A mother of one boy has revealed how she overcame her fear of water after nearly dying from a brain-eating amoeba she caught while swimming as a child.
Kali Hardig of Arkansas was 12 when she fell into a lake and water entered her nose, exposing her to the brain-eating amoeba Naegleria fowleri.
A few hours after the accident, the girl developed a slight headache, but 24 hours later she was rushed to Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock barely conscious.
A lumbar puncture revealed that he had primary amoebic meningoencephalitis (PAM), or severe brain inflammation, that had been caused by the amoeba.
The infection kills nearly 100 percent of people who contract it.
Ms. Hardig spent a month in a coma and, thanks to intensive treatment, became one of only five people in the U.S. to survive the infection since 1978.
Kali Hardig, 23, pictured above with her one-year-old daughter Adalynn, revealed the infection left her afraid of water for more than a year.
Ms Hardig is pictured above after recovering from the infection at Willow Springs Water Park, where she says she contracted the amoeba.
Doctors at the hospital initially tried to turn Ms Hardig away, saying she had flu, but her mother wouldn’t take no for an answer and demanded she be tested for other infections.
At first they thought he had meningitis, an inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain, because of his neck pain and sensitivity to light.
But a lumbar puncture, where fluid is removed from the spinal canal, revealed he actually had the amoeba infection.
Although he has now fully recovered, he occasionally suffers from blurred vision in his left eye due to scar tissue left over from the disease.
“It does cause blurry vision from time to time, but that’s the only lasting effect it has on me,” he said.
After she was first diagnosed in July 2013, doctors told her parents the infection was a “death sentence” and gave her less than a one percent chance of survival.
They said she would probably be dead by the weekend and that if she survived, she would need to use a wheelchair for the rest of her life.
She said PEOPLE:’They didn’t tell me at the time, they just told me that I was very sick and that I needed to fight.
“I had never heard of (the amoeba), nor had anyone in my family.”
To treat her, doctors initially placed her in a medically induced coma, which can help reduce inflammation and swelling in the brain and protect the organ.
He was then given drugs to combat the amoebas, including the treatment miltefosine, which had to be flown to the United States from Germany.
After 22 days, doctors reversed the girl’s coma and she spent another month in the hospital receiving further treatment.
After 55 days, Ms. Hardig was well enough to be moved to a rehabilitation center.
Ms Hardig said after battling the infection she was like a newborn baby and had to relearn everything, including the ability to walk and talk.
She also said that at the rehab center they addressed her fear of water and eventually got her swimming again in the center’s pool.
He said at the time he was “like a new baby” and had to relearn everything, including how to talk and, what he said was the hardest, how to walk again.
When he was about to recover, his parents explained to him that he had contracted the infection through water, which immediately made him afraid to even shower.
“After Mom and Dad told me how I got sick, I wanted nothing to do with water; I didn’t even shower,” she wrote.
“I was very scared, so in therapy they started working with me to make it easier for me to get into the pool at Children’s.”
This involved, in part, explaining to him that the water had been heavily treated with chemicals and would not contain the amoeba.
Ms Hardig, now 23 and a receptionist, said she was “delighted” to have overcome her fear, because she loved swimming before her illness.
She’s also grateful she overcame her fear of water so she can now teach her 1-year-old daughter Adalynn to swim, though she said she will tell her to always wear a nose clip.
N. fowleri kills about 97 percent of all people it infects and is fatal because it spreads rapidly to the brain and begins killing tissue.
Naegleria fowleri hides in warm bodies of freshwater such as lakes and rivers and can infect someone if this contaminated water enters their nose.
Once an infection begins, the amoeba travels along the olfactory nerve to the brain, where it triggers widespread inflammation and organ damage in what is known as primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM).
Warning signs of infection include severe headache, high fever, stiff neck, and confusion.
According to the CDC, more than 97 percent of patients die from the infection, while many of those who survive are left with lifelong disabilities.
Infections are very rare, with only about 10 cases recorded each year. Records show that 157 people in the US have previously been infected since 1978, of whom only five survived. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionincluding Mrs Hardig.
There have been no public reports of the amoeba in the United States this year, but in Israel a 25-year-old man was reported to have died from the infection after swimming in the Sea of Galilee, an inland freshwater sea in the country.
In 2023, a child in Arkansas and a resident in Georgia died from the infection after swimming in fresh water.
