Reporter Fights to Recover After Mosquito Bite

WOOD (Grand Rapids) Reporter Barton Deiters has been off the air for months after being bit by a mosquito.

Deiters contracted the West Nile virus and he developed one of the most serious symptoms the virus can cause: encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain.

Deiters has fought to overcome neurological damage that affects his mobility.

“He was fine one day and literally the next day he lost his ability to move, to walk, to speak,” his wife Lorena Deiters shared with News 8. “It was crushing to see that happen and not know if he would survive it, because a lot of people don’t.”

Since the Sept. 16 diagnosis, Barton Deiters has had a tracheotomy, feeding tube and was on a ventilator. He was transferred from a hospital in metro Grand Rapids to Ann Arbor and then to Plainwell, all of which was compounded by pandemic-related restrictions that limited his family’s ability to be by his side.

“He’s always put in the effort, which blows me away,” music therapist Peter Muskiewicz told News 8. “I think if my body and brain had been leveled like his has been, I don’t know what my level of effort would be. So just to see his work ethic and determination is so humbling to me.”

Deiters is scheduled to go home March 10 after six full months in different hospitals.

H/T WOOD