West Nile Virus Survivor Offers a Warning and a Plea

On August 6, 2006, Marie Heilman awoke to find herself in a Woodland Memorial Hospital bed, in the intensive care unit, attached to a ventilator that was keeping her alive. She did not know that she had been in a coma for 15 days.

“All I remember is waking up, absolutely terrified, because I had a tube down my throat,” she recalls. “There was nobody in my room, and everything was so blurry I could barely see. I couldn’t hear anything. I was extremely weak to where I couldn’t even get off the bed. It still feels more like a bad dream than a memory.”

Heilman, at the time an active, healthy 40-year-old with a country home outside Winters, a husband, and four children aged 16 to 23, had barely survived a severe case of encephalitis that was brought on by West Nile virus. Of the 27 Yolo County residents who were struck by the virus that year, she was the one hit the hardest. Since that time, she has worked tirelessly to educate people about the dangers posed by this mosquito-transmitted disease.

'I was crawling to the bathroom when I realized there was something very wrong.'

While she can’t be certain where or when she got bit by the bug that made her so sick, Heilman guesses it was while she was gardening or mowing the lawn. She’d spent a bunch of time in the family’s big yard preparing for a party she was throwing for her oldest daughter, Sam, who was visiting from St. Louis. It was a few days later, after dropping her daughter at the airport, that Heilman began to feel ill.

“Sam had an early flight, so it was about 6:30 in the morning when I got home,” she says. “I felt tired and weak, but I thought I just needed some rest.” Heilman decided to take a nap on top of the bed. That’s where she was 12 hours later when her husband got home from work.

“Obviously, I was exhausted,” she says, looking back. “I thought it was just because I worked hard over the weekend, getting things ready for the party and that kind of stuff.” But within hours she suffered an attack of vertigo that would not go away, and was overwhelmed by nausea.

“I was crawling to the bathroom when I realized there was something very wrong,” she says.

Rare but Familiar Symptoms

The following day, a Tuesday, Heilman went to a doctor, who told her there was a virus going around and that she probably picked it up at the party. The doctor sent her home and told her to come back that Friday—or cancel the appointment if she was feeling better. The next day, Heilman says, she was “spinning out of control,” unable to eat, and suffering a horrible headache. “I’m not a headache person,“ she says. “I rarely have had a headache in my life. And my head was just pounding.”

In an interview this week, Heilman pointed out that she had recognized this set of symptoms from an advertising campaign being conducted at the time by the Sacramento-Yolo Mosquito & Vector Control District (SYMVCD). She’d seen TV commercials, billboards, and ads in the community newspaper warning people of the specific dangers posed by West Nile virus, which had arrived in California just three years earlier.

“I thought, ‘I have every one of those symptoms,’” she says. 

By the end of the week, she was experiencing seizures. She had to be taken from her car into the doctor’s office in a wheelchair. She was immediately sent to the hospital, where she was given a spinal tap so a sample of her cerebrospinal fluid could be sent to the lab for a test. By the time the results came in five days later, she was already in a coma.

An Avid West-Nile Education Proponent

Marie Heilman says she thanks God she survived, and over the 17 years since her ordeal, she has devoted herself to helping people understand that they should protect themselves. She wants people to know just how devastating West Nile virus can be. She wants her Northern California neighbors to know that she came within inches of death, and that some of her symptoms—including severe visual impairment—will never go away. 

And she wants people to know that there is a simple way to make certain that you and your family are protected. Despite the severity of the risk and the complexity of the disease, she says, the path to safety is simple: Wear mosquito repellent.

Over the 17 years since the first case of West Nile Virus appeared in California, it has caused 374 fatalities. 

“People know they need to wear sunscreen and put sunscreen on their kids, but somehow they don’t remember to protect themselves from mosquitoes, which can be deadly. It only takes one bite

She has a cool trick that makes this easier.

“I buy 100 percent DEET and put three drops in our sunscreen—it's not that hard,” she says, laughing. “Why can't they invent something that has sunscreen and bug repellent in the same formula? Why do we have to make it?”

The Big Fight Against the Bite

Since West Nile Virus came to California in 2003, there have been 7,683 cases that led the infected individual to seek medical treatment. 

One in five people who become infected develop a fever that is often accompanied by headache, nausea, body aches and other flu-like symptoms. A small percentage of those patients will experience much more severe symptoms, including feelings of disorientation, profound muscle weakness, vision problems, convulsions or, like Heilman, coma. 

Over the 17 years since the first case of West Nile Virus appeared in California, it has caused 374 fatalities. 

For anyone who requests the free service, the district will send a technician to perform an inspection of their property.

In addition to making batches of  mosquito repellent sunscreen to protect her family and friends, Heilman spent more than a decade serving on the Sacramento-Yolo Mosquito & Vector Control District board of directors. This special  district is charged with protecting the residents of the two counties it serves from West Nile Virus and other mosquito-borne diseases. It accomplishes this by employing state-of-the-art science to monitor mosquito populations, track West Nile Virus, and giving people the tools they need to “Fight the Bite.” 

For anyone who requests the free service, the district will send a technician to perform an inspection of their property. They will help identify mosquito breeding sources and offer advice on how to eliminate the standing water that mosquitoes need to survive and multiply. The district also conducts localized spraying in areas of high WNV activity to keep the number of virus-spreading mosquitoes down, distributes repellent wipes at area events, and even offers free mosquitofish for residents’ ponds, fountains or horse troughs. (To sign up for email notifications for spraying updates, click here.)

Heilman joined the district’s board in 2008, representing the city of Winters, and gave special attention to its outreach efforts—especially at the start of mosquito season. Because the effects of her illness have caused her eyesight to fail to the point that she no longer can drive to the board's monthly meetings, she stepped down from her official position, but continues to do volunteer outreach work.

“They are doing such good work,” she says of SYMVCD, “and I will never pass up on an opportunity to let people know about them. And about how important it is for everyone to take steps to protect themselves and their community.”

This article was produced in collaboration with the Sacramento-Yolo Mosquito & Vector Control District. Follow this link to learn more.