Fatal flu case shocks family

By Ed Runyan

Three local H1N1 deaths have been reported to the Ohio Department of Health.

LEAVITTSBURG — Margaret Savitts of Eagle Creek Road in Braceville Township didn’t suspect anything was terribly wrong with her husband, Walter, when he came down with the flu Oct. 23.

“He just said, ‘I’m not feeling very well,’” she remembers. Three days later, he had a fever of 103 and went to a doctor, who advised him to take Motrin and Tylenol and rest.

“I just thought it was the flu like any other flu,” she said.

Two days after that, Oct. 29, however, Margaret awoke at 2:30 a.m. and found her husband out of bed. “He said, ‘I hurt really bad.’” She took him to Robinson Memorial Hospital in Ravenna, where he was diagnosed with pneumonia and admitted.

Walter, 44, worked in Twinsburg driving a dump truck and cement mixer, Margaret said. He and Margaret are the parents of three sons, Bobby, 27, Jeramy, 24, and Steven, 18.

Because of the pneumonia, Walter’s lungs were not working well on their own, so doctors put him on oxygen, using a tube in his nose.

Still, doctors were reassuring.

“The doctor said they were hoping to get his oxygen level up and wanted to release him by Monday or before,” Margaret said.

But that Saturday, Walter complained to Margaret that he couldn’t breathe. Margaret became concerned, but the doctors and nurses “just kept telling him to relax,” Margaret said.

Doctors gave Walter an anxiety medicine, which helped, but Walter was still having trouble breathing, Margaret said.

On Sunday, the hospital ordered a chest X-ray and said a pulmonary specialist would check on Walter on Monday, Margaret said. Margaret left the hospital Sunday evening to handle personal matters.

By 2 a.m., however, she was notified that Walter had gone into “total respiratory failure,” Margaret said. “His lungs were so damaged, they couldn’t provide enough oxygen,” Margaret said. He was sedated and never regained consciousness.

Walter was transferred to University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland on Nov. 2. Doctors put Walter on an ECMO machine, which removed Walter’s blood and oxygenated it for him. ECMO stands for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.

Walter died there Nov. 24, with a test later confirming that Walter had died of the H1N1 virus, Margaret said.

Walter is believed to be the first person from Trumbull County to have died as a result of the H1N1 virus, said Dr. James Enyeart, Trumbull County health commissioner. The department does not receive reports of H1N1 deaths, however, Dr. Enyeart said, so his information comes from only what he’s heard and read in the news.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control says at least 1,224 Americans have died from the virus, also known as the swine flu, since Aug. 30. Locally, three confirmed deaths have been reported to the Ohio Department of Health, said Robert Jennings, ODH spokesman.

They are a 50-year-old woman and a 55-year-old woman, who both died Nov. 10. A 48-year-old woman died in Columbiana County on Nov. 9, Jennings said, adding that he believes the numbers reflect people who died in those counties, not the county where the person lived. The names of those individuals are not available, he said.

Cathleen Wagner, 55, of Columbiana, a kindergarten teacher in the Columbiana school system, died Nov. 18 in Cleveland Clinic, her family has said.

Jennings said he has no record of any Trumbull County deaths resulting from the H1N1 virus and no record yet of a 44-year-old man having died of the virus in Cuyahoga County on Nov. 24. Such deaths can take a while to be reported, he noted.

Margaret says Walter, who liked hunting and already had made preparations to go deer hunting this year with his youngest son, was “just a good guy. It didn’t matter if he had just worked 12 or 15 hours. He helped everybody.” He was the youngest of 12 children and was born in Ravenna.

She never dreamed that her husband would die from H1N1.

“He didn’t smoke. He was healthy,” she said. “My husband was 44 years old. I didn’t think he had anything to worry about.”

Margaret said she still has no opinion on whether people should get vaccinated against the flu, but she does feel strongly that anyone with the flu this year should be careful to treat it correctly.

“It only takes a couple days before it’s too late,” she said of the damage that pneumonia can do to a person’s lungs. Walter received the standard advice from a doctor — that he should feel better in five to seven days.

“If you don’t feel better in five days, you might want to go back to the doctor or something,” she said.

runyan@vindy.com