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Wilmington woman knows 'blasto' illness from double-dose of experience

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Wilmington woman knows 'blasto' illness from double-dose of experience

By D'Abruzzo

Assistant Features Editor

March 9, 2002

Sara F. Messer, shown in her Wilmington home, visits Warsaw often to care

for her aunt and tend family graves. She has been infected with

blastomycosis twice in the past 10 years. STAFF PHOTO | S. Otto

News out of Warsaw that a handful of its residents have been diagnosed with

blastomycosis hasn't completely surprised Sara F. Messer.

She grew up in Warsaw and has spent her adult years visiting relatives

there. Nearly once a week, she'd visit its cemetery - taking flowers to the

six gravesites she tends to and visiting with deceased family members.

And she, too, has suffered through the effects of blastomycosis twice in the

past 10 years.

Ms. Messer, 62, will never know if she contracted the fungal disease in

Warsaw, but for years she's speculated that. And now with newspaper

headlines linking the town with more cases of blastomycosis - caused by

inhaling spores of a mold species commonly found in the Southeast - she can'

t help but worry she'll get sick again.

" They've told me the best thing I can do is stay away, but I can't do that, "

said Ms. Messer of Wilmington, who continues to visit the town about once a

week to care for her elderly aunt. " I've just got to be careful - get in and

get out. "

The five most recent cases of blastomycosis in Warsaw have occurred in four

students who attend Kenan High School as well as an 81-year-old man

who lives near the school. Another man who lived between Kenansville and

Warsaw died in May of the same fungal infection.

The disease is not contagious, and it tends to severely affect those who

have weakened immune systems or get delayed treatment.

Ms. Messer was living in the Chicago area in September 1991 when she was

first diagnosed with " blasto. " Her doctors never could figure out how she

contracted it, but they suspected the South, where she was from.

She speculated that it happened when she was in Warsaw the previous summer.

" We know that in February 1991, my lungs were clear, " she said. " Sometime

after that, somehow, I picked it up. "

Ms. Messer visited her parents in Warsaw three or four times a year during

her 29 years in Illinois. That summer, she was there while her parents' home

was being repaired.

" They were taking out all that rotten wood, " she said. " The doctor asked

where I'd been and what I'd done. I always thought it came from that old

house and the rotted wood, but there was no way to track it down to that. "

That first case of blastomycosis, Ms. Messer believes, likely would have

been taken care of with anti-fungal medication if not for the abscess it

caused on her lung. She had to have lung surgery to have the abscess

removed, and her lungs have plagued her with problems since. She has chronic

problems with bronchiectasis - an enlargement and infection of the bronchial

tubes.

Ms. Messer moved to Wilmington in 1995 to be closer to her family in Warsaw

after the passing of her father in 1994. Her husband died weeks later, and

her mother died in 1998.

Ms. Messer often went to Warsaw, some 60 miles away, to visit her family.

Then in February 1998, it happened again.

Ms. Messer was hospitalized, her lungs covered in pneumonia. She was on the

most powerful antibiotics, but she kept getting worse. Luckily, she said,

her doctor, who knew her history, tested her for and soon diagnosed her with

blastomycosis - once again.

" Because I had blasto before, he suspected it might be blasto. Fortunately,

he didn't waste a lot of time, " Ms. Messer said.

That stay in the hospital at New Hanover Regional Medical Center lasted 16

days, and it took her months to recover with home health care.

Again, Ms. Messer was faced with the question of how she contracted

blastomycosis.

" There was a number of possibilities, " she said, citing that the blasto may

have always been present in her body or that, perhaps, she came in contact

with it again. " The second time it happened, my only thought when I was

lying up there so sick was what can I do to never have this again? "

This past year has been Ms. Messer's best in terms of her health. That's why

she feels she needs to take precautions when it comes to visiting Warsaw.

" I've been concerned about going up there and going to the cemetery, " she

said, though she stressed that she is not " afraid. "

It's been nearly a month since she's visited the cemetery, though, and on a

visit to Warsaw on Thursday, she said she really wanted to be there.

" I can't spend the rest of my days not going to the cemetery, " she said.

" Next time they see me in Warsaw, I may be wearing a (surgical) mask. "

D'Abruzzo: 343-2388

diana.dabruzzo@...

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