Dad Catches Rare Disease After Showering in Rat Urine on Holiday
A father suffered kidney disease and sepsis after showering in lake water he believes was infected with rat urine on holiday.
Anthony Wright, 48, became ill with Weil’s disease – an infection caused by a cork screw shaped bacteria spread through animal urine – after cooking food and showering in water pumped directly from the lake while on a fishing trip in France.
Carpet fitter Anthony became ill when he returned home from the holiday, eventually being rushed into hospital
He was left ‘scared and embarrassed’ after being tested for HIV and AIDS while baffled doctors battled to establish the cause of the illness that he still hasn’t recovered from.
It was May last year when Anthony, who has two sons and two step sons, was on a fishing trip at Lac Du Menhir that it all began.
He said: “We were on a fishing holiday, staying in tents and using the facilities at a wood cabin on site for meals and showers. We didn’t realise there was no mains water and it was all being pumped from the lake into tanks. The owner said he had a filtration system but it wasn’t, it was just a chemical put into the water.
“There was a sign advising not to drink the tap water but we’d been cooking, washing our pots and showering in it.
“The place was alive with rats. When you got in your tents at night you could just hear them all running around.”
The weekend after he returned home, Anthony, 48, began to get flu-like symptoms.
He added: “I was playing a game of cricket and started feeling freezing cold even though it was 60 degrees. By Wednesday, I couldn’t walk. The doctor came out, she put it down to flu, but by the Friday night I was in hospital feeling really rough. I had sepsis and acute kidney disease.
“The doctor said if I’d waited another couple of days my kidneys would have been damaged beyond repair.”
After having his blood tested for all manner of conditions including HIV and Hepatitis, doctors diagnosed Mr Wright with Leptospirosis, which is also known as Weil’s Disease.
Rare in the UK with less than 40 cases reported in England and Wales every year, the infection can cause life-threatening problems such as organ failure and internal bleeding.
Anthony, who lives in Rye, East Sussex, said: “All my family thought I was going to die. I wouldn’t let my sons come to the hospital to see me, I only let my mum come because she thought I was going to die. She lives 80 miles away.
“I was off work for six months and, as I’m self-employed, I didn’t get a penny. I still have days off now with fatigue and doctors say I could be affected for years.
“I’ve never been off in 15 years, I’m just not the sort of person who has days off.
“When I was admitted to hospital the friend who I was away with texted the owner of the resort to tell him and he said he was sorry and would look into adding more chemicals to the water. That was all.”… READ FULL ARTICLE