Angie Barwise had come down with the flu around the holidays.
Just days after Christmas, the 58-year-old Texas mother and grandmother was diagnosed with Type A influenza, along with bronchitis and strep throat, her family told Fox affiliate KDFW.
Doctors gave her antibiotics and Tamiflu, an antiviral medication used to help treat the flu and, soon after, she started to bounce back. But almost exactly a month later, her family said, she was in the emergency room — this time, with a different strain of the virus.
After beating the flu once, Barwise was battling it all over again.
Her husband, Greg Barwise, told KDFW that her fever was difficult to control. “Every four-and-a-half hours,” he said, “we'd have to give her medicine to get the fever down.”
He said he took her to an emergency room Jan. 31 near their home in Fort Worth. Doctors ran tests and then sent them home. But the next day, he said, he was told to bring his wife back.
“They called me at 2:30 and said, 'Oh, you need to get her back up here,' " Greg Barwise told CBS DFW, adding that he was told there was something in his wife's bloodwork.
In fact, Barwise had a secondary infection of pneumonia and was in septic shock, a life-threatening medical condition that can be a complication of influenza, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On Saturday — a week after her second bout with the flu — Barwise died.
“I left for just a few minutes — I thought everything was going to be okay,” Greg Barwise told CBS DFW. That's when, he said, “I got a phone call that she had just passed.”
He told KDFW that the family is devastated.
“She's a wonderful wife, a wonderful mother and wonderful daughter,” he said.
[ This flu season's hospitalizations are highest in nearly a decade ]
Her death comes as the worst flu season in years is sweeping across the United States.
Since the start of the season in October, more than 14,600 people have been hospitalized — the highest number of those were adults older than 50 and children younger than 4, according to the most recent data from the CDC.
The CDC said that during the week ending Jan. 27, the agency received reports of 16 children who recently died of influenza and related complications. In total, the agency said, 53 children have died during the current flu season.
As The Washington Post's Lena H. Sun reported, what makes this season's infection so unusual is its unrelenting pace. Sun reported that “high levels of flu activity are widespread across the country, and over the past week, the rate of patients seeking care for flulike symptoms again rose sharply — nearing rates seen during the swine-flu pandemic in 2009, according to the latest report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
“As of this week, overall hospitalizations are now the highest we've seen” in nearly a decade, Anne Schuchat, CDC’s acting director, said last week in a news conference.
The CDC lists ways to help avoid the flu — including getting the vaccine.
- If you are healthy, avoid contact with those who are sick. And if you are sick, limit contact with those who are healthy.
- When you cough or sneeze, cover your nose and mouth with a tissue. If you don't have a tissue, use your upper sleeve.
- Wash your hands with soap and water, or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer when washing them is not an option.
Barwise had not received the vaccine this year, according to her family.
Barwise, who is survived by her husband, children and 13 grandchildren, was “a loving mother, grandmother and daughter,” according to her obituary. Her memorial service is Friday in Fort Worth.
“I've outlived my own daughter,” Eileen Smith, Barwise's mother, told KDFW. “I'm 83 years old, and I've outlived her. It shouldn't be that way.”
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