Gardener sounds warning for protection after serious Legionellosis infection

As a Palmerston North woman lay in hospital in a coma while an insidious infection took over her body's organs, her family were told to prepare for the worst.

Wendy Franicevic is still feeling the effects of Legionnaire’s disease more than a year after she fell into a coma for 10 days. Photo: RNZ / Jimmy Ellingham

Wendy Franicevic was rushed to the city hospital by her worried partner, now husband, Jay Toogood after her health deteriorated.

That was on 19 December, 2020, and five days later, on Christmas Eve, Franicevic was diagnosed with Legionnaires' disease.

"By that stage, I was well and truly in a coma, paralysed, [and] on kidney dialysis, because my kidneys had stopped functioning," the 46-year-old told RNZ.

Her temperature was sky high as the Legionellosis infection took hold until, finally, it responded to antibiotics.

Over Christmas that year, she spent 10 days in a coma, as Toogood and her parents were warned to expect the worst.

But she survived, although she was initially paralysed when she woke. She had to learn again to control her body and went home after about a month to continue her rehabilitation.

She and Toogood also decided there was no time to waste and the couple married in an intimate ceremony at their home on 27 February last year.

"That gave me a sense of purpose when I came out of hospital," she said.

"I felt great that day and I had worked so hard in physio to try and get into my shoes. I was determined I was going to wear my white heels... It was the best day ever. It came out of something so horrible and so dark."

For Franicevic, a long-time gardener, the trouble started in early December 2020 when she opened a bag of potting mix when planting vegetables.

She wore her usual leather gardening gloves and sunglasses, but no mask, breathing in the bacteria that attacked her from the inside over the next couple of weeks before she went to hospital.

"I had a dry cough. I was tired, had a nasty headache, a pain in my chest and in my belly. That's all I remember. I don't remember the six days before going to hospital."

An Otago University study published in 2019 found there were 238 cases of Legionnaires' disease in New Zealand identified between May 2015 and May 2016.

More than half of those were believed to have caught it from gardening, like Franicevic. It can also be caught through inhaling it from contaminated water sources.

Franicevic has made a startling recovery from where she was just over a year ago, but the former chef's life is dramatically different and she cannot yet be sure of the disease's long-term effects.

She takes more than 20 pills a day, although that has decreased, has put on weight, has suffered hair loss, and is regularly fatigued.

Often stuck at home, she relishes contact with friends or family, but is often forced to cancel catch-ups because she is not feeling well.

Unable to work, she is also ineligible for ACC.

Franicevic said she was speaking out to encourage other people to properly protect themselves from the disease and its debilitating effects. In particular, she said, gardeners should read the warning labels on potting mix and wear masks, gloves and protective glasses when opening it.

"It is a nasty, ongoing disease. You don't recover. You just get complications. That first year being out of hospital I learnt how frustrating and futile and upsetting the whole process can be," she said.

"Everything in our way of life has changed, absolutely everything, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Everything has changed.

"The body that I learnt to rely on, that I knew could get me through a hell of day in the kitchen or a full-on day of moving, or some hard stuff, cannot sustain me. I can't rely on my body."