Nine Years and Still Hurting

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

They all report pain, sometimes unbearable pain.
Many report feelings of isolation and difficulty in comprehension.
Nearly all have been dropped by their doctors and have difficulty getting a physician willing to treat them.
Ironically many still have serious after effects from the powerful medications used to keep them alive.
They are all victims of the 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak and nine years later the suffering endures.
Though in many cases the harm had been inflicted months earlier, the "totally avoidable" medical tragedy began to unfold in the Fall of 2012. Tennessee was the first state to report a rare case of fungal meningitis in mid-September.
Though it would take weeks, months and years for the full details to emerge, the cause of the outbreak, which ultimately sickened nearly 800 and killed over 100 of them, was deadly fungi that contaminated a steroid prescribed to kill painful spinal and joint pain.
Describing her extreme pain, Joan Peay, a Tennessee victim, said, "If I try to stifle a yawn, the pain is so bad I could almost pass out."
Peay, who suffered two bouts of fungal meningitis following injections of contaminated methylprednisolone acetate, said the pain in her back, side and neck gets worse at night forcing her to use "a long heat pack" that she warms in a microwave.
But pain is not the worst after effect. Difficulty in comprehension she says leaves her feeling isolated.
"Whatever controls comprehension was damaged with the huge swelling that occurred in my head," she said, adding that if someone talks too fast or too softly, "I have no idea what they are saying. I frequently feel left out because of that. It is an isolated feeling."
A feeling shared by others.
"My short term memory is gone," said Justine Miller, a Michigan victim who also reported heart and non-alcoholic liver disease.
Dawn Elliott, an Indiana victim, said she and other patients at the facility where she was injected were summarily dropped by the clinic and she has had continuing difficulty in finding a physician willing to deal with her serious pain.
"I ended up walking out," she said after describing her last heated encounter with one physician. "Now I have no pain doctor."
"I was seeing a pain doctor but after a short period of time, she cut off my pain meds and referred me to physical therapy," said Nancy Dargan.
Dargan said back in 2012 she was initially supposed to get a spinal injection but because of severe pain the doctor decided to inject her in the hip.
She had an immediate severe reaction and ended up making multiple trips to the hospital. vorinconazole.
"I had trouble remembering things, my thought processes were a mess..I had hystrionics, was hallucinating and talking to people who weren't there," she recalled.
Jack Pavlekovich, who was injected in Indiana, said his health has been going downhill and he needs a walker to ambulate.
"I have constant back pain," he said. Pavlekovich, however, says he no longer has any trouble getting medical care. That's because he left Indiana and moved to Wisconsin.
"I've had no problem at all," he said.
Rita Begin Geisler says her current condition makes it difficult to even take a walk.
"I am so bad now that I can’t even walk around the block with my dog and husband without moaning and groaning in pain," she said, adding that she likes to read and, thankfully, has no pain when sitting.
Elliott, Pavlekovich and other Indiana victims have yet to see a dime from suits against the clinics where they were injected. And in Michigan Justine Miller says she has been waiting almost four months for a payment she was already awarded.
Yet Miller, like many other outbreak victims, continues to live in pain.
"I live in severe pain with my back and legs and sometimes cannot dress myself without my husband’s help," she said.
Contact: wfrochejr999@gmail.com