Jeanna Giese, of Fon du Lac, Wisconsin, defied medical odds by being the first person to survive rabies without a vaccination in 2004. The, then-15-year-old girl, got infected with the virus when she got bitten by a bat, but since the wound she sustained was shallow, she didn’t seek medical attention until thirty-seven days later, when the virus began attacking her body. The disease then progressed so fast that by the time she was admitted and diagnosed at the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, she was in a near-state coma. But instead of giving up, Rodney Willoughby, an infectious disease specialist in the hospital, decided to try a novel treatment on Giese to save her life. The treatment involved giving her a cocktail of drugs that would induce a coma, to preserve her brain from the virus. This was to give Giese’s immune system time to fight the deadly disease, while giving her a chance to survive. The risky treatment worked, however, and thirty-one days later, she was declared rabies-free. Although the treatment left Giese with some brain damage, the girl responded to rehabilitation therapy and recovered quickly, much to the surprise of her doctors.
Interesting Fact: The experimental treatment that was used to cure Giese, dubbed the Milwaukee Protocol, is now currently under trial, and so far two patients out of twenty-five were cured. However, there had been some controversies regarding Giese’s survival under the treatment, one of which is that Giese was infected with a weaker form of rabies, and that significantly affected her response to the treatment.
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