15 replies to this topic

[respect the redhorse]

Hi all,

 

I'm really perplexed about this and wanted to appeal to the NANFA hive-mind.

 

I just moved to Greenville, NC to start a PhD program at the university here in marine benthic ecology. I've spent years working in streams in MD, occasionally in pretty nasty water. I'm pretty good with personal hygiene and have never before had any kind of illness (even tick related) that I would associate with either working in streams or the surrounding edge-type forest / field habitat. 

 

However, I just spent two days in the hospital with some kind of an infection that had me running a temperature at one point of 104.4....aches and pains the whole week, and those horrible, wracking chills that actually had me shaking the couch and freaking out the dogs. They ran every test under the sun and couldn't come to any definitive conclusions -- still waiting on some of the blood cultures though. I was discharged yesterday and am feeling much better. It could be just a coincidence, but I started feeling sick Sunday evening. That morning, I'd been checking out a nearby creek with some chunky creek chubsuckers. It's summer and the creek drains a mostly rural area, so I was going without waders. There was nothing around that looked nasty or suspicious, but I'm not familiar with the area so maybe there was a drain or sewer outfall just around the bend upstream or something. At one point I did see the usual wild animal fecal matter on an exposed sandbar, so maybe I had a small open wound somewhere and...well...who knows? The final analysis from the hospital was something like: "unknown zoonotic infection, probably tick related." It's also worth noting that I never infected my wife, so that too may suggest something more exotic. 

 

Anybody have any experience with this? I just got some new nets from Jonahs, so I'm going back...albeit with full chest waders and guaranteed cut-free arms!

 

Many thanks,

 

Chris

 

 

[MtFallsTodd]

I've never gotten ill from anything freshwater. Got real sick fragging zoanthids but that's a whole different story. Keep us informed with anything else you find out. I'm in one creek or another all summer and want to avoid getting sick!!!!

[Matt DeLaVega]

I don't want to cause paranoia, but a buddy of mine and myself ended up in the hospital when we were about 18. We were jumping off a rope swing in the East fork of the Little Miami. It was summer flow, and there was a treatment plant upstream. I imagine the higher percentage of effluent and the jumping in(probably swallowed a fair amount of water that day) were a bad combination. So fever, aches,pains, swollen lymph nodes, diarrhea, and vomiting. I.V. rehydration and antibiotics did the trick. Never has it happened to me since,

[Moontanman]

In warmer southern waters the dangers increase somewhat but this one is the one I most worry about. I used to do quite a bit of snorkeling in freshwater but in retrospect if it was easy to catch I would have been in trouble. 

 

http://www.cdc.gov/p...ia/general.html

[Doug_Dame]

I know of Vibrio vulnificus, Naegleria fowleri, and Edwardsiella tarda, but Wikipedia's "waterborne diseases" reminded me of many more, including cryptosporidiosis, cholera, e. coli, Legionellosis and others. You could check there to see if any matched your symptoms. But hopefully the final lab results will give you more definitive info. (However, you'd think the hospital would know about everything that's reasonably well known, or at least it'd be recognizable/keyable under a lab microscope.) Some typically enter via an open wound, but some could get you via water splashes to the mouth or eyes. 

 

But if it was a waterborne something, same-day is an awful fast onset of acute symptoms. 

 

Glad you're getting over it!!! Sounds highly unfun. The good news is that the relative risk seems pretty low.

 

Now ... when you go out with full waders ... be careful about heatstroke. I went with my normal neoprene chest-highs (only set of waders at the time) once in a nasty-looking place in Florida many years ago in the middle of the summer, and almost baked myself. 

[gerald]

It's not common, but certainly possible: bacteria, amoeba, Pfeisteria, etc.  The tick-borne connection may be a stronger possibility, from a bite several days or weeks earlier.  Maybe a combination of things got you.  A biologist who worked for NC-WRC and NC-DOT for many years doing mussel surveys got some kind of never-identified infection(?) that messed him up for more than a year.  He suspected it was from a water-borne pathogen but the labs could never really ID any cause.  I can send you his email if you want to contact him.  I'd be more suspicious of pathogens from high-intensity livestock production (hogs, chickens) than from public wastewater treatment plants.

 

Edit:  Pfeisteria cannot infect you; it can make you sick from exposure to the toxins it produces.

[respect the redhorse]

Thanks everyone for taking an interest! I will certainly update you if there is a 'smoking gun.' Interestingly, I never had any GI issues at any point...really came down to horrible back and muscle pain and those fever chills. All the viral panels were negative, which makes sense given that IV doxycycline seemed to do the trick. I don't know whether some other potentially infectious microorganism (like a protist) would be susceptible to those. God help me if I ever encounter N. fowleri, the brain eating amoeba! That thing's been making the rounds this summer as usual, most recently in the US Whitewater facility in Charlotte I heard. But that's certainly something to be aware of when snorkeling in shallow areas with very little flow...the snorkel covers the nose of course, but you wouldn't want to accidentally inhale a great gob of mud! 

 

Someone else rightfully pointed out that getting symptomatic on the same day of infection seems unlikely. I thought so too. It just adds to the mystery I guess. About three weeks ago I was down on the Neuse River below New Bern in the vicinity of the Croatan Forest. Now THAT was some bad water. We had to set some small mud crab traps in the shallows, and we were pretty well covered when working, but that was as good a place as any to pick up some kind of a slow-burn infection. The probe gave us a reading of 37 C -- human body temperature!!...in an area subject to sewage runoff during periods of heavy rain...it's like a giant incubator for human disease. Gerald raises the livestock contamination issue, which would certainly be a factor along the Neuse. If I ever get any kind of a definitive answer back from the hospital, Gerald, I'll get the biologist's email and let him know. It could provide some closure! 

 

Thanks again everyone!

[Matt DeLaVega]

A symptom I was reluctant to mention for both myself and buddy, but may be pertinent, was quite a bit of discomfort in our groin area. Possibly from the swollen nodes, but seemed worse. Gerald may be correct and the plant had nothing to do with it. May have been an algae bloom in the lake upstream, or totally unrelated.

[Moontanman]

A symptom I was reluctant to mention for both myself and buddy, but may be pertinent, was quite a bit of discomfort in our groin area. Possibly from the swollen nodes, but seemed worse. Gerald may be correct and the plant had nothing to do with it. May have been an algae bloom in the lake upstream, or totally unrelated.

 

 

Interesting, I've come into contact with something in the water around here in NC that felt like being stung by a jellyfish or maybe nettle. It occurred under my clothing as well. 

[Chasmodes]

Have you ruled out food poisoning?  I just recovered from it 2 weeks ago.  I went on antibiotics that did the trick after being sick for two weeks.  The bacteria that plagued me has an incubation period of 1-3 days, but others could be as much as a couple of weeks.  Had I been sick after being in a stream a day or two prior, I may have thought it was the cause rather than food poisoning. 

[fritz]

Sorry to hear about your troubles. I've been immersed in Coastal Plain streams for decades with no apparent problems, except maybe mental ones.
you should hook with zootho something and me to do so some collecting. We're in Morehead City during the week and I'm in Wilmington most weekends

[fritz]

Zooxanthellae aka Scott Smith

[respect the redhorse]

Ahh, the ever-present food poisoning! Hard to rule that out, but it certainly is a distinct possibility. When the blood cultures come back we'll see what, if anything, has been cultured. My dad had a patient who went swimming in a pool in a Mexico and came home with salmonella in the blood. 

 

Thanks, fritz. I'd love to do some collecting at some point and learn more about the area. I moved here from Maryland this summer (originally from Winston-Salem though) and it's wonderful to be in a new place with different fish. I have yet to make it out to Waccamaw or any of the Carolina Bays. A masters student in my department was running a morphometrics study on the Waccamaw killifish and was having a heck of a time collecting fish. I hooked him up with some NANFA folks, but don't know if it ever worked out for him. 

 

--Chris

[Chasmodes]

Hope you're feeling better and fully recovered Chris, whatever caused it.

[Casper]

Agreed.

 

Hope you're feeling better and fully recovered Chris, whatever caused it.

 

I have to say i have NEVER gotten sick after snorkeling... to my knowledge.  I have gotten a couple painful ear infections, usually caused by exploring stagnant back water or diving deep.  Nowadays as soon as my ear begins to hurt i use swimmer's ear drops when i go to bed.  Keeping my head to one side for 30 minutes as the drops do their work.

Food poisoning though is quite a bit more common, probably due to i eat out so often.  Been hospitalized 3 times in the last 20 years or so.

I do insure i don't drink the water nor get mucked up too bad.

 

Eager to hear what your Dr. says.

 

For outdoor activities it seems like ticks are the worse.  I have several friends diagnosed with Lyme's Disease and that is a bad way to be. 

[Casper]

It might be good to mention this as well...

 

A few months ago a fella contacted me after a snorkel session in the Conasauga telling me he was sick, both him and his girlfriend, vomiting and diarrhea, asking if anyone else had reported being ill.  Of course that got us concerned and after a thorough check no one else had reported being sick.  Turned out it was a stomach virus that the couple shared.  Which further brings to note that NO ONE has reported getting sick after any of the many snorkel sessions i have been involved with at all the rivers we snorkel.  The Conasauga River is monitored regular for ecolli and such as there are campgrounds and a few moo cows, whitetails and assorted critters upstream.  We also have snorkelers rinse their mouthpiece both before and afterwards in a bleach solution and the wetsuits are soaked in an enzyme solution each time.

I think that is a good report for snorkeling health in the CNF... of course there are many different water bodies beyond us nation wide,  and plenty are NOT healthy.  I have snorkeled many places around the country and never gotten sick.  I was concerned in Nevada after reading several signs and avoided one site, not wanting to get a severe skin rash requiring scratching the itch all the way home.  And there is some kind of brain drilling organism that is a grave concern.

 

On another note i have gotten serious sinus infections from swimming / diving in public chlorinated pools.  So much so i tend to avoid them.  Kind of rare to see a fish in them anyways and when i do they are generally multi colored plastic toys.  In that case it's better to sit in a lounge chair and enjoy bikinis.