Stories from Caregivers: Synthia from CALIFORNIA
CA
Synthia
FROM CALIFORNIA
I took care of my husband, Orfil, who was fighting Valley Fever. This is a disease that is devastating! It is rare and can kill you or leave you with permanent damage. And most people have never head of it. You can get it by just breathing, that's how my husband got it, he became sick with night sweats and he developed lumps on his arms and legs, we thought it was some kind of rash. It took two visits to the Urgent Care until a nurse practitioner he saw said she knew exactly what it was because she had the same bumps before. That's when they diagnosed him with valley fever. He became so weak that he could barely walk, he lost so much weight people barely recognized him when he finally was able to go outside. He was out of work for 3 months and at this time I was working full-time. Still, I didn't know about FMLA back then or maybe they didn't have it. I would check on him at lunch time, make sure he took his meds, and he was fed. He's in good health now, valley fever will always be there when he takes x-rays, there will always be a nodule that shows up in his lungs as a scar that won't let you forget this devastating rare disease. My hope is that eventually valley fever is a thing of the past. It doesn't get the recognition that we need it to get only because it affects less than 200,000 people a year and is primarily in the southwest region of the United States. We are happy he's still here as we have 5 kids and 1 grandbaby. Thank God!
