Miracles Happen - the story of Jeanna Giese

This story isn’t really a ‘small miracle’ at all, but a really big one!  You may have heard of it before, but it’s worth repeating here.

 

I was lucky because I got to see with my own eyes, hear with my own ears and touch with my own hands the teenager Jeanna Giese who was miraculously saved from rabies.  Whether by a true miracle of prayer or a miracle of science through a treatment developed by Dr. Rodney Willoughby and colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Jeanna survived rabies - a disease that should have killed her.

 

Jeanna was a teenage kid who loved animals.  One month before these events, she had picked up a bat in her church – the bat was sick and had fallen from the choir onto the floor.  Jeanna wanted to help the poor creature, so she asked her mom if she could pick it up and take it outside.  Jeanna did so, yet the bat latched onto her finger with its teeth and wouldn’t let go!  Although she didn’t realize it at the time, the bat had rabies.  (of course it’s never a good idea to pick up any wild animal – an animal’s natural instinct even without rabies is to bite). The bat fluttered off, and Jeanna and her family thought that was the end of that strange incident.

 

One month later though, she developed some bizarre symptoms which took doctors several days to recognize as rabies.  She had fevers, double vision and tingling of the arm.  She developed speech problems and gradually got worse over the next few days – slipping into a state near coma.  After rabies was confirmed from blood tests, Dr. Willoughby decided to try a new treatment by trying to protect the brain with sedation while the body ‘fought’ the virus.

His theory was to ‘buy time’ while Jeanna’s immune system recognized the viral invaders and developed an immune response, thereby preserving her body and brain from attack.  Thus, no vaccines were given.  Instead, a cocktail of medications were administered.  The medicines chosen included ketamine and benzodiazepines to cause coma, which would allow the brain to rest and ‘ride out’ the electrical brain storm thought to be so deadly in rabies.  Other medicines with anti-viral properties were added including amantadine and ribavirin, which are powerful drugs.  Jeanna was kept alive with excellent ICU care and monitored continuously.  When tests showed her immune system was ‘waking up’ to the rabies virus, the doctors lifted the coma.  At first, it was very worrying because there were no obvious signs of life – then, Dr. Willoughby noticed an eye reflex.  That was all she had.  Over the next few days, other parts of her brain ‘woke up’.  She was alive!

 

Over time, Jeanna continued to improve.  Finally she left the hospital ahead of expectations. She went into rehab and relearned many important skills such as learning to eat and drink, walk and talk, etc.  The experts were amazed at how she continued to progress.

 

Eventually she learned how to drive and returned to high school where she actually graduated just a few months ago.

 

I was lucky enough to meet Jeanna and her family at the Rabies in The America’s (RITA) convention in Ottawa, Canada 2005.  It felt to me like being at a wedding – there were so many people happy to see this kid alive, a survivor of the most deadliest disease known!  She talked to the doctors in the room and thanked them for the research that had helped with her cure.  It was a powerful moment.  People came up afterwards to pose for pictures and to shake her hand.  What a miracle!

 

We’re hoping Dr. Willoughby and his team at the CDC can be successful more often, although rabies remains one of the most challenging diseases known to man once symptoms are present.  The key to treatment is actually preventing disease in the first place, so it’s always a good idea to keep the family pet vaccinated against rabies.  Any contact with wildlife should be reported to the proper animal or human health professionals who would know about rabies.

 

Jeanna’s mom had given me a blue bracelet that said ‘Miracles Happen” when we met in Ottawa.  I still wear that bracelet even today, hoping that others too can be saved from rabies.  There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to make the world rabies free.  I hope one day the world will ‘wake up’ to the rabies problem and actually do something to drive this deadly scourge back into the archives of history where it belongs.