How Jeanna Giese is recovering from rabies
Family, friends attribute 15-year-old’s survival to prayer

By Karen Girard, Special to the Catholic Herald

FOND DU LAC — Jeanna Giese has become known throughout the world as being the first person to survive human rabies without receiving any vaccination. She was bitten by an infected bat at Holy Family Church last September and was diagnosed with the disease on Oct. 19. The 15-year-old Fond du Lac girl’s recovery was reported by many major media outlets.

With the triumphant outcome of Jeanna’s cure proclaimed worldwide, it’s easy to overlook the ongoing and tender local side to the story, as the effects of Jeanna’s illness continue to shape her family and community, molding them through sorrow and joy, doubt and faith, pain and transformation.

Faith has always been a part of the Gieses’ life. Parents John and Ann consider it worth the sacrifice required to give Jeanna and her three brothers a Catholic school education. That faith is being stretched into another dimension as they watch their lively, athletic daughter and sister fall ill — her body ravaged by the rabies virus — and fight to regain the physical independence most take for granted. “Why us? Why our family?” are questions coming naturally wherever misfortune hits. For Ann, faith carries her.

“I don’t need to know the answer,” she said.

It’s enough to know God has a purpose in allowing these things to happen, she said, and she trusts God with what is humanly impossible to understand. It doesn’t make the pain any less, however, and the tears still flow at times.

After effects of disease remain

Jeanna beat the fatal disease, much to the joy of her family and friends. However, she still deals with the after effects. At this time last year, Jeanna spent her days in typical teenage fashion: going to school, playing junior varsity basketball, hanging out with friends. Now, her days include occupational therapy, speech therapy, and one-on-one academic tutoring. Jeanna works hard to regain the ability to walk, but still depends upon a wheelchair for mobility. Life is a daily struggle for Jeanna. Meanwhile her family and friends watch her determination but struggle with their inability to make things right for her.

When he first heard Jeanna was diagnosed with rabies, Robb Jensen, St. Mary’s Springs High School principal, said he was relieved doctors found the cause of her mysterious illness, and could now treat her successfully. Then he discovered the likely possibility that this disease would prove fatal. He cried as he made the announcement the next morning over the school’s loudspeaker. Jeanna’s classmate, Maggie Millin, said for many of the students, hearing Jensen cry revealed a soft side to their principal they never would have guessed.

Ribbons are prayer reminders

Megan Geib, another of Jeanna’s classmates, went to work that night making prayer ribbon pins for people to wear as a reminder to pray for Jeanna. They were blue and white, she said, because blue is Jeanna’s favorite color. She initially made 100, and gave them out the next day, with requests for more. She made another 300 the next night, with still more requests. She eventually made and distributed 2,500 prayer ribbons — “we bought out all the blue ribbon from all the Walmarts from here to Appleton,” she recalled.

“With prayer comes faith,” said Carol Kazmierczak, St. Mary’s Springs theology teacher and campus minister. The students pray for Jeanna’s intention at the beginning of each of her classes she said, and their weekly Masses also include prayers for Jeanna. She explained they do not simply pray for a specific action to be taken by God, but also for strength for each of them to accept God’s will.

Prayer unifies community

Kazmierczak said there’s a unity that comes when a community has a specific focus. This past year, she said, the Catholic community held Jeanna in their prayers.

“I would go to meetings for (archdiocesan) campus ministers, and other campus ministers would bring along banners and cards for Jeanna from well-wishers at their schools,” she said. “Prayer is something that binds us as a community of believers.”

Not just Catholics, she said, but believers from all walks of life are pulling for Jeanna. For example, she said, students and staff at Fond du Lac’s public high school keep Jeanna in their thoughts; many of them wear blue bracelets imprinted with the words “Jeanna” and “Miracles Happen.”

People from around the world have been praying for Jeanna, spurred on by those close to her requesting prayers from their family and friends who pass on prayer requests to their individual circles.

School parent Debbie Helleberg asked her mother, who lives in Kansas City, to pray for Jeanna. Her mother, she said, asked for prayers from her own parish as well as of her coworkers, who in turn, requested prayers from their respective churches.

“Mom would be at work, and a coworker would leave a note for her saying, ‘My group is praying for Jeanna.’”

Helleberg said when she’s out somewhere and people discover her connection to St. Mary Springs, they often tell her, “We’ve been praying for Jeanna.”

“The power of people coming together in prayer for a common cause is uplifting,” she said.

When Springs senior Kay Lechner first heard the news about Jeanna’s illness, she immediately asked her home parish, St. Joseph in Waupan, to pray for her. Even though they do not know Jeanna, she said, they now always ask her how Jeanna’s doing, and support her through their prayers.

School atmosphere was tense, hopeful

Lechner sees the difference prayer has been making in her fellow students these past few months. When students learned of the seriousness of Jeanna’s illness, Lechner said, the atmosphere was very tense. Students were hopeful, she said, but the majority were worried. “A lot of them found peace through prayer,” she said. “I think they came to realize they could lean on God (in difficult situations).”

Lechner said the experience allowed students to see first hand that “God does work miracles.”

“We’ve become closer,” said 15-year-old Cassie Kurek, describing an awakening the students experienced as they came to terms with the fragile nature of human life brought into sharp focus by their classmate’s brush with death. “Everyone’s there for each other,” she said, describing a closeness that did not exist before Jeanna’s illness.

Family looks for goodness from tragedy

In the brokenness of Jeanna’s illness and her painstaking recovery, Ann said their family has become more aware that any sense of permanence in this life is an illusion. The effect has been that they appreciate one another more in the time they have together. The family’s affection for each other has always been there, said Ann, but not always openly acknowledged.

“Before, we knew, but didn’t always think about it. Now everyone shows it more because you never know when you can’t,” she said.

Still, you search for answers, for goodness rising up out of life’s tragedies, the promised transformation through the (often involuntary) giving of pieces of our lives. Maybe, said Ann, it’s as her husband, John, believes: maybe people who thought prayer didn’t matter will now look to Jeanna, and think again.

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