- Classes at Chester-East Lincoln School will be cancelled
Thursday following the death late Saturday of learning disabilities teacher
Connie Albert from a human form of mad cow disease.
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- A C-EL school board meeting scheduled for this evening
will go on as planned.
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- Albert began showing symptoms of the disease about three
months ago when her vision began to be impaired, according to her brother,
Bob Thomas, who is also Logan County coroner.
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- Thomas said spinal fluid sent to a lab in Columbus, Ohio,
confirmed the diagnosis of Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease after doctors, first
at Abraham Lincoln Memorial Hospital and then Memorial Medical Center in
Springfield were stymied.
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- Thomas said a doctor at Memorial finally began to suspect
mad cow disease and called in an associate from another hospital who had
a patient with the disease.
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- The disease is extremely rare in the U.S., literally
a one in a million chance of contracting the disease. Thomas said the only
time his sister has been out of the country was a trip to Canada about
three years ago.
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- Also, the disease has a very long incubation period,
up to 40 years.
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- Albert was 57 at the time of her death.
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