An Australian man from Victoria left his dream vacation in Bali back in January, only to come back home with a rare and dangerous disease, thanks to a mosquito.
Mark Schroeder was infected with the viral disease of Japanese encephalitis, which had never been reported in Victoria before, according to the Herald Sun.
The 45-year-old had been in rural Bali for a week and went back home on Jan. 2 earlier this year, with the disease that has a fatality rate of 30 percent and is known to cause long-term brain damage in about half who contract the virus.
In Schroeder’s case, the virus reportedly attacked parts of his brain responsible for short-term memory. At first, his symptoms appeared to be flu-like, but they got worse and worse.
He was in Monash Medical Center for seven weeks and his short-term memory was so bad that a poster was reportedly put by him to tell him who he was, what day it was, and that he was in Melbourne and in the hospital, says his partner Ann-Marie Freeman.
“But with no short-term memory, five minutes after you’d given him the reassurance that he was home and safe he would forget and go straight back into anxiety,” Freeman told the Herald Sun.
Doctors aren’t sure if or when Schroeder will ever fully recover.
Schroeder returned home last Thursday for rehabilitation under care of Freeman.
“He’s not necessarily likely to make a full recovery, given that it has been at least six weeks and he is still significantly affected,” Southern Health’s Dr Ian Woolley said, as quoted by the Herald Sun.
“He will, at best, need a long period of recovery.”
