NUORI URHEILIJA KUOLI EHRLICHIOOSIIN

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Lähettäjä: Soijuv Lähetetty: 14.6.2004 16:47

Punkit levittävät toisinaan myös erlichioosia.


Kansas City Star
Tuesday, May 28, 2002

Erin Zinna

They buried Erin Zinna in her boxing trunks, a symbol of the physical strength and the free spirit befitting a national Golden Gloves champion. Yet it was Zinna's humor and smile that drew more than 600 people to the Polo High School gym on May 16 for her funeral. Amid their grief was profound disbelief. Health officials say Zinna, 19, died of ehrlichiosis, an uncommon disease carried by ticks. "It's just very hard for us to believe that here's a tick that can cause this kind of damage to a big, beautiful, spirited girl," Polo principal Robert Newhart said.

Zinna lived most of her life on a livestock farm west of Polo where ticks were part of everyday life. "I've picked ticks off my kids since they were old enough to crawl in the grass," said her mother, Lynette Zinna. Erin Zinna kept up with two older brothers on farm chores such as hauling hay and often joined them on fishing trips. In the spring she searched the woods for mushrooms with her father, Ed. "She had a sweet, feminine side," her mother said. "But she was not a sissy."
In high school Zinna excelled at all sports, including softball, basketball and track. As a junior she received the Wendy's High School Heisman Award for Missouri female athletes. By her senior year she was 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighed slightly more than 200 pounds.

"She was the epitome of health," her mother said. "She ran. She ate well. She drank gallons of water. She took no medicines. I don't know of anybody who was stronger or healthier." A year ago Zinna helped lead graduates into the Polo High gymnasium as senior class president. She was an honors student and involved in many activities.

"Erin was the kind of girl who crossed all classes of people," Newhart said. "She was caring, and Erin had that smile that attracted people. And she was not afraid of anything." The straight-A student also was a champion arm-wrestler.

"She was the kind of girl who could either go into a barroom or the White House," Newhart said. Zinna was not through with athletics after high school. In August she punched her way to the National Golden Gloves super-heavyweight championship for women in Augusta, Ga. "She was a spectacular natural athlete," said Jimmy Joe Zeikle, her trainer at the Cameron Boxing Club. "She was somebody that other people thought could do anything, and she was always happy." Zinna tried to get into the Olympic boxing program but couldn't, so she turned pro. Her first match was to have been last Wednesday at a Kansas City casino. "She had a great shot, great potential," Zeikle said. Zinna was drawn to Johnson County Community College by a program in the child-care field and in late winter participated in the shot put for the school's track team at a national meet.

Zinna quit track this spring to take a job at St. Agnes Child Care Center in Roeland Park, her mother said. Zinna wanted a career in child development.

"When her job was done, she would sit in the classroom doing her homework, just to be with the kids," said Neona Russ, the center's director and a college classmate of Zinna's. "If there was a challenged kid, she was just a magnet for them. She went out on the playground, and the kids would come running." Zinna had made plans for the summer, already setting up a puppet show in her classroom to spice up stories.

She could have picked up the tick anywhere. Zinna lived in Shawnee this spring with a relative and stayed with friends at times in Kansas City. On weekends she often returned home to the farm near Polo. She fished, hunted for mushrooms and played with her dog. On a Friday night, May 3, Zinna complained of headaches and malaise, her mother said. On May 4 she went to her weekend dishwashing job at the National Golf Club of Kansas City in Parkville. But she went home feeling ill. "Mom, I feel like I'm dying," she told Lynette Zinna that day in a telephone call. She had a severe headache and a fever, and her neck and back hurt. That night Zinna checked in to North Kansas City Hospital. After tests, she was diagnosed with spinal meningitis, her mother said. Her condition went up and down all week. The morning of May 9 she showered and seemed better. That afternoon she got worse and later was placed in intensive care. At some point in the week her mother mentioned to the staff that Zinna had complained about an annoying tick bite behind her knee, Lynette Zinna said.

On May 10, doctors told the family they suspected that Zinna had Rocky Mountain spotted fever, a tick-borne disease, her mother said. Antibiotic treatments began, but her organs began to fail. On May 11 doctors said there was no hope. The life-support system was removed at her parents' direction, and Zinna died. Early the next week, blood tests showed that she had a form of ehrlichiosis, said Linda McElwee, administrator for the Caldwell County Health Center. McElwee said she was received the diagnosis from officials at North Kansas City Hospital. A hospital spokeswoman said doctors and officials there would not comment on the case. "Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought a tick could do this," Lynette Zinna said. "I still don't know what to think."

Erin Zinna was buried in her blue boxing uniform. Her favorite rock music and the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" from her favorite movie, "The Wizard of Oz," were played at a memorial service. "Everything she did, she did so well," Lynette Zinna said. "I had to make this as right as possible." Grief extended from day-care children to college students to staffers at the National Golf Club and throughout Polo. "She had such a future," Russ said. "She would have been at the forefront of our (child-care) frontier." Zinna died on one of medicine's frontiers.

Zinna probably had never heard about Human Granularcytic Ehrlichiosis. Her mother had not, until now.
"She never did anything ordinary," Lynette Zinna said. "It would have to be something very unusual to take her."