A woman had to have all her limbs amputated after contracting a deadly illness caused by a tick bite.
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Rogers was vacationing at Grand Lake o’ the Cherokees, a 46,500-acre lake in the foothills of the Ozark Mountain Range in northeast Oklahoma that is well known for its bass fishing. After testing negative for West Nile Virus and meningitis, Rogers was diagnosed with Rocky Mountain spotted fever, which is spread by ticks.
A GoFundMe page to help cover the costs of Jo’s medical care has been set up by her cousin, he added.
Four days after being bit, Rogers said she felt like she had the flu. The doctors only came to a conclusion that she might have contracted an illness caused by a tick bite when she began developing gangrene on her limbs.
Five days later, her family took her to an emergency room because Rogers couldn’t walk. Symptoms include fever, headache, abdominal pain, vomiting, and muscle pain.
“(They had) to save her life to keep the infection from getting to her vital organs”.
As the young mom fights for her life on a ventilator, still in a medically induced coma, Lisa does her best to be positive even though the woman’s life will never be the same, just because of one small tick bite.
Indeed, the severity of her infection is rare, but many people catch the bacteria from an unsuspecting tick bite every year. She went into septic shock, and her limbs turned black and blue. Within the course of one week, 40-year-old Jo Rogers went from being the picture of health to losing both of her arms at mid-forearm level and parts of both of her legs. On the fifth day, however, she was brought to the hospital because her hands and feet were hurting.
“She’s a attractive, energetic fun person and I mean nobody deserves this”, said Lisa Morgan.
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“It’s the worst case of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever they’d seen”, Roger’s cousin Liza Morgan told CNN’s Oklahoma affiliate KOCO, according to CNN. People who are treated early may recover quickly and not need to be hospitalized, the CDC says.
