LA Woman Hospitalized With Bubonic Plague

A woman was hospitalized earlier this month with bubonic plague, the first confirmed human case in Los Angeles County in more than two decades, health officials said Tuesday.

The woman, who was not identified, was admitted April 13 with a fever, swollen lymph nodes and other symptoms. A blood test confirmed she had contracted the bacterial disease. The woman was placed on antibiotics and is in stable condition, officials said.

Bubonic plague is not contagious, but if left untreated it can morph into pneumonic plague, which can be spread from person to person. Bubonic plague is usually transmitted to humans from the bites of fleas infected by dead rodents.

Health officials suspect the woman was exposed to fleas in her central Los Angeles home, said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, the county's director of public health. The woman's family was also placed on antibiotics as a precaution, but there's no evidence they were infected.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/04/18/D8H2OUH87.html

Her name was Donna Delattre. She was the thirteen-year-old daughter of the president of my college, and I met her at an alumni fundraiser in Seattle back in 1983. Shortly thereafter, she went with her parents to the New Mexico campus, then went on to somewhere in the Southeast to visit her grandparents. Apparently, she contracted the plague in New Mexico (where it is not uncommon), but the symptoms didn't show up until she was at her grandparents' home, in a part of the country where it never occurs. Thus, the local medical staff was unfamiliar with the symptoms, and didn't manage to diagnose her condition until it was too late.

She was a really nice kid, too. :cry:

That's so tragic. I knew a girl in high school named Theresa Maldonado who went to the local emergency clinic with moderately escalating flu symptoms. She was sent home with instructions to take tylenol and make sure to keep hydrated. 3 hours later, she was dead. She had meningococcal meningitis and apparently, was already presenting with the rash when observed with the attendant stiff neck, photophobia, a raging headache, nausea, vomitting, dizziness and decreased ability to follow basic commands and frankly, she'd been better off going to KMart for help. This happened in 1981 in Atwater California.. Such a shock and sadness for her friends, classmates and family.:hug:

Of course House (as usual) was able to diagnose the problem before it was too late. Glad to see that they caught it in time in real life as well.

Hubby liked how they figured out that they had to take her off the immuno-suppresant drugs to find out what was really going on. He's done that with a patient before.

He also was upset about the colonoscopy without anesthetic. He said that there is a group of doctors who favor that, though, and he said that the depiction was extremely accurate. He's hoping they'll rethink their position on the procedure being done that way.

without anesthetic. I had one with it and it was bad enough. Besides CSI and West Wing, House is my favorite show.

He said that it's hard enough to get his patients to get one with anesthetic and that compliance would drop to zero without it. He just can't understand docs who don't take pain seriously, but they're out there.

Everything stops for House in our house. :D My hubby likes to think up potential diagnoses and then criticize the House team for bad pain control (he hates how Forman doesn't anesthetize enough for lumbar punctures) and other stuff. It helps him blow off steam. ;)

Remember when the anthrax attacks occurred and the very first case was that Florida guy and they all thought it was naturally caught from the environment, and he was just the first of a wave of victims of the attack. I hope this is really an isolated case....

That's where it is here in the States.

Hmm. That's a good question--how did she get it?