'We thought he had the flu:' Mom shares heartbreaking story of an illness that took her son's life

For months, Guierre Walton and his concerned family were baffled about the mysterious illness wreaking havoc on the 26-year-old Las Vegas native’s body – and, Walton’s mother shared with AccuWeather, so were the doctors who ran multiple tests to try to diagnose what was ailing him. Walton initially fell ill between February and March of 2018 with symptoms that physicians had repeatedly mistaken for those of influenza, according to his mom, Phoebe Fletcher. Walton had no clue what was going on.

“He started having really bad pains and was sweating a lot,” Fletcher told AccuWeather. "'Mom, my back really hurts, I feel so bad,'” Walton frequently complained to his worried mother. A doctor ran blood work on Walton, telling him that it was possibly just a bad bout of the flu. A few weeks passed as the family anticipated the test results. They were told Walton would have to wait until the tests came back before treatment could begin.

“They never got back with us; they said they’d tried to get back with Guierre, but his number had changed,” Fletcher said. “Unfortunately, his phone was off, but he’d given them my number as a message number. No one ever called me.” Sometime in early April 2018, a still-ill Walton stepped into a local 7-Eleven. Weakened by the mystery illness, he crashed into a machine in the store, fell to the floor with a thud and fainted. Nearby patrons gathered around Walton to help him regain consciousness. He eventually came to and drove himself home. His girlfriend then took him to a hospital, his mother said.

If it wasn’t the flu, doctors speculated, perhaps it was something more serious. Cancer. AIDS. “He’d lost so much weight during that time. It was just eating him alive,” Walton’s mother said. After additional blood tests and multiple bone biopsies, doctors finally determined the culprit: the fungus growing in his bones, impacting his lungs and eating away at his body and health was coccidioidomycosis, better known as valley fever.

What is valley fever?

“Valley fever is caused by a fungus that thrives between the 40th latitudes of the United States, so it is often the Southwest, parts of California, Arizona and some other areas of the world that [the Coccidioides immitis fungus] is very prevalent,” Dr. Amesh A. Adalja, a senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told AccuWeather.

“It’s an environmental fungus,” Adalja explained. “It’s often something that you can find increased numbers of cases after a dust storm, after construction and after earthquakes. The spores get aerosolized, and people will inhale them into their lungs.” Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that 10,000 valley fever cases are reported annually, mostly from patients in California and Arizona.

The fungus grows in the soil of places with low rainfall, high summer temperatures and moderate winter temperatures, according to the University of Arizona’s Valley Fever Center for Excellence. It’s also found in parts of Nevada, western Texas, east-central Utah and southeastern Washington state.

In April 2019, the National Weather Service (NWS) office in Las Vegas tweeted information to advise residents of the increased risk of contracting the potentially deadly fungal lung infection in response to high winds and dust blowing in the area.

Most valley fever cases have minimal symptoms, according to Adalja. “When people do have symptoms, it’s primarily a respiratory infection,” he said. “It will often present like a garden-variety pneumonia and is often treated as if it is a pneumonia case, and it resolves over time.”

Walton’s experience was not as fortunate. “I think he spent three or four months in the hospital because he had to take his anti-fungal medicine through an IV. But it never went away,” Fletcher said. Doctors told the family that the illness had spread like wildfire through his bones and lungs. “We basically had to watch him leave us, and there was nothing anyone could do,” Walton’s mother said.

He was sent home, where he spent his final days. “He would just sit down. It was too much. He was too tired,” Fletcher told AccuWeather. Walton died at home on Jan. 18, 2019, leaving behind two 4-year-old daughters.

Symptoms to recognize

Even those who do survive may still suffer long-term health impacts long after valley fever goes away, as Fresno-based Dr. Roberta DeLuca discovered. The retired 56-year-old contracted the infection in November 2012 while hurrying across the tarmac for a connecting flight at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport just as a large haboob, or dust storm, rolled in.

“I went out on the tarmac and I realized that all of the people had big scarves around their noses and mouths,” DeLuca told AccuWeather. “I thought, ‘this is really weird!’ I’d never been exposed to a haboob.” Ten days later while in San Diego, DeLuca came down with a dangerous fever of 107 degrees Fahrenheit. “I was coughing for at least six weeks non-stop, I couldn’t catch my breath, I couldn’t sleep for a least a month,” she said. “I was a mess.” DeLuca also had to deal with terrible joint pains, headaches, nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, rapid weight loss and fatigue.

Doctors tested her for everything from meningitis to tuberculosis, but they all came back negative. DeLuca suggested to her physician the possibility that she’d contracted valley fever – an illness the doctors had not yet suspected. After a month of testing, she was properly diagnosed, treated with the appropriate anti-fungal medication and relieved of most symptoms in a couple of weeks, although she had to remain on medication for a year.

“They finally said I was clear, but when they took a chest X-ray, two-thirds of my lungs were scarred and essentially not useful,” DeLuca said. The rough battle with valley fever prompted her to take an early retirement, and seven years later, the health issues continue to impact her life. Some days, it takes her "a heck of a lot of balance and concentration" just to eat a meal, she said. "I had it in 2012, and I still feel the effects today. It's always going to be an issue."

In April 2019, her case of double pneumonia turned into sepsis, which then resulted in congestive heart failure. She'd become so severely ill, her physicians called for her family to come in and say their goodbyes. “Doctors think [the lung scarring] had a big influence on why I got so ill,” she said.

Though scientists have attempted to create a valley fever vaccine since the 1960s, there is not yet a vaccine to prevent the infection, according to the CDC. It’s really hard to limit exposure because it’s in the air,” Adalja said. “It’s like pollen. There’s no real way to avoid exposure if you’re in those areas.”

For Fletcher, the loss of her son to the illness was the beginning of her efforts to do everything within her power to raise awareness for valley fever. She and her daughter are distributing T-shirts with the valley fever signs and symptoms printed on them, and they're working on valley fever fliers to distribute in local medical facilities.

“I have to, for my son," she said. "I don’t think he would want anyone else to go through this.”

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