Michael Kohlhof Wiki – Michael Kohlhof Biography

A single flea bite cost a Texas man both arms and part of his feet, his family said. Michael Kohlhof was rushed to the San Antonio emergency room last month after losing feeling in his toes and suffering what his family initially believed were severe flu symptoms, his mother wrote on a GoFundMe.

Shortly thereafter, the 35-year-old man suffered septic shock and was rushed to the ICU. Within 24 hours, Kohlhof was placed on a ventilator, dialysis, antibiotics, vasopressors, and numerous intravenous medications to keep him alive as his organs began to fail rapidly. “By the end of June 20, I was told to call immediate family to come from all over the country to say goodbye,” wrote mother J’Leene Hardaway.

Michael Kohlhof

The age of Michael Kohlhof is 35 year.

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What happened to Michael Kohlhof

Kohlhof’s brother, Greg, told KENS5 that his brother “almost died once or twice. “They were worried that he was brain dead,” Greg said. It took another 11 days of intense medical care, but Kohlhof made a miraculous recovery and was taken off the ventilator and sedation on July 1, but not without serious physical consequences.

According to Hardaway, Kohlhof’s hands and feet developed dry gangrene as a result of treatment with vasopressors, one of the many medications that saved his life. The cause of Kohlof’s sepsis and rapid decline was identified as typhus, which originated from a single flea bite. “He was the victim of a severe and traumatic bite from a single flea,” Hardaway said.

Doctors told the family that the type of typus Kohlhof suffered from is extremely rare in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, flea-borne typhus occurs in tropical and subtropical climates around the world, including areas of the United States, namely southern California, Hawaii, and Texas.

“Untreated [typhus] can cause severe illness and damage to one or more organs, including the liver, kidneys, heart, lungs, and brain,” the CDC warns. Usually, people bitten by infected fleas seek medical help after finding a swelling or rash around the bite mark, but Greg said his sister didn’t experience any symptoms until it was too late.

Kohlhof’s gangrene had no treatment and doctors were forced to amputate both hands up to the forearms and half of the feet earlier this week. If he had waited another 48 hours, he “wouldn’t have made it,” his partner Alishpa Masood told KHOU11. According to his brother, Kohlhof is from Houston and had only been in San Antonio to help care for her mother while she recovered from foot surgery.

Kohlhof is a volunteer, handyman, art lover, and part-time pet sitter whose passions tragically center on his hands. “He and I talked about it. It is not your hands that do all these great things. It’s your mind,” Greg told his brother. “You’ll just have to find a new avenue to exercise it.”Read More……..