Key Points
A Texas man lost his hands and parts of his feet after contracting an extreme case of typhus from a flea bite...
Michael Kohlhof, 35, was taken to a hospital in San Antonio on June 19 after developing flu-like symptoms, including an upset stomach and a fever, NBC News reported...
By the next day, the handyman was on a ventilator, dialysis, and a cocktail of drugs including antibiotics, beta-blockers, and vasopressors in order to keep him alive while his organs were failing, a GoFundMe page set up by his family said.. "He almost died once or twice," his brother Greg Kohlhof told KENS 5 News...
Kohlhof emerged from sedation on July 1, with doctors explaining that the cause of his condition was typhus, an infection spread by lice, fleas, or mites...
"He was the victim of a severe and traumatic bite from one single flea with unimaginable consequences," the GoFundMe page said.. Kohlhof's family wrote that the vasopressors that had helped to keep him alive had "complicated the outlook of his extremities," and that he had developed dry gangrene...
