{"id":415719,"date":"2026-10-01T13:46:33","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T13:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/415719\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T13:46:33","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T13:46:33","slug":"tampa-dengue-survivor-recalls-weeks-of-illness-i-went-from-july-to-september-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/415719\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa dengue survivor recalls weeks of illness: \u2018I went from July to September\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Bailey remembers little of the weeks he spent fighting dengue<\/a>. His wife, Danielle Mercuri, remembers wondering whether he would survive.<\/p>\n

“I went from July to September,” Bailey said.<\/p>\n

The illness began Aug. 8 with back pain, followed by violent shaking. Mercuri said the pain was unusual even for her husband, who had experienced back problems before.<\/p>\n

“But this was unknown,” Bailey said. “I had nothing I’d ever felt before. That’s why I was scared.”<\/p>\n

An ambulance took him to Tampa General Hospital, where Mercuri said his temperature reached 106 degrees. Doctors initially struggled to determine what was making him sick.<\/p>\n

“I have never seen him like that to the point where I asked the nurse ‘is he going to die?'” Mercuri said.<\/p>\n

An infectious disease specialist ordered testing for tropical diseases, which revealed dengue, she said.<\/p>\n

Mercuri said doctors told the couple Bailey was Hillsborough County’s third confirmed dengue case.<\/p>\n

During his illness, she said, Bailey developed rashes, his platelet count dropped dangerously low and his liver began shutting down. He also experienced confusion and believed he was being held in jail rather than receiving hospital care.<\/p>\n

“I don’t remember being there at all,” Bailey said.<\/p>\n

His treatment continued through a hospital-at-home program before he was discharged Aug. 20, according to Mercuri. His recovery stretched into September.<\/p>\n

“It still took me like two weeks to even get my head out of the clouds and started feeling like me again,” Bailey said.<\/p>\n

Now, the couple wants others to understand how serious the mosquito-borne illness can become.<\/p>\n

“People aren’t thinking about that,” Mercuri said. “They’re like, it’s a virus, it’s a cold, it’s a fever. No. This is so severe.”<\/p>\n

According to the Florida Department of Health, dengue spreads through bites from infected mosquitoes. Symptoms can include fever, severe headache, pain behind the eyes, muscle and joint pain, and bleeding. Severe forms of the disease can be fatal without timely recognition and supportive care.<\/p>\n

The department recommends wearing long-sleeved shirts and pants, using an EPA-registered insect repellent according to its label, repairing damaged window and door screens, and draining standing water where mosquitoes can breed. People experiencing symptoms should contact their health care provider.<\/p>\n

Bailey said he is feeling better and has changed how he prepares to work outside, including wearing long sleeves and using repellent.<\/p>\n

“You don’t want to be in my position,” he said.<\/p>\n

For Mercuri, the warning comes from watching what happened to her husband.<\/p>\n

“I get everybody sensationalizes a lot of things, but we lived through this,” she said. “So there’s a different lens with perspective.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Bailey remembers little of the weeks he spent fighting dengue. His wife, Danielle Mercuri, remembers wondering whether…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[74742,164671,164672,135,137,136],"class_list":["post-415719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-bailey","tag-mercuri","tag-michael-bailey","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}