A woman's death from a rare fungus infection has left her family reeling.
Now, the family of Sonya Cruz from Ketnosha, Wisconsin, have issued an urgent warning to others about blastomyces- a rare fungus that is most commonly found in soil, especially wooded areas.
If disturbed the fungus can release spores into the air that can cause severe illness.
During severe infection, which is rare, the disease spreads from the lungs to other organs, like the skin, bones and brain.
"My life. They took my life away from me. I’m not saying the hospital or whoever. Whatever this is, took my wife," John Cruz, Sonya's husband, told Fox 6.
The family have set up a GoFundMe - where the description says: "Yesterday we lost a ray of sunshine in this world.
"TeTe” “SoSo” meant the world to so many around her. She was and is surrounded by love with family, friends, her children and amazing husband, John.
"Myself, John and the family are asking if you can contribute to this fund, so we can celebrate her life in the way we feel she deserves. Thank you and God Bless."
Symptoms
"Whatever this is, took my wife," says Mr Cruz.
Before his wife had contracted the deadly disease, John Cruz had never heard of it.
"I can walk out here and swallow a bullet, not literally a bullet, but a bullet of that," he added. "I think this is something that needs to be shared around the world."
"It's probably more common than we think," said Dr. Bruce Klein of the University of Wisconsin Medical School.
Symptoms might not appear for up to three three months after breathing in the deadly spores - and can include pneumonia, coughing, shortness of breath and shaky chills.
It's typically diagnosed through tests done on blood and urine samples. Body fluid and tissue culture tests can also indicate the infection but the report may take up to a couple of weeks to be generated.
Dr. Klein says treatment can work – but warned it can take between six months and a year. Infection is easy for even doctors to miss, so awareness is important.
According to the Centre of Disease Control (CDC), Wisconsin reported the highest number of cases of blastomyces in the U.S.- 2.1 cases per 100,000 residents.
The CDC said that the rare fungus is also found in other Midwestern, south-central, and southeastern states.
"That’s probably only a fraction of the true occurrence of infection, because we know that at least half of the cases can have mild or asymptomatic illness," Klein added.
Sonya's daughter, Shatrice Staten, said that she hopes that no one has to go through what her family's is going through following her mother's unexpected death.
"It just sucks. I had to watch my mom take her last breath. It really does," Staten said. "I don’t want anyone else to feel like what me and my dad going through."
Earlier this year, a rare fungus outbreak infected at least 109 people - with one person killed and another 13 sick in hospital.
The upsurge in cases in Michigan, US, is thought to be linked to a paper mill in Escanaba, Upper Peninsula, and are caused by the infection blastomycosis - a rare fungal disease developed after breathing in spores of disturbed rotten wood or leaf litter.
The Last of Us
Speaking previously about the heightened interest in fungi after the release of The Last of Us, an expert warned that fungal disease epidemics are not completely out of the realm of possibility.
Anita Sil, professor at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at UCSF, told Synapse podcast: “There’s actually an outbreak right now of a fungus called Blastomyces in some sort of processing plant in Michigan,” Sil said.
“All of a sudden, everybody in a facility is inhaling large quantities of those fungal spores and then getting infected. So that’s a really serious situation.”
