Typhus symptoms look like the flu, which is why it took weeks for this San Marino man to be diagnosed correctly
Tom Sachs could barely move from his bed.
He lay lifeless — delirious with 103-degree fever, riddled with aches, chills and extreme weakness.
“I had the chills where my body would shake from my waist to my head,” he said during an interview Monday, Oct. 15.
Doctors told him he had the flu.
After nearly three weeks without any recovery, his wife, Carolyn, called a priest. Although she said she was thinking more about healing than death, Sachs seemed so ill that the priest gave him communion and last rites.
“I just welcomed any kind of prayer that would bring him comfort. The medical community was doing nothing,” she said during a phone interview Monday. “My husband was extremely sick and the doctors didn’t know.”
In the end, Sachs decided he didn’t just have the flu. He called the fire department and this time he was taken by paramedics from his San Marino home to a local hospital emergency room where, after much persuasion, he was admitted, he said.
What may have saved his life was his insurance company, Blue Shield 65 Plus HMO, which also authorized a visit to HealthCare Partners Medical Group’s infectious disease specialist Dr. Paul Nieberg of Pasadena.
Nieberg diagnosed Sachs with flea-borne typhus.
Outbreak
Sachs is one of about 60 reported people who have contracted flea-borne typhus this year, an outbreak that reflects an increasing trend in typhus cases since 2009, according to Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger.
The number of cases have risen from 47 in 2016 to 67 in 2017. The recent outbreak includes cases among the homeless population in downtown Los Angeles.
Pasadena’s Heath Department reported 20 cases so far this year, “an elevated level,” as compared to the one to five cases normally reported each year.
Long Beach also reported an unusually high number:12 typhus cases this year.
Pasadena and Long Beach are separate from the county health department figures.
Fleas, not flu
The disease, also known as murine typhus, masks with flu-like symptoms, making it very difficult to diagnose.
When Nieberg reported the case, Sachs got a call from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, who interviewed him about his exposure to an infected flea.
Fleas containing certain bacteria that cause the disease are carried by rats, feral cats and opossums.
Sachs doesn’t remember getting bitten, saying only that he likes to garden around his home and spends a good amount of time outdoors where fleas may live.
After spending three days at one hospital (that he declined to name), he was transferred to USC Verdugo Hills Hospital in Glendale where he was given a 10-day dose of antibiotics. He was kept under close watch for 14 days until he was well enough to be released back to his San Marino home, he said.
From mid-April, when the flea infected him, until June 1, when he was released from the hospital, Sachs, who just turned 81, had lost 20 pounds and went from a senior citizen who traveled, visited his grandkids and enjoyed an active life, to an invalid on death’s door.
Months after treatment, he’s about 75 percent recovered, he said.
Recovery
Sachs is receiving physical therapy to help strengthen his leg muscles, he said.
He still has some dizziness and attributed the irregular heartbeat for which he now must take blood-thinning medicine to the typhus.
He thanked Nieberg and HealthCare Partners for pushing for hospitalization and a more thorough diagnosis. He only wished it happened sooner.
“I am grateful. It was handled slowly, but it was handled,” he said.
Sachs wanted to tell his story in order to help others.
“There might be somebody out there really sick and they don’t know what is going on,” he said.