The Heartwarming Testimony of a Black Mushroom Survivor: “I Woke Up Crying in Pain” | The case of a Mexican who lost an eye due to an illness

Jaime Diaz de Léon, a 48-year-old man who survived rhinocerebral mucormycosis, known as black fungus, and coronavirus in Mexico, shared details of his harsh experience while transiting the disease: “I woke up at dawn crying in pain.”

The onset of mucormycosis, a fungus that lodges in the nasal cavity and develops in immunocompromised patients, began to appear in patients with critical coronavirus conditions in the India then it spread to other parts of the world.

It is a fungal disease that particularly affects patients with uncontrolled diabetes, those who have had leukemia, a bone marrow transplant or those who are immunocompromised.

Originally from the city of Delicias, in the state of Chihuahua, this man started showing the first symptoms of the coronavirus in October of last year. “I couldn’t breathe, my voice was growing, I was walking a hundred yards and I was totally tired”, he told in dialogue with the newspaper The country.

The severity of her condition required hospitalization, administration of steroids and continuous oxygenation for two weeks. A few days after being admitted to hospital, he lost vision in his left eye, the first sign of an opportunistic fungal disease. After several weeks without a clear diagnosis, they detected severe sinusitis that destroyed the eye socket and invaded the base of the skull as well as a brain aneurysm.

“It was an unbearable headache, I woke up at dawn crying in pain and my daughter had to inject me to be able to sleep, eat and get through the day, so I spent almost a month, ”he recalls.

Later, Díaz de León underwent another surgery where they cleaned up the infectious contents and doctors had to remove the left eye, which was completely overgrown with the fungus, to prevent the infection from spreading.

“In the context of the pandemic, reported cases of mucor may be on the increase and probably many cases go undiagnosed as they can progress rapidly,” he said. Ordoñez Solorio, one of the doctors who treated Jaime Díaz de León.

As the fungal spread was internal, the patient did not develop the characteristic blackish spots on the face. Ordoñez Solorio explained that unlike other patients, the progression of the fungus was less aggressive in this case because the patient had no pre-existing conditions such as diabetes or cancer, a decisive factor in saving his life.

Over the past 15 years, some 10,000 cases of black fungus have been detected in Mexico, a low incidence of a disease that has a death rate of over 90 percent, according to data from the Faculty of Medicine of the ‘UNAM.

“I am 48 years old and nothing has ever happened to me before. I am not diabetic, I am not hypertensive, I have not taken any drugs. So there are opportunities in life that pass and my Word is the attitude and don’t be sorry, you gotta get out go ahead, there is no other “, he concluded Diaz de Leon