Wife warns others after husband becomes 1 of 4 hospitalized with West Nile virus in Davis County

LAYTON — A Layton wife is sharing how her husband became one of four people who were hospitalized in Davis County with an uncommon form of West Nile virus after he was bitten by mosquitoes in August.

The common mosquito-borne disease may cause one in five people to develop mild symptoms; however, most people don't even show symptoms, according to Davis County Health Department Epidemiologist Sarah Willardson. She said around one in 150 people will develop the severe neuroinvasive form of West Nile virus.

"Really, anybody can become infected with the neuroinvasive form," Willardson said after confirming the four Davis County hospitalizations. "But it is more likely to be an individual who's older, like those that are 65 years of age and older, or people who have an immunosuppressed condition."

At barely 64 years old, David Christensen became the one in 150 when he was diagnosed and hospitalized in Davis County with the rare form of West Nile virus. His wife, 65-year-old Joyce Christensen, said her husband was bitten several times by mosquitoes outside of their home in east Layton.

The couple were married in 1984, have 6 children, 12 grandchildren and have seen David Christensen go through years of positions in law enforcement. Joyce Christensen said her husband started as a police officer with the Parowan City Police Department. Several positions later, David Christensen now works for the Utah Division of Consumer Protection.

"He's been in law enforcement for 40 years, and a mosquito is what took him out, basically," Joyce Christensen said. "I — we really thought he was — he thought he was gonna die. We were afraid that he was gonna die."

Joyce Christensen believes her husband caught West Nile virus on Aug. 16 while he was outside their home for about 10 minutes. David Christensen was making conversation with a neighbor at the time when they were both "eaten alive by mosquitoes," which the two attempted to brush off of themselves.

Not thinking much of the mosquito bites, David Christensen watched as the bites became swollen, itchy, and appeared bright red. Joyce Christensen said her husband doesn't usually have a reaction like that to mosquito bites, and she even had to apply hydrocortisone cream to the wounds in an attempt to stop the reaction.

Three days later, on Aug. 19, David Christensen began feeling sick.

"We had plans to go to southern Utah the next morning early, and he just thought, 'Oh, I don't know, I might be getting the flu or something,'" Joyce Christensen said. "And so, he went into bed, and he got up at 6 in the morning. He wasn't feeling well."

Not wanting to put the trip off, David Christensen decided to push through the suspected flu and head to southern Utah. Along the way, he progressively got worse with body aches and sharp pains going through his legs and hips, among other symptoms.

Continuing to think the symptoms were related to the flu, Joyce Christensen said her husband went straight to bed when they arrived at their destination, but David Christensen just kept getting sicker and couldn't sleep well. The two treated the symptoms with Tylenol, ibuprofen and flu medicines — not knowing what was to come.

Now, it was Aug. 22 — David Christensen's 64th birthday.

"He didn't want to be stuck down there and have to go to the doctor, you know, without his doctor," Joyce Christensen said. "So we headed home. Got home and he barely could get out of the truck and barely could walk up the stairs."

On Aug. 24 and 25th, David Christensen decided to work from home. Joyce Christensen said at the time, her husband was in excruciating pain and could barely lift his arms or get up and down the stairs. She left for work that day telling him that they'd need to head into the emergency room if he wasn't feeling better by the time she got home.

With symptoms like throwing up and diarrhea, Joyce Christensen said her husband got sick enough to the point where he couldn't work and was stuck in bed the rest of the day. After a visit to the doctor involving a COVID test, influenza test and a blood test, doctors could only guess that David Christensen was suffering from the flu, according to his wife.

On Aug. 26, the situation had taken a turn for the worse. Joyce Christensen called the doctor's office to see if any results had come in from her husband's blood test because he had gotten much sicker.

"The doctor wasn't in that day, and they said that I probably wouldn't get the blood results until the next day, and I said, 'Well, my husband is dying. So, I've got to take him to the emergency room,'" Joyce Christensen said.

Through her emotions, Joyce Christensen explained how at that point her husband's temperature was 102 degrees F. By the time she got her husband to the emergency room, it had gone up just over 105 F.

"It was just bad," Joyce Christensen said. "That's when they started testing for everything under the sun."

She said the West Nile virus test was a last resort because the doctors would require cerebrospinal fluid from a spinal tap. According to Willardson, doctors may also use results from a blood test to diagnose the virus, but it's not as reliable.

A spinal tap was eventually done on David Christensen, leading doctors to the diagnosis of West Nile virus, which had turned into meningitis. By this point, he experienced a sort of paralysis caused by the neuroinvasive form of West Nile virus and had a hard time moving his body, according to Joyce Christensen.

As of Thursday, Joyce Christensen said her husband was still in the hospital, and he has a long road of recovery ahead of him. He has been dealing with fevers, extreme weakness with a sort of paralysis and will be going through rehabilitation as soon as he's able.

After the series of tests and sickness, Joyce Christensen said she's just grateful she didn't wait for her husband's blood test results to arrive and got him to the hospital when she did, because she's never seen anything like West Nile before.

"I had never seen anybody be so sick," Joyce Christensen said. "We had been through COVID, we've been through influenza, we've been through a lot of sicknesses."

Whether a person is embarrassed to see the doctor, money is an issue or something else gets in the way, Joyce Christensen said she hopes people will listen to her story, advocate for themselves, don't wait for symptoms to go away and understand how important it is to get treated quickly.

"You can't just stay home and wait for it to get better," Joyce Christensen said. "It's gonna kill you."

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