‘I thought I had a chill – it was leptospirosis’: Kiwi farmer on what it’s like to be diagnosed with the life-threatening infection

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.