Gabrielle Duclos recovering from typhoid fever

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http://www.cbc.ca/sports/blogs/teddykat ... track.html


Athlete with typhoid fever gets back on track
November 10, 2010 1:08 PM |
By Teddy Katz
Canadian swimmer Annamay Pierse, seen competing at the Commonwealth Games, contracted dengue fever while at the Games and hopes to compete again soon. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press)

An up and coming Canadian pole vaulter is trying to get back on her feet after returning from the Commonwealth Games in India with typhoid fever.

Twenty-two-year-old Gabriella Duclos-Lasnier told CBC she was the unnamed track athlete who it was reported a couple of weeks ago got seriously sick at the Games.

Another athlete, swimmer Annamay Pierse, contracted dengue fever and is recovering quickly. Swimming Canada told CBC the world record holder in the 200-metre breaststroke is hoping to compete at the Canada Cup in Toronto in two weeks.

As for Duclos-Lasnier, she says she's also feeling much better and has recently resumed training near her home in Quebec City.

But she says it was a scary episode. She spent three days in emergency when she got back to Canada last month as doctors did a battery of tests to figure out why she was so ill.

"I would wake up five times a night, my shirt [was] all wet," Duclos-Lasnier says of the high fevers that doctors had to closely monitor.

Duclos-Lasnier says she hardly ever has headaches. But her head was spinning so much she took a couple of tylenol every four hours to keep the fever in check.

In hospital doctors tried to determine if she had malaria, meningitis or something else.

Lucky to get typhoid fever

"I was almost lucky in my bad luck," she says. "When I heard I had typhoid fever, I was like it's better than malaria, but I thought how did I get that? You have this idea it only happens to others," Duclos-Lasnier adds.

Typhoid fever is not uncommon in India. Travellers can contract it from contaminated water or food or poor hygiene.

Prior to the start of the Commonwealth Games, many countries, including Canada, publicly expressed serious concerns about the hygiene of some rooms in the athlete's village.

Indian organizers feverishly worked to clean things up in the days and hours before athletes arrived.

Duclos-Lasnier says the village for the most part wasn't a problem.

"It wasn't so bad like the media claimed it was. OK, maybe they found that snake one day in an athlete's room, but after all those incidents they were very careful."

She says she ate in the cafeteria in the village just like all the other athletes. And she doesn't think that caused her problem.

Questions about warm-up pool

Instead she traces her illness back to a warm-up pool in the village she used on one of her first days in New Delhi to relax after a workout.

"The next morning I woke up with extreme nausea. I vomited several times only bile. There was definitely something wrong with my system, not bad food I ate," she says.

When she went to see doctors with the Canadian team in India, her symptoms looked similar to many of the swimmers on the team who had also used the warm-up pool and were suffering what they referred to as Delhi belly - diarrhea and an upset stomach.

Duclos-Lasnier later read in a local paper that the water in that warm-up pool was contaminated, but she's not sure with what.

She's wondering if she got an intestinal virus from that water and that made her susceptible to contracting typhoid fever.

"Even doctors say it's very hard to put a finger where I really got it. It's quite mysterious actually," she says.

She saw a lot of those doctors during the Games. She went back every few days. They thought she had a virus or nerves because of her competition. But she'd feel fine one day and then horrible the next, something that lasted throughout the Games.

By the time her competition rolled around, she had very little energy, power and explosion, exactly what you need to do well in pole vault. She finished eighth, well off her personal best.

It can reoccur

Once she returned to Canada and was diagnosed with typhoid, doctors told her there was a 20 per cent chance it would reoccur. Antibiotics may not kill off the bacteria.

"I talked to the doctors about that. I said I just cannot allow myself to have this again. Because when I start back to train 100 per cent, it's just going to mess up my year [2011]," she says, adding she hopes to go to Italy soon where she trains with a top Russian coach.

Now she's back training. Her blood tests show no more traces of the fever.

She's been progressively pushing her body harder in training. But at times, she's had to stop to rest when the headaches come back.

Despite everything she's gone through, Duclos-Lasnier says she doesn't have any second thoughts about going to India.

"It only makes me think twice about the choice I made to not take the typhoid fever shot."

Doctors had strongly recommended the athletes and team staff get vaccinated, but didn't force them.

"It [the vaccine] had to be taken four weeks before [the Games]. At that time, I was in Italy for training camp. It was difficult to access a clinic. I was in a small town. And after I kind of forgot about it and I was kind of negligent about it."

She won't make that same mistake twice.

"Now for sure every time I travel in a country that is a little bit exotic you know I'll definitely take everything I need to prevent any disease to happen to me again."