Las Vegas NowFriend of Las Vegas H1N1 Victim Speaks Out
John Talley spent his 34th birthday hospitalized in a coma.An otherwise healthy 34-year-old man could not fight off the H1N1 virus and ended up becoming the first Clark County death from swine flu. His roommate is now speaking out about what happened to his friend.
John Talley spent his 34th birthday hospitalized in a coma.
"I've known him for 20 years. He's a healthy person," said Luc Mayer, Tally's friend and roommate.
When Talley first became sick, he thought he had food poisoning but the virus that is now a global pandemic ended up killing him.
"He came back from the doctor's office, and he said, 'they say I have food poisoning.'"
Luc Mayer lived with Talley and two other roommates. They saw their friend's health go down fast.
"He came home on Monday, looked at him, he looked worse. He went back to the emergency room, and they checked him into the hospital."
Talley was admitted at Mountain View Hospital on June 15 for pneumonia.
"He never came out," Mayer said. He says that Talley did not respond to Tamiflu or other treatments. He says his friend kept getting worse and ended up in ICU for 13 days.
"I believe the hospital did what they could. The nursing staff in ICU was incredible throughout, the doctors too," Mayer said.
What's frustrating for Mayer is that Talley's first four tests came back negative. Only the fifth test was positive for H1N1. He died three days later and Mayer has lots of questions.
"Anger, how can I not be angry? How you can go this long and not know what's going on?"
How Talley got the virus or why it killed him may never be known. None of his roommates have become ill and they are well past the incubation period. No one from the Southern Nevada Health District could comment about specifics on this latest swine flu death because of medical privacy issues.
