ST. BERNARD, La. -- It's taken the life of a 16-year-old girl in Florida after she swam in a river and a 9-year-old boy in Virginia after he was dunked in water at a fishing camp.
Now the mother of a young college student from St. Bernard Parish talks about the loss of her son from a deadly brain-eating amoeba.
The victims who have died of this rare infection include a Florida teen. The amoeba could have entered her body when she swam in a river near her home. She first had high fever, a headache and threw up 20 times.
Another case was the boy from central Virginia. He was dunked at day camp the first day.
Now this rare infection by an amoeba has also taken a life here at home. Patrice Cusimano remembers her only child.
"He had some very definite opinions about some things, but he was very kind. He was a sweet boy and I was very happy to see the comments (on the obit blog) that people made about him, about how kind he was, because to me that meant more than anything that he was kind to people. He was very much like my dad," said Cusimano.
Jeffrey Allen Cusimano of Arabi was 28 when he died on June 7 after the amoeba apparently entered his brain by contaminated tap water that unknowingly was in the neti pot he used to clear his sinuses.
A neti pot is small and shaped like a tea pot. It's used to rinse out the nose and sinus cavities with salt water to help people suffering from colds, sinus infections and allergies.
"Around 4:00 in the morning, I started hearing him taking showers like repeatedly, he would take a shower and then go lay down and take a show and go lay down and at some point I got up to check and I realized he was burning up with fever," his mother remembers.
State health officials say the organism was found in the shower head in his home. It was also in the hot water heater. But they say it was isolated to that home and the water supply was checked and not contaminated.
First symptoms include headache, fever, nausea, vomiting and a stiff neck. Later symptoms include confusion, attention loss, loss of balance, seizures and hallucinations.
That's exactly what happened to Jeff.
"At this time he was disoriented. He didn't know his social security number. He had started walking around the house about getting dressed, going to take a shower in his bedroom, and just acting very erratic," Patrice Cusimano said, crying.
Jeff graduated from Holy Cross High School with honors. He had plans, graduating from UNO this year with future MBA and law school hopes. He was enjoying a life in the hotel industry working at the Ritz.
But Patrice knew when the ICU doctor called from Ochsner Baptist Medical Center, those plans would never happen.
"The doctor called and asked me if I could come right back because he was deteriorating, and I knew I was going to lose him," she said. "So from Saturday to Tuesday, he was gone."
Only 120 people have died from this amoeba since it was found in the 1960s.
It usually happens to children after water is pushed up their noses from jumping in to water in lakes, ponds and rivers. People can swallow this organism and be fine, but for some when it gets lodged up in the nose, it goes to the brain and consumes it as its food.
"We see it late in the summer -- August, September -- and the organism invades the body," said Dr. Jim Diaz, of the LSU Health Sciences Center's School of Public Health. "Its infectious form is a cyst that's microscopic, and it invades the body through the nose. So the cases we've seen have been cases where people have been wake boarding or water skiing or doing something in fresh water -- diving, swimming under water a lot."
To protect yourself from this rare infection, use a nose clip or hold your nose when jumping into lakes and rivers. In neti pots, use only sterile or distilled water, or water that has been boiled and cooled.
wwltv.com
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