A DAD has died from 'triple E' horse virus half a decade after he was bitten by an infected mosquito in his backyard.
Richard Pawulski, 49, passed away due to complications from eastern equine encephalitis (EEE), which he picked up five years ago.
Known as EEE or 'triple E', the virus got its name after first being spotted in horses.
The rare bug kills around a third of those it infects and often leaves survivors severely disabled.
This year, the US faced a large outbreak of the mosquito-borne virus, which led to the death of a man from New York State in August.
The surge in cases promoted curfew measures and warnings across several US states as experts feared the bug was making a resurgence.
So far this year, 16 people have tested positive for the virus, according to the latest CDC data.
It's believed Richard, who lived in Connecticut, picked up the virus while clearing out his backyard in August 2019.
In the years that followed, he was plagued with several health complications, including brain damage.
"I'm not joking when I say your life can change in the blink of an eye, because that was what happened to us," Richard's grieving daughter Amellia Pawulski, 18, told the New York Post.
At first, the dad, originally from Poland, complained of intense headaches and began vomiting yellow bile before he was taken to hospital.
Doctors rushed Richard into emergency surgery to relieve the swelling in his brain, which left him in a coma for two months.
He was eventually diagnosed with EEE, after other cases started to crop up in Connecticut that year.
Amellia and her mother, Margaret were told Richard's brain damage was extensive and that he would unlikely ever be the same again.
The two ultimately decided to take him off life support, believing it was what he would have wanted - when he suddenly woke up.
For the next five years, Richard bounced around hospitals and nursing homes.
He endured a traumatic brain injury, liver and kidney complications, seizures, and other severe illnesses, along with frequent bouts of pneumonia.
Some days, Richard wasn't aware of what year it was or where he was, Amellia told the Post.
Fortunately, he was lucid enough in his final days to tell his wife and daughter that he loved them.
Richard passed away on October 14
"None of this stuff would have come up if he didn't get it[EEE]," Amellia said.
"He always tried to look at the positive," she added.
"I remember people being like, 'Oh, how's your day?' And he was like, 'My day is great. I woke up. I can breathe on my own. I can talk on my own. I can go to the bathroom on my own. I have no reason to be upset.'"
The CDC says only a few cases of EEE are reported in the US each year, with most infections found in the eastern and Gulf Coast states.
Outbreaks of EEE usually occur in Massachusetts every 10 years and typically last two to three years.
Philip Armstrong, chief scientist at the Center for Vector Biology & Zoonotic Diseases at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, said the clusters this year are cause for vigilance.
"This is one of the more active years," he told Stateline.
"I would say, about every four or five years, we see these sort of regional outbreaks that occur."
In a 2019 outbreak, there were six deaths among 12 confirmed cases in Massachusetts.
The outbreak continued the following year with five more cases and another death.
Symptoms of EEE include fever, headache, vomiting, diarrhoea and seizures.
People who survive are often permanently disabled, and few completely recover, Massachusetts authorities said.
The disease is prevalent in birds, and although humans and some other mammals can catch EEE, they don't spread the disease.