Being a Statistic... The Dubious Honor

Several weeks ago... around Labor Day... we had one of our not too infrequent power outages caused by a severe thunderstorm. It was night, we had the windows open, but the air was not moving through the bedroom enough to go to sleep comfortably. So, I got up... several times.

To keep cooler, and to keep an eye on the power crews so that they didn't leave our area without getting our power back on (which has happened before), I sat on the front porch. My wife, Cindy, and I talked about putting some insect retardant on. It was dark in the house and we couldn't find it with the flashlights, so we sat out there and I got bit up by mosquitos.

About four days later, I started getting chills, fever, headache and body ache. This lasted all weekend and into the beginning of the next week. What was more strange was that I broke out in a rash. We joked about getting West Nile Virus. I looked up the symptoms on the web and, sure enough, they matched what I had.

I decided a couple of days later to get a blood test, just in case. Cindy called the doctor today and she nurse told her that the test came back positive for WNV. I am, thankfully, over the symptoms now. I had an elderly uncle who died from WNV. So, I have the dubious honor of being a CDC statistic... one of the "confirmed" cases in our area.