Jeanna Giese

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Jeanna Giese is the first person known to have survived symptomatic rabies without receiving the rabies vaccine. She is only the sixth person known to have survived rabies after the onset of symptoms; the other survivors suffered from vaccine failures.

In September 2004, Giese, then fifteen years old, picked up a bat that she found in St. Patrick's Church in her hometown of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. She sustained a small bite on her left index finger, but her mother decided to not seek medical attention. Thirty-seven days after the bite Giese developed symptoms of rabies. She was admitted to the hospital with tremors and trouble walking. Her condition continued to deteriorate, and she was referred to the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. Doctors there began to suspect rabies, and their diagnosis was confirmed by laboratory tests at the Centers for Disease Control.

Rabies had been considered universally fatal in unvaccinated patients after the onset of symptoms (with treatment generally limited to palliative care), but Giese’s parents agreed to an experimental treatment proposed by her doctors at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. The doctors used drugs to put Giese into a coma, and then gave her a cocktail of antiviral drugs (ribavirin and amantadine) while waiting for her immune system to produce antibodies to attack the virus. Giese was brought out of the coma after seven days.

After thirty-one days in the hospital, Giese was declared virus-free and removed from isolation. There was some initial concern about the level of brain damage she had suffered, but while she had suffered nerve damage, the disease seemed to have left her cognitive abilities largely intact. She spent several weeks undergoing rehabilitation therapy and was discharged on January 1, 2005. By November 2005 she was able to walk on her own, had returned to school, and had started driving. She also expressed some frustration at her newfound celebrity.

The reasons for her survival remain controversial. Giese's doctors knew most rabies deaths were caused by temporary brain dysfunction, not permanent brain damage. They reasoned that if they protected Giese's brain by intentionally putting her into a coma, she would survive long enough for her body to fight off the virus. While the treatment appears to have worked as planned, other rabies researchers suggest Giese might have been infected with a particularly weak form of the virus, or that she might have an unusually strong immune system. John Giese, Jeanna's father, expressed his gratitude to her doctors, but also attributed her survival to the power of prayer, a claim unable to be proven scientifically. The bat that bit Giese was not recovered for testing, and doctors were unable to isolate the virus from her body.

At least four later attempts to cure symptomatic rabies using a similar medical protocol have been unsuccessful. In May 2006, doctors at the Texas Children's Hospital applied a similar treatment as used on Giese to Zachary Jones, a 16 year-old stricken with symptomatic rabies, but they were unable to save him.

Jeanna Giese attends St. Mary Springs High School in Fond du Lac, and with the extra help of teachers, was able to complete her sophomore year with her class. Despite the obvious setback, she is at the same level as the rest of her classmates.

External links

[Soul Survivor: A Journey of Faith and Medicine]

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