Jun 4, 2009 10:53 pm US/Central
Boy Nearly Killed Because Of Bad Mosquito Bite
KELLOGG, Minn. (WCCO) ―
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His parents believe 8-year-old Tagen Miller caught Lacrosse encephalitis from getting bit by a Japanese rock pool mosquito.
CBS
When your kids get mosquito bites they might whine about an itchy bump. But the mosquito bite that 8-year-old Tagen Miller got last year made him so sick he had to relearn to read, write and talk.
The 8-year-old's mother thinks a new bug called the Japanese rock pool mosquito is probably to blame.
Last summer, Tagen dream to become a dairy farmer like his dad was almost cut short when a mosquito bit him on the face. About a week later, Tagen got really sick.
"I remember picking him up from school on Friday and he just tucked his head in the seat as tight as he could because it hurt," recalled Kay Miller, Tagen's mother.
"It just started with a sore throat and the sore throat kind of went to an earache and headache," she said.
Then he took a turn for the worse.
"He couldn't eat, he couldn't talk, the first time we stood him up he wasn't aware of the left side of his body," said his mother.
As Tagen slipped into a coma-like state, doctors discovered he'd caught Lacrosse encephalitis. There is no cure for the virus; he just had to wait it out.
"It was really hard see, because he was so healthy. He just steadily declined to the point where he wasn't responding to us," said Kay.
The Millers think a Japanese rock pool mosquito likely landed their boy in the hospital. That bug first came to Minnesota a few years ago. But health investigators say it's spreading.
This kind of mosquito is mean. It's more aggressive and tends to bite during the day.
"They did find a few larvae of a mosquito which they thought was a tree hole which they further tested and found out it was the Japanese mosquito," said Tom Miller, Tagen's father.
The Minnesota Department of Health said privacy laws kept it from saying if investigators did that testing on the Miller's farm. A spokesman said there are no known cases of Minnesotans getting sick from the Japanese rock pool mosquito. He said that other kinds of mosquitoes carry the same virus that made Tagen sick.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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