiting and her body became rigid. On Oct. 18, as her pediatrician asked what she could’ve been exposed to that would cause this, her mom brought up the bat. Immediately, he called Children’s Hospital of Milwaukee, and she was taken by ambulance.
At the hospital, doctors took hair, skin and saliva samples to be sent to the Centers for Disease Control in Georgia. When the results came back the next day, rabies was confirmed.
Her parents were told that they could either leave Giese-Frassetto at the hospital to die or take her home. Dr. Rodney Willoughby, who had taken the job only four months earlier, presented a third option.
From the time she had been admitted, the doctor had researched rabies and found that in those infected, the brain “was physically undamaged.” The disease, Giese-Frassetto said, spreads from the wound, to the nerves, to the spinal cord, to the brain and to the salivary glands so it can be passed on. If the virus could be stopped from reaching the brain, Willoughby believed she could be saved.
To do so, he suggested an experimental medically induced coma.
Within seven days, the virus was gone, and in two weeks, doctors brought her out of the coma, making her the first person to survive rabies without the vaccine. The method is now known as the Milwaukee Protocol. To her survival, she attributes God and science.
“I always say God first because to me, if there wasn’t a God, then science wouldn’t have been there to help,” she said.
A life full of accomplishments
Though she was alive, her body had been damaged. Her brain had swelled and her hypothalamus was impaired. The left side of her body was much weaker than her right. She was “basically a newborn,” she said.
On Jan. 1, 2005, she returned home to Fond du Lac and began rehabilitation and physical, occupational and speech therapy at St. Agnes, as well as tutoring to keep up with classes. Through it, her mom, dad and three brothers supported her. Today, her left side and nerves have difficulty functioning, and her balance is not what she wishes, but she has accepted it, she said. Recently, she began equine therapy to help her balance.
During the presentation, one audience member told Giese-Frassetto she had been listed on a radio program discussing people who shouldn’t have survived. Despite the odds stacked against her, she has added a multitude of accomplishments to her life, including graduating from high school with her class in 2007 and from Lakeland College with a degree in biology in 2011. Now, she is married, has three children and races sled dogs across Wisconsin, while remaining an animal lover and staunch advocate for rabies education.
The virus is preventable through vaccines and education, she said. People should not approach wild animals if they don’t have to, and if they must, they should wear protective gloves and other gear. If a person is bitten or scratched by an animal, they should capture the animal and keep its brain fully intact so it can be sent for testing. Wounds should be washed with soap and water, and the doctor called, she said.
To reduce the spread of the virus, she encourages pet owners to spay and neuter pets, as well as have all pets vaccinated. If the animal is bitten, it must be quarantined at a facility for 10 days, or at home if it had a vaccine, as well as examined by a vet, she said.
Sharing this information and more has taken her around the world. She has given presentations to groups young and old, served as an ambassador for the Global Alliance for Rabies Control, taken part in conferences, bat festivals, fundraisers and, in the Philippines, an island’s celebration of having eradicated the virus from dogs.
In Fond du Lac, she added libraries to her list, with her hometown library the first she had ever spoken at, said Lori Burgess, assistant director of operations at the Fond du Lac Public Library.
To be back in her hometown felt “pretty good,” she told a crowd made up of family members, as well as those who wore blue bracelets in support of her and added her name to prayer chains when she was first infected.
“I, along with a good share of people in this room, were praying for you at the time, and it is true miracles do happen and it’s really nice to see how well you’re doing,” said one attendee.
The words ring true to Giese-Frassetto, who on her shoulder has a tattoo of a cross and a bat with the words “miracles happen” above it. Despite the many wrong choices that led to her fighting for her life, she does not hold any grudges — even to bats. Instead, she describes them as ”amazing animals” that pollinate plants, eat pests and, at all costs, avoid people and daylight, unless they are ill — like the one who bit her.
“If I could go back and change the moment I was bit, I wouldn’t change it. Too many good things have happened because of it, and I wouldn’t have the wonderful life I have now,” she said.