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What’s It Like To is a regular listener.co.nz column where New Zealanders from all walks of life share first-hand experiences of living with and overcoming health challenges. Here, farmer Mark Shadbolt tells Paulette Crowley what it’s like to contract leptospirosis.
After a day of crutching sheep on my Akaroa farm, I felt really ill and had back pain. I thought I’d got a chill because it’d been such a cold day, but I also had back pain and rigors – shivering violently – which is generally associated with a major infection.
Back then, four years ago, my wife, Biddi, was the practice manager at the local health clinic. Between her and one of the local doctors who’d had experience in the freezing-works industry, they guessed I might have leptospirosis. It’s a bacteria that can be picked up from the urine of infected animals. Although he wasn’t sure of the diagnosis, the GP decided it was worth trying out some antibiotics.
I started the treatment and deteriorated for six days, with violent rigors, agonising pain and sweats. Apparently, that can happen when you first start treating lepto with antibiotics. I was going downhill so fast that I was put in the hospital to have intravenous antibiotics and fluids for dehydration. I didn’t quite make it to intensive care, but I was put right next to it because they thought my kidneys might malfunction. I was very ill for the best part of a week.
It probably took me about three months to get somewhere back to normal. In the meantime, I had a lot of tiredness, aches and pains. It’s a great way to lose weight and energy, I can tell you.
I was surprised that I’d contracted lepto after 50 years of farming. Back in my early farming days, I was artificially inseminating 2000-3000 cattle a year. If I was going to get lepto, I should have got it then, because it was thought that you usually catch it from direct contact with a cattle beast. It was something we never, ever thought about.
I found out that the number of lepto cases has been increasing in recent years. I was confused about that, because I thought all cows were vaccinated for the disease. Because it was emerging as a bit of a problem, researchers at Massey University asked to test my animals and property for lepto, to try to find out how I had been exposed to it. I also wanted to find out where the hell it came from.
We finally figured out there were two possibilities for how I got infected. One was when I’d found a dead cow on my property and dragged it out of a creek. I remember there was a bit of an issue with a broken rope and getting it out. Around that time, I was also doing quite a bit of fencing and planting. I had cuts on my hands and I was scratching around the grass with no gloves on. There could have been pee on the grass from a rat or a hedgehog.
As part of the lepto trial that Massey was doing, they asked to randomly test all of our livestock. So, all of our sheep, cattle and dogs had urine and blood tests. They also tested soil and water on the property. I’m pretty sure they found strains of lepto in all of the samples, but the consensus was that it wasn’t in levels high enough to have to treat the animals.
Despite finding lepto in my animals and on my farm, we still never found out exactly how I caught it. The way I’ve dealt with it has been to downsize my farm. I’ve got only a couple of hundred sheep and about 50 cattle now, so my direct contact with the animals isn’t as much as it was before.
But even with that, I got another lepto infection after fencing a couple of years ago. My finger swelled up like a balloon, so I got tested and given treatment straight away. This time it wasn’t as bad, so maybe I had developed some sort of immunity.
Lepto was the start of a downhill run for us. I found out I had prostate cancer and then Biddi passed away. It’s been a lot, but it’s just something my family and I have had to grapple with.
Thankfully, I’ve dealt with the prostate cancer. I’ve just turned 70 and still love farming. This block I live on now has been in my family for generations. It’s a hell of a good life and it’s been a lovely place to farm. These days, I’m not doing as much planting as I was and I’m obviously pretty cautious about it, ’cos I don’t want lepto again.
I’ve got adult kids and grandkids now, and if they’re ever helping out with planting, I make sure everybody wears gloves. It’s common sense to do that, but we were never brought up to wear protective “anything”, whether earmuffs, gloves, or anything else. I’m pretty emphatic about that sort of stuff now.
There’s no telling what’s been where you touch, whether it’s in your own vegetable garden and you’re digging the soil and weeding. Maybe a rat was in there as well? None of us really know.
A friend of ours who did a lot of planting in wetlands as part of his job got lepto about two-and-a-half years ago. I think it comes down to the rats and the hedgehogs and everything else that’s living in those wetland environments.
Now I tell people, put some gloves on before planting and wash everything up after with plenty of disinfectant and hot water. Being careful and protective is all you can do in life, I think. But don’t stop doing things.
Epidemiologist Jackie Benschop on leptospirosis
Leptospirosis is a bacterial infection that has usually affected those working in traditional farming roles. However, a new study from Massey University has shown the disease is changing, meaning more people may be at risk of contracting it.
Leptospirosis in New Zealand is starting to “behave” more like it does in tropical regions, with rodents and the environment itself driving how the disease spreads. It’s concerning seeing cases of the disease in people who haven’t worked in industries that were previously considered high risk.
We need to spread the word beyond the usual high-risk groups, because that’s where we’re now seeing more cases. There are things people can do, such as wearing gloves, covering all wounds with waterproof plasters and making sure livestock are properly vaccinated. Rodent control and good hygiene are also critical. We can’t just rely on the old thinking, as this disease is changing and our response needs to change with it.
