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Retired Army man
getting better after
leptospirosis

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By Helen Altonn
Star-Bulletin

Edward Bugarin, 50, decided after running, lifting weights and kayaking yesterday that he had better pass up the 36.2-mile Haleakala Run to the Sun race tomorrow because he is still recovering from leptospirosis after a 500-mile Eco-Challenge Race in Malaysian Borneo.

Bugarin is the second Hawaii participant in the grueling two-week adventure race to contract leptospirosis, a sometimes fatal bacterial illness.

Mike Trisler, 32, a lifeguard on the North Shore, was hospitalized 10 days after arriving home Aug. 27 from the race.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and health officials in other countries have been trying to reach members of the 80 teams to warn them of the disease.

The teams had to swim through heavily flooded waters, and leptospirosis is transmitted through water contaminated with urine from infected animals.

A retired Army sergeant-major who served in the elite Delta Force, Bugarin has had a life of excitement.

Among other career highlights, he was involved in the rescue of American hostages in Iran in 1980, and is credited with saving the American ambassador's life in a bombing in Beirut in 1984.

"Everything I do, I-could-almost-die-of type of thing," he said. "It's fun."

But it wasn't much fun after returning Sept. 5 from the Eco-Challenge Race. He said he felt fine that night but was sore, achy and had a fever the next day, similar to flu symptoms.

He took his dogs on a walk to Makapuu from his Hawaii Kai home and did not think much about it. But when his temperature climbed to 103.8 degrees that night, his wife told him he had to go to the doctor.

He went to the emergency room at Tripler Army Medical Center and was there three days, undergoing a battery of tests and examinations by infectious-disease and other specialists.

His blood pressure was low because he was dehydrated, and his heart rate was abnormally high, he said. At one point his temperature soared to 105.8 degrees.

The doctors ruled out malaria and treated him for leptospirosis, although they did not tell him that is what he had, Bugarin said.

"I figured I was going to get some kind of disease," he said, describing a lot of cuts on his legs, a big gash from crashing a mountain bike, mosquito bites, leeches in the water and rubbing against bat dung while climbing in caves.

Bugarin was recruited for Eco-Challenge as part of a four-member Alogent-NoticeNow.com team from Georgia.

Eco-Challenge heavily involved paddling and two types of boats for swift water, he said. The teams also had to scuba dive, ride mountain bikes and hike, navigating from one point to another.

"Lepto was one of the concerns. I thought it was one of the things you get drinking contaminated water," he said. "I was adamant. Any time we picked up water out of the streams, I treated my water very well."

Two other members of his team also became ill with the disease, which can lead to kidney and liver failure.

Bugarin has started training again, although he thinks "yesterday I overdid my training."

"I feel 100 percent better than when I went into the hospital, but I know my body well enough that I'm not at the point where I can train hard again."

For him, hard training involves running up to 50 miles a week, kayaking, canoeing, mountain biking, lifting weights, swimming "and whatever else I can do to trash my body," he laughed.

"I call it a bad habit I've developed through the years."