Megan Evenroth knew since sixth grade that she would go to the University of Georgia.
The highly ambitious 17-year-old was doing everything in his power to make it happen. She was an honor student, president of the Beta club and vice-president of the Spanish club. She recently took up tennis and played on her high school team to finish her extracurricular activities.
Megan, who lived in Deering, a small town near Augusta, enjoyed the last weeks of summer before her senior year, swimming with friends in a lake not far from her home in McDuffie County. The last time they went swimming was on Tuesday, July 11th.
Eleven days later she died.
It is caused by a very rare and usually fatal brain infection. Naegleria fowleria brain tissue-destroying amoeba claimed the life of a teenage girl with big dreams and a vibrant personality.
“I’m still in shock,” Megan’s mother, Christina Evenross, said Monday in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “But I can’t keep quiet about her. She was extraordinary.”
Naegleria fowleri Amoebas are single-celled organisms that live in soil and warm freshwater lakes, rivers, ponds, and hot springs. This organism is commonly referred to as the “brain-eating amoeba” because the water containing the amoeba enters the nose and causes a brain infection (primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM)). This amoeba is not present in salt water, nor is it present in properly treated drinking water or swimming pools.
McDuffie County coroner Paul Johnson told the AJC that police had contacted him about Megan’s death. Georgia Children’s Hospital of Augusta University Health. He confirmed she died of a rare brain infection.
Georgia public health officials said Friday that an unidentified Georgia resident died of a rare brain infection, but did not provide details of where the person contracted the disease. DPH spokeswoman Nancy Nydom said in an email, “If it was in a particular body of water, it may not be there now. Plus, it could be anywhere, but only in that particular body of water.” It also risks providing a false sense of security that
Evenroth didn’t even name the places her daughter went swimming. What happened to her daughter was a terrible fluke. None of her friends who went swimming got sick. And, she said, this is a place where families bond and she doesn’t want what happened to her daughter to end that bond for others.
Several agencies contacted by the AJC, including the Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said they did not know the location.
Dennis Kyle Director of Kyle Laboratory, University of Georgia, A research institute focused on developing antiparasitic drugs said it was highly unusual for authorities not to share the location of where someone got the parasite. Naegleria fowleri. He said he believed authorities should name the place but put it in context. Naegleria fowleri It can be present in any freshwater body of water in the United States, its presence one day does not mean it will be there the next, and swimming in the same place will infect others. But no.
CDC says N.aegleria fowleri Infection is rare, with approximately 3 cases reported each year in the United States. From 1962 he has 157 cases reported between 2022.. Only four of the confirmed cases are alive, According to the CDC.
Before Megan died, five other cases had been reported in Georgia since 1962.
Earlier this month, a 2-year-old boy in Nevada died of bruises. N.aegleria fowleri brain infections. Officials with the Nevada Department of Public Behavioral Health said they believed the boy was exposed to radiation at Ash Springs, a natural hot spring in Lincoln County. In February, a Florida man died after being infected by a sinus wash, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
signs of Naegleria fowleri Infection usually begins with severe headache, fever, nausea, and vomiting, and progresses to stiff neck, seizures, and coma. Symptoms usually start about 5 days after infection, but can start anywhere from 1 to 12 days. Once symptoms begin, the disease progresses rapidly and is usually fatal within about 5 days.
Kyle told one reason why Naegleria fowleri This infection is so deadly because the symptoms of the infection resemble those of the more common and treatable disease, viral meningitis. Current drugs to treat this brain infection are not very effective, but a delayed diagnosis is often too late to have “even a chance” of survival, he said.
His lab is working on a simple urine test to speed up diagnosis so patients can start treatment as soon as possible.. According to the CDC, primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM) is treated with a combination of antibiotics and antifungal drugs. Two children who were separately infected in the summers of 2013 and 2016 survived PAM, and the CDC says early diagnosis and treatment contributed to their survival.
Kyle said scientists don’t know why some people get amoebas, People swimming in the same water at the same time, on the other hand, do not.
Four days after swimming on July 11, Megan woke up with a terrible headache. Her mother took her to her emergency clinic, where she was treated for migraines. As the days went on, Megan’s head continued to hurt. Her mother then took her daughter to the local emergency room, where she was treated for sinusitis and she was prescribed antibiotics, she said. and was sent home.
Megan rested at home on Monday and her mother slept beside her that night. By Tuesday morning, Ms. Evenroth felt her daughter’s high fever.
Megan’s parents then drove her to the emergency room at Doctor’s Hospital in Augusta. Megan underwent a series of blood tests and was put on an IV, but her condition continued to deteriorate. She was taken to the Children’s Hospital of Georgia, where she was intubated for several days. Evenroth said doctors once opened her daughter’s skull to relieve swelling in her brain.
By Friday, July 21, she had heard suggestions that her daughter may have been attacked by a brain-eating amoeba. Meghan died the next day.
A spokeswoman for the Georgia Children’s Hospital at the Augusta University School of Health declined to comment, citing federal HIPAA privacy regulations, and said she could not confirm whether Megan had been treated at the hospital.
“They were very caring and had the best doctors and nurses. I don’t blame anyone,” Ebenrot said. “This was God’s doing. Now we need to figure out why.”
Ms Ebenroth said she mothered her daughter’s class every year, driving her to school every morning and picking her up every day after school.
“She was my world,” Evenroth said.
Kyle of the UGA Kyle Institute said he was deeply saddened by Megan’s death. Amoeba infection is a very serious and “always worrying thing”, especially during the summer months when the water temperature rises with unusual warmth creating ripe conditions for the deadly amoeba. said he.
DPH said there are no regular tests to check for the presence of naturally occurring amoebas in pond and lake water. The location and number of amoebas in water can change over time, even within the same body of water.
DPH said amoeba could not cause infection. I am swallowed. Infection does not spread from person to person.
DPH also said that people who swim in warm, fresh recreational water should always assume risk of infection, even if it is low risk. Swimmers can reduce their risk by limiting the amount of water that enters their nose.
Besides her mother, Megan has a father, Steve Evenros, and an older brother, Matt.
Ebenroth said of her and her daughter: They were very close, even “best friends”.
“She tells people I’m her best friend, but I said, ‘Honey, I can’t be your best friend.’ And about three weeks ago, she said, ‘Come on. Mom, you know I’m your best friend, and I said, “Yes, I am.”
