OCALA, Fla. — Vilinda York lies in her Florida hospital bed, facing a dry-erase board that lists in green marker her name, her four doctors and a smiley face.
Also on the board is this: “Anticipated date of discharge: NOT YET DETERMINED.”
The 64-year-old contracted fungal meningitis after receiving three tainted steroid shots in her back. She’s one of 271 people nationwide who are victims of an outbreak that began when a Massachusetts compounding pharmacy shipped contaminated medication. Twenty-one people have died.
Like many trying to recover, York, who has been hospitalized since Sept. 27, faces a long and uncertain road. Many people have died days or even weeks after being hospitalized. Fungal meningitis — which is not contagious — is a tenacious disease that can be treated only with powerful drugs.
“I’m determined I’m going to fight this thing,” she said. “The devil is not going to win.”
Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious-disease specialist who chairs Vanderbilt University’s Department of Preventive Medicine, said the treatment includes intravenous anti-fungal medicines that are tricky to use.
“These are powerful drugs. They’re toxic,” he said. “You’re walking a tightrope because you want to get enough into a patient to have the therapeutic effect while at the same time you’re trying not to affect, or to minimize the effect on the liver and kidneys.”
Even after leaving the hospital, he said, patients will continue anti-fungal drugs for weeks or months.
When York talks about the past six weeks, tears run down her cheeks. She knows the disease is deadly. And if she needed a reminder, it’s right there in the headline from a local newspaper on her hospital bed: “Third death reported in Marion County from fungal meningitis.”
On Jan. 21, she was on her way to a wedding when she got into a car crash. It wasn’t enough to put her in the hospital, but she did suffer back problems.
The pain was strong enough for her to visit a doctor at Marion Pain Clinic, where she received two steroid shots Aug. 16. A week later, the pain was still there and she began feeling headachy, nauseated and dizzy. She chalked it up to her back and got a third shot Aug. 28.
On Sept. 27, her legs and arms grew numb. The numbness flowed upward to her waist. That’s when she called 911.
“I didn’t know whether I was getting ready for a stroke,” she said.
When she arrived at the hospital, doctors discovered she had meningitis.
When she told them about the steroid shots, doctors began to assemble a theory. On Sept. 25, the New England Compounding Center had voluntarily recalled three lots of the steroid methylpredniso-lone acetate.
York’s three shots were that steroid, health officials said.
York said a doctor from the Marion Pain Clinic visited her in the hospital and told her about the contaminated shots. The doctor was crying as she spoke, York added.
