Three years ago, Jeanna Giese of Fond du Lac, then 15 years old, picked up a bat that had flown into her church. She wanted to take it outside.
Jeanna was bit and contracted rabies. She didn’t enter the hospital until a month later.
Doctors made a tough call. They put Jeanna into a coma and gave her many antiviral drugs and other medications. The aim was to keep nerve cells from dying. Jeanna went home on New Year’s Day, 2005 after two months in intensive care.
This week, Jeanna Giese, a survivor or rabies without vaccination, attended her first day of college. The medical marvel goes to Marian College in Fond du Lac.
Though it may not be Time or People magazine, Jeanna is written about today in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The Journal says Jeanna was the sixth such case of rabies encephalitis reported in humans, and she was treated “with a novel therapeutic regimen that included ketamine, ribavirin, and amantadine. Five months after exposure, she still had dysarthria, weakness in the left hand and foot, bilateral extensor plantar response, generalized choreoathetosis, intermittent dystonia, and a lurching gait.”
Jeanna showed enough progress by 2006 to return to classes full time in high school without having difficulties with either learning or memory. But she could not resume activity in sports. The Journal writes, “She had no difficulties with her instrumental activities of daily living, including driving. In high school, she took college-level courses in English, physics, and calculus. She scored above average on a national college achievement test, graduated from high school in 2007, and planned to attend a local college in the fall. She had no problems with peer relations or mood disorders.”
Here is a
video showing the progress Jeanna has made.
Notice the blue bracelet on Jeanna's right wrist. You can read about it and more in the
Fond du Lac Reporter newspaper.Jeanna Giese is an amazing young woman.
