Man Dies After 5-Year Battle With Mosquito-Borne Illness

A Connecticut husband and father died this week after a grueling five-year battle with a mosquito-borne virus that's fatal in nearly 30 percent of cases. And the rare disease is making a resurgence in the tri-state area on the East Coast.

Richard Pawulski, 49, first contracted the disease, Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE), while doing yard work in his wooded, Colchester, CT backyard in August 2019, the New York Post reports. Even those who survive the initial onset of the virus, which targets the brain, are typically subject to lifelong disabilities and neurologic problems. When Pawulski first contracted the disease, he experienced intense headaches and was vomiting yellow bile, but doctors were initially baffled.

It wasn't until other cases of EEE began popping up in Connecticut—with four total cases diagnosed in the state that year—that doctors determined what was wrong with him. At the time, Pawulski was the sole survivor of the illness.

When he first fell ill, Pawulski was rushed to emergency surgery to alleviate swelling in his brain, but complications from surgery worsened his condition, and he fell into a two-month coma. Though miraculously, he awakened from the coma after his wife and daughter made the heartbreaking decision to pull the plug, he ended up spending the next five years in hospitals and nursing homes. Among the complications Pawulski suffered were a traumatic brain injury, liver and kidney complications, seizures, and regular bouts of pneumonia.

Pawulski died early Monday after being admitted into hospice, when doctors found that "there wasn’t much else" that could be done for him. His cause of death was ultimately a methicillin-resistant Steph infection that was too difficult to treat on top of his other EEE-related symptoms.

"I’m not joking when I say your life can change in the blink of an eye, because that was what happened to us,” his 18-year-old daughter, Amellia Pawulski, told The Post . "He always tried to look at on the positive. I remember people being like, 'Oh, how’s your day?' And he was like, 'My day is great. I woke up. I can breathe on my own. I can talk on my own. I can go to the bathroom on my own. I have no reason to be upset.'"

EEE is described by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a "rare but serious disease" with similarities to other mosquito-borne diseases, such as dengue fever and West Nile virus. Only a few cases reported in the United States each year, typically occurring in eastern or Gulf Coast states. However, New York State saw its first fatality in nearly a decade this year, with another death reported in New Hampshire back in August.

Symptoms can include fever, headache, vomiting, diarrhea, seizures, behavioral changes, and drowsiness. There are currently no vaccines to prevent or treat EEE, with experts suggesting that mosquito bite prevention is the best way to lower risk of infection, such as wearing long sleeves and pants outdoors, in addition to using mosquito repellent spray.