PATTERSON IRRIGATOR
ORIGINAL ARTICLE

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2005

By John Saiz Patterson Irrigator

TURLOCK — Lying unconscious on a hospital bed, wired to machines that keep him alive, Pete Carpenter is barely hanging on after contracting West Nile virus last month.

The Patterson resident has remained in a coma at Emanuel Medical Center since Sept. 25.

“We’ve almost lost him twice,” Toni Say of Lathrop said this week of her 63-year-old brother.

Carpenter went to the hospital Sept. 20 for dialysis treatment like the ones he had received for the past year. He complained of nausea during the visit.

The hospital took a culture and a spinal tap for testing, but before results came back confirming he had West Nile, Carpenter’s brain became inflamed and he fell into a coma.

West Nile virus is spread to humans and birds by infected mosquitoes. It cannot be spread from human to human.

Most people infected with the virus have no symptoms, but when people do become ill, their symptoms are usually similar to flu, including fever, headache, and body ache. In rare cases, the infection results in a severe illness called encephalitis, which causes inflammation of the brain and can be fatal. Carpenter has the most serious form of the disease.

Pete Carpenter’s brother, Rick Carpenter of Manteca, said Thursday he could not even begin to describe the ugliness of the early symptoms his brother showed before lapsing into a coma.

“He was shivering like he was lying on an iceberg,” he said.

Within two days of being admitted to the hospital, Rick Carpenter said, his brother was in critical condition. He said he watched painfully as his brother began to lose his speech and then the ability to move different parts of his body.

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