Valley Fever

Posted by Jesse Connor on March 23, 2014, 3:09 pm
187.148.168.241

Last year , after returning from my annual winter stay in La Manzanilla I had an event that still perplexes me as to it's origen . In May I was hospitalized for 5 days after becoming very ill at my home in California . I was in extreme pain and highly jaundiced when admitted , and many of the normal tests came up with nothing . X-rays and a MRI revealed a problem in my gall bladder , but at the same time revealed a mass in the bottom of my right lung above my liver . They went in and corrected the gall stones then sending me off to Stanford to diagnose the mass in my lungs . Understandably lung cancer was suspected as they performed a procedure to get a sample of the mass for biopsy . The good news was I had no lung cancer , but the diagnostic outcome revealed that I had a colony of fungus spores taking up residence in my lung and growing , called progressive desiminated Histoplasmosis , a form of Valley Fever which is air-borne when dust is stirred up. Valley Fever is currently in the farming communities of western farming states , the type that I have is called Ohio River Valley Fever and only contacted there . It is spred by the droppings of birds and bats in that State . Stanford was perplexed , as no one in California has contacted that form from California . I offered the possibility that I may have contacted it from migratory birds while I was in Mexico. My diagnosis revealed that it was in my lymph nodes and my blood stream and more than likely is the reason I had problems with my gall bladder and liver . The reason I'm bringing this up is because in a casual conversation with another resident here , I was told that there were more people here with these symptoms , and I would like to discuss the effects that this fungus has had on me over the last year . The best cure is a strong immune system coupled with anti-fungus drugs . For those with a weak immune system , this form of Valley Fever left untreated can be deadly . It takes anywhere from a year to three years to get rid of it , and it is monitored by lung x-rays . If anyone is aware of someone else's diagnosis , please inform me .

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