Our lives were like most people's very busy, Jim was owner the of a small independent tire company, which we had bought in 1994. Before that, Jim had managed the Tire Company since 1975. I hadn't worked since the birth of my first child, and in 1997 my boys were 19 and 17 years old. I had helped care for my parents with cancer since 1987. We lived in a small city of 25,000pop Ashland, Kentucky. Jim had always coached baseball in the community, and I did various community projects. We always supported each other, and met somewhere in the middle. We were a busy family. Coaching baseball was very important to Jim because it was something he knew and wanted to share. He was raised in a small "steel town" in Pennsylvania, and upon graduation he was awarded a four-year baseball scholarship to Marshall University in Huntington, W. Virginia College was something that would not have been possible from his family if it were not for baseball and his high academics. Jim was an honor student in high school and studied accounting and business in college. We were married Sept, 1974 and he was working for the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Dayton, Ohio. He served in the Army Reserves in the 70's. Jim graduated from college and graduate school.

We have been very active in the Ashland community since 1975. Running a tire company, coaching spring. summer and fall teams. In 1994, he took the only team ever from Ashland to the "Babe Ruth World Series. He had help many young boys get to college on baseball scholarships. Jim would travel to different states, to tournaments so that his team could get the exposure necessary from college coaches. In the spring of 1997 my husband had gone to Florida for a week, to watch my oldest son play college baseball. He had been in Boca Roton, Miami, and Ft. Lauderdale. He was out side day and evening games. When I had talked to him on the phone, he said the weather was nice but the bugs were very bad. We dismissed it. Jim continued coaching his baseball team in the summer, my oldest helping him coach. J. P. noticed that his father was slipping, but kept it to himself. He said, his father would not know what to do at times.

They finished up the summer team and had a couple of weeks before the fall team would start. Jim was running the store, and coaching the team as he has for so many years. I started to notice a difference in Jim during fall ball season. He became very irritable with me, and that was very unlike Jim. He was sleeping a lot. He would come home from work, and we would be talking about the day, and he would fall asleep talking. He would fall asleep eating, and he became very hard to get up in the morning. I ask him to go with me to a doctor because he may have low blood sugar. He became very angry. I started noticing him taking ibuprofen a lot. I would ask if he had headaches, he would respond by saying "never you mind what I am doing." I was scared, because I was seeing a different Jim. My husband weighed 303 in Aug of 1997, and he never went to the doctor because he was always afraid to go. Never had a family doctor. He was always a Pepsi drinker, and drank a lot of Pepsi in the summer, which would bloat him. . He had chronic sinusitis, which was never cared for and this was from living in this valley of pollution in the area of Ashland. Most people have to put up with allergies and sinusitis living in this area.

When I would call Jim to get up in the morning, he was very difficult to awake. I would have my son drive him to work because I had noticed he was becoming very lethargic. A friend had asked Jim to go to the Marshall U and Miami of Ohio football game, where they would stay with another friend in Cincinnati. Jim had forgotten to tell me he was going. But he was forgetting a lot. I had also noticed it was taking Jim a long time to get ready for work. This man for years had always jumped up everyday without an alarm and start his day, always in a good mood. I would find him brushing his hair continually, not knowing when to stop. When he went to the game with his friend Jim, I had called ahead to our friends in Cincinatti, and asked them to please watch Jim, because something was very wrong with him. They called back and told me yes, something is wrong he had gone to the game, and sat on the bleachers and slept with his head hung over, like a brain stem injury. They had gone to a restaurant, he ate and then went to the bathroom and got sick. Jim had complained of his legs hurting, and he was having a hard time getting into their van. He took forever to get ready, and had to be cued to move on. MY GOD! What was happening to my husband!

When he returned from the weekend, I told him we were going to the doctor on Monday. He was very furious, and said "You go to the doctor". I went to the store the next morning and started asking questions of his secretary. She said, she had noticed a big difference, the employees started telling me, they would find him very lethargic, and sleeping with his head hung down. He would walk out into the shop, and forget why he was there. Jim's secretary said, the light would bother his eyes, and he would bring things to her to read for him. He had a mess in the office, he hadn't paid any bills, and didn't know where to start. He was going through the motions. He had transposed numbers. After hearing all of this, I was in a panic, but knew I had to get him somehow to a doctor quick. I thought that it was one of three things, a stroke, a heart attack (with his weight), or a nervous breakdown. These things I could have understood.

He was taken to St. Mary's Hospital a big catholic hospitals in Huntington, W. VA known for they're heart unit. By this time, Jim was very very lethargic, confused, and was trying to hold it together, but he was slipping. They gave him an EEG, could see nothing, and said it could be TIA's. They released him, and gave me a doctor to call to make an appointment with first thing on Monday. Monday could not come soon enough.

That weekend was spent in a daze for both Jim and I. We watched the World Series games on TV, and Jim did not know the teams or the players. He was talking out of his head. He asked me "where is the food you brought in, and then spread it in the yard?" My life had taken a change right then, I knew that he was going to be different. First thing Monday morning, I called the doctor, the hospital suggested. It was the wrong number for the doctor, one who didn't handle TIA's or anything remote. I immediately took my husband to the hospital again, my son JP told them that if they released his father again, he would sue for negligence.

They admitted Jim, and good see progressive dementia. They kept Jim in nine days, with no medication, just spinal taps, and MRI's. They ran every test known to mankind. I asked for a psyche test, they ran that, they said it was not psyche but organic but didn't know what. Jim had a swollen head, high temps, paralysis on his right side, tremors, seizures, respiratory failure, and semi coma. My husband was dying before my eyes. His illness looked like a brain stem injury. He did not know me or the boys, or the president or what year it was. When I was at the hospital one day, a nurse pulled me aside, and said "I could get fired for this, but you need to ask for a second opinion." She said she and the other nurses are very concerned about your husband, because of the progressive dementia. They was letting Jim just lay there, and this was not good. He went into ICU when he had his respiratory. failure. The new neurologist came in studied the chart on my husband, I watched. He said, "Jim had a virus that attacked his brain, he must go to the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, possibly for him to have a brain biopsy." I had to sign papers after papers. They had asked all the questions and were running all the tests, they asked me when we were out of the country and where. When he had his Achilles tendon repaired in the 70's did they use animal tissue? We had been to Africa, Mexico Spain, but these were 10 years ago, didn't matter things can lay dormant. They thought it was CJD, or encephalitis.

They flew Jim by helicopter to Cleveland. He remained in ICU, for a month, with more respiratory. failures, temps, seizures, then the blood clot in his calf, pneumonia, headaches, light sensitive, and progressive dementia. They treated the symptoms, the brain with steroids, he had bad brain edema. Their diagnosis was EEE with early involvement of the basal ganglia, and thalamus. Lesions throughout his brain. They wanted to put Jim into a skilled nursing home, but there was not one that could take him within this Tri-State area. Finally, the local hospital agreed to take him after my sons begged them, because they knew family and friends were crucial to his recovery and to help with his memory. Their father of 50 was in diapers, could not walk, slept a lot, had to be fed, did not know the children or I. He did not know anyone. He had brain damage and there was still swelling. We put a legal pad in Jim's room, which read, "Thank you for visiting Jim, we are sorry we missed your visit, and Jim would not remember, so we ask that you sign your name, and we will work on helping Jim remember." "God Bless you for coming, Jeri, JP, and Beau."

Some people would visit, most would not, only two players he had coached throughout the years came. That hurt my boys tremendously. People would call, I would ask for them to come and visit Jim, as visuals were very important in brain injured from a virus. They would say," well if he doesn't remember me, there isn't much sense in coming". Some would say, I heard you didn't want visitors. No, no one in this family ever said that, I guess it would have just been more comfortable to think that. It wasn't until then I became more worried about those that didn't have encephalitis, then my husband who did. For the boy's sake, I would add names to the list so they would not see it blank. It was at this time that I knew what a misunderstood and devastating disease this was going to be. We did have a few friends that have stayed and helped us cope.

Jim was released from the hospital after three weeks, the future was not looking bright, we lost the store, JP and I made the decision to let it go, and I knew I had 6 months of health insurance after the store closed. Jim went back into the hospital in Feb 1998, with Viral Meningitis another brain infection on the meninges, compromised from the first brain infection deep within the brain Eastern Equine Encephalitis. Our work here with Jim was going to be more important, and everything else was just "stuff". I remember telling one doctor, about how people act, and they think he has had a nervous breakdown, or just plain gone off his rocker. She said, "Get Rid of Them" and everything else negative in your life. Those were the best words I had ever received, and very empowering to do the job, I had to do it. I had to set up Jim's rehab, and stimulate his brain or "What he didn't use, he would Lose" That was my goal. Today, Jim has come along way, but up short of recovery, like the doctor said he would. He is very single tasked, has to be cued, personality changed, compulsive behavior, higher cognitive deficits, memory deficits, sleep disorders all the things that many encephalitis survivors go through. They don't want others to know of their deficits because they want a chance to be contributors to life again, and if people knew of all the deficits from surviving encephalitis they would not give them a chance to complete their dreams, but only shun them into isolation. This I will stop