Local bubonic plague survivor describes life-threatening ordeal
“It’s surreal,” Plescher told MLive.com. “I don’t know if I’ve still processed that I’m fighting the plague, that I’m surviving the plague.”
"It's surreal," says the 33-year-old Michigan woman recovering from bubonic plague.
Posted by Marquette Mobile on Tuesday, September 15, 2015
The local resident is recovering after the contracting the bubonic plague. The resident reportedly contracted the plague while in Colorado. Medical Director for the Marquette County Health Department Dr. Terry Frankovich says there have been 14 reported cases of bubonic plague this year in the U.S. and four deaths, which she says is relatively high.
She says this is the first ever reported case of bubonic plague in Michigan. The bubonic plague is an infection that occurs in the lymph nodes near the site of a bite because of a bacteria called Yersinia.
“In the case of Yersinia in current days we have antibiotics that can actually treat it quite readily,” Dr. Frankovich added, “but of course in the Middle Ages that was not the case. Now we have much less exposure, you know, we know that rodents and the fleas that live with those rodents can carry the organism.”
The disease is not contagious from person to person and can be treated with modern day antibiotics. Dr. Frankovich says that she hears the Marquette County resident is currently on antibiotics and says they are recovering just fine.