Connecticut dad dies from rare mosquito-borne virus he caught in his own backyard – and cases are on the rise
A Connecticut father died Monday — five years after he was bitten by an infected mosquito while clearing brush in his wooded backyard.
Richard Pawulski, 49, was killed from complications of Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE), a fatal disease that caused its first New York state death in nearly a decade last month — marking a startling resurgence that’s left health officials baffled.
The mosquito-borne illness is a rare but “severe” disease that targets the brain, causing rapid physical deterioration and lifelong disabilities — if it doesn’t kill you first.
“I’m not joking when I say your life can change in the blink of an eye, because that was what happened to us,” his grieving daughter Amellia Pawulski, 18, told The Post.
Richard died at 2:30 a.m. Monday, one week after he was admitted into hospice when doctors determined that “there wasn’t much else” that could be done for him, Amellia said.
He ultimately succumbed to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a staph infection that proved too difficult to treat when combined with his other EEE-derived ailments, like a bacterial infection in his heart, a deteriorating liver and a traumatic brain injury.
Richard suddenly fell sick after doing yardwork in the family’s lush, wooded Colchester backyard in August 2019. Just one day after finding a new mosquito bite, Richard complained of intense headaches and began vomiting yellow bile.
Richard was rushed into emergency surgery to relieve the swelling in his brain, but complications with surgery seemingly made the situation worse and landed the Polish immigrant in a coma for two months.
Doctors were initially dumbfounded on what could have caused such a sudden deterioration — as a cancer survivor and diabetes patient, Richard was extremely health-conscious to the point where he refused to drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes.
It wasn’t until other cases of EEE started cropping up in the state that doctors realized Richard could also be a victim of the virus. There were four total cases in Connecticut that year — at the time, Richard was lauded as the sole survivor, though he barely lived through the initial outfall.
The young father was originally given a fatal prognosis, leaving Amellia and her mother, Margaret, with the tough choice of keeping him alive via life support or pulling the plug. Doctors warned the brain damage was such that he would never be the same.
They had just moved him into hospice care and settled on the heartbreaking latter choice — what they believe Richard would have wanted — when he suddenly woke up from his coma and began speaking.
The miracle was short-lived, however. Richard spent the last five years bouncing between hospitals and nursing homes as he suffered through a traumatic brain injury, liver and kidney complications, seizures and other strenuous illnesses, as well as routine bouts of pneumonia.
His mental state was sorely affected — some days, Richard wasn’t aware of what year it was or where he was. Fortunately, he was lucid enough in the days before his death to tell his wife and daughter that he loved them.
“It’s very hard. We don’t have a lot of family here,” Margaret told The Post through tears, adding that the stress has put tremendous strain on their transnational relationships.
“None of this stuff would have come up if he didn’t get it,” Amellia added, regarding triple E.
“He always tried to look at on the positive. I remember people being like, ‘Oh, how’s your day?’ And he was like, ‘My day is great. I woke up. I can breathe on my own. I can talk on my own. I can go to the bathroom on my own. I have no reason to be upset.'”
About 30% of EEE cases are deadly, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It is a rare but serious disease spread to humans by infected mosquitoes and bears some similarities to other mosquito-borne diseases in the US like dengue fever and West Nile virus.
“This one is thought to be the most severe of them all,” Dr. Roy Gulick, chief of infectious diseases at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, told The Post.
A least 10 cases of EEE were confirmed across the US this year, including the deadly New York case and another in New Hampshire, marking a bone-chilling uptick compared to previous years.
The unidentified Ulster County patient, the state’s first confirmed human EEE case since 2015, was diagnosed on Sept. 20 by the Health Department’s Wadsworth Center.
The virus is especially on the rise in the Empire State — state officials said this week infected mosquitoes have been found in at least 15 counties, including Suffolk County, when in previous years they were only found in two or three.
The cause of the surge is also a mystery.
“It’s usually sporadic and it’s not clear why. One year we see more than another,” Gulick said, adding that the health department monitors mosquito pools and infected horses — which are also major targets of the bugs.
“This year there have been both mosquito pools testing positive and horses testing positive as well, so the presence of this virus is more so than we’ve seen in previous years. Cases are kind of scattered throughout New York — people really need to pay attention to this and do everything they can to avoid mosquito bites.”
According to Gulick, there is one silver lining amid the surging disease: The impending winter will wipe out mosquitoes and terminate the threat until next spring.
“Typically, the peak infections are in August and September, and then it does take several days of freezing temperatures to completely kill the mosquitoes. So even though we just started fall and the temperatures are dropping, people still are at risk for mosquito bites.”
In the meantime, the infectious disease expert urged New Yorkers to take care when trekking outdoors and any place a mosquito could be present.
There is no preventative vaccine for triple E, so wearing long sleeves and pants, as well as thorough mosquito repellent spray, is imperative, Gulick said.
Avoiding being outside at dusk is also an easy way to narrow the chances of an encounter, as well as tossing any still water, like that collected in buckets and birdbaths, in order to eliminate the breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
“This is not to scare people, but people really need to take it seriously and do what they can to prevent mosquito bites,” said Gulick.
