{"id":204219,"date":"2025-09-06T05:45:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T05:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/204219\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T05:45:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T05:45:11","slug":"western-minnesota-woman-moves-to-assisted-living-after-being-diagnosed-with-west-nile-virus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/204219\/","title":{"rendered":"Western Minnesota woman moves to assisted living after being diagnosed with West Nile virus"},"content":{"rendered":"

A western Minnesota woman is speaking out about her life-changing experience with West Nile virus<\/a> amid a rise in reported cases.<\/p>\n

Clarissa Sparkl, 37, of Montevideo, experienced a case so severe that she now stays in an assisted living facility.<\/p>\n

“Once you get West Nile, there is nothing you can do about it. It takes a week to diagnose it,” Lori Winterfeld, Sparkl’s mom, said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That’s how long it took to diagnose Sparkl’s condition. By that time, her health had taken a turn for the worse.<\/p>\n

“She got sick on a Friday, and by Monday she was hospitalized and intubated,” Winterfeld said. “The only thing she could move initially were her eyebrows. And then she could eventually blink. It’s been a long, long haul.”<\/p>\n

Sparkl added, “I didn’t know what happened because I was young and healthy.” <\/p>\n

Her family believes she may have been bitten by a mosquito carrying West Nile in her own backyard. She also takes medication for multiple sclerosis, which Winterfeld thinks may have made it harder to fight off the virus. <\/p>\n

“One percent of the cases of West Nile are neuroinvasive, and hers hit her brain stem,” Winterfeld said.<\/p>\n

Sparkl became so weak that last year, she was forced to leave her husband, Jesse, and 10-year-old daughter behind, and move into a nursing facility in St. Paul. That’s where Winterfeld takes care of her during the week, and Jesse drives from Montevideo to be with her on the weekends.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Over time, some movement has returned to her arms and her hands.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The goal now is to get Sparkl off her breathing tube, and once that happens, she can go home. Her family is hoping that it can happen by November. <\/p>\n

“It’s really hard because I love my daughter,” Sparkl said.<\/p>\n

Winterfeld added, “It’s been hard on her, too, not having a mom at home. Video chat is wonderful. She gets to see her mom every day, and she gets to talk to her.”<\/p>\n

Even with a homecoming on the horizon, the fight against the virus will continue.<\/p>\n

“It’s been a bad year for West Nile. In every state, it was very early,” Winterfeld said.<\/p>\n

Before she got sick, Sparkl worked as a social worker, a teacher and a pharmacy technician. A GoFundMe page has been set up in her name to help pay for medical care.<\/p>\n

\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n

John Lauritsen<\/a><\/p>\n

John Lauritsen is an Emmy award-winning reporter from Montevideo, Minn. He joined WCCO-TV in late-July of 2007. Two days after he started, the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A western Minnesota woman is speaking out about her life-changing experience with West Nile virus amid a rise…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":204220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[210,3663,51879,67,132,68,51878],"class_list":{"0":"post-204219","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-minnesota","10":"tag-mosquitoes","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us","14":"tag-west-nile-virus"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115155771372123905","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}