Karen was a well-rounded and promising student in her second year of Criminal Psychology at Malaspina College on Vancouver Island. During the stress of final examinations in 1989, her doctor recommended relaxation and a hot bath to deal with disquieting symptoms. But more than nervous tension was at play. A virus had begun penetrating her brain and while travelling to Victoria to see a friend, she became disoriented and was speaking incoherently upon arrival. The hospital emergency team checked for bacterial, but overlooked viral infection. Upon collapsing at the doors on her third visit, a specialist diagnosed that a virus had entered her nervous system.

Rapidly, speech was impossible as paralysis distorted her face. Her entire body became covered in sores with a thick green growth on her tongue. Karen’s Mom insisted that her daughter be taken to the U.B.C. Research Centre in Vancouver. Fortunately, then Premier Bill Vander Zalm made available his plane which avoided a rough ferry ride.

And so with head packed in thick foam and steadied by her Mom’s loving hands, she was soon surrounded by UBC neurologists and specialists, one of whom commented while checking hearing and vision, “Oh my God, this child is deaf and possible blind as well!”

Karen reports that “At this point I was in a vegetative state only breathing and capable of blinking my eyes. The doctors wanted to drill through my skull to extract some tissue that they thought might provide some assistance with finding out what type of virus I had.”

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