When most of us get a cold, we assume we will be better in a few days.
That’s what Jared Maynard, a 33-year-old powerlifter, physical therapist and father of three from Ontario, Canada, believed when he developed a runny nose last January.
But he was wrong.
Mr. Maynard, his wife and three daughters all came down with mild colds. His daughters and wife got better within a week.
However, things seemed to be getting worse for Mr. Maynard. Eventually his skin began to turn yellow and he became delirious.
Subsequent hospital tests revealed that he did not have a cold, but that something much more sinister was going on.
Mr. Maynard developed a rare condition called hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis in response to what appeared to be a mild cold. He lost 43 pounds while in the hospital and was on life support for five weeks.
Mr Maynard, pictured here before his illness, with his wife Ashley, 32, and their three daughters, Elizabeth, 6, Mary-Claire, 6, and Cecilia, 3.
His ‘cold’ was in fact a virus that had caused a rare immune system disease, causing his liver and kidneys to malfunction.
Doctors discovered he had developed life-threatening hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH), which hijacks the body’s immune system, causing it to attack the body as if it were a foreign invader.
This makes someone who is already fighting a virus much sicker and weaker than they would normally be.
Doctors placed Mr. Maynard on life support in an attempt to keep him comfortable in what they believed to be his final days.
This condition is rare and doctors are not sure how many people this condition affects. One study out internists at Rochester General HospitaI found that between 2006 and 2019, 16,136 cases of the disease were diagnosed in the US.
It is fatal in about 40 percent of people who develop it, doctors at the Lyon Immunopathology Federation in France estimated.
There are two types of the disease. One is activated by your genetics, and the other is activated in response to a virus or bacteria.
In Mr. Maynard’s case, doctors determined that he developed HLH in response to the Epstein-Barr virus, also known as mono, or the kissing disease.
With enough rest, people can usually recover from mono within a few weeks. according to the Mayo Clinic.
But the combination of mono and HLH caused Maynard to go into organ failure.
He was sedated, put on a ventilator and dialysis in late January.
Doctors normally treat HLH with a cocktail of chemotherapy drugs, but because the treatment is hard on the body and Mr. Maynard was weak, they were unable to give him the full treatment.
His doctors were skeptical that he would survive and gave him palliative care, thinking his days were numbered.
But in March he began a miraculous recovery.
“It was enough to earn me the nickname ‘Miracle Man,’” Maynard told Jam News.
That wasn’t the end of his journey.
Mr. Maynard’s doctors were unsure whether he would survive his intensive HLH treatment. But he pulled through and was nicknamed “Miracle Man.” When he was allowed to go home in May 2023, he started strength training again.
In the five weeks since he was on a ventilator, Mr. Maynard lost 43 pounds. His body had eaten his muscles to survive the long weeks of bed rest.
“My doctors told me that if I hadn’t been so fit and strong when I went in, I probably wouldn’t have made it,” he said.
He remained in the hospital until May 2023 and relearned how to walk, sit, stand and even breathe, speak and swallow.
Even as he began to regain motor function, he suffered nerve damage in his feet from chemotherapy and struggled to revive his sense of smell.
But since he was released, his focus has been on rebuilding his strength, despite the pain he still suffers from. As a strength coach, he turned his attention to weightlifting.
Since returning to weightlifting in June 2023, Mr. Maynard has worked his way up to lifting 465 pounds.
On May 25, he competed in his first powerlifting competition since becoming ill.
But by far his greatest achievement, he said, was being able to pick up his daughters again.
When he was able to lift all three, he said, “It felt like a piece of my heart had been restored.”
Mr Maynard has always been committed to fitness, but said his harrowing experience highlighted the importance of taking the time to exercise.
“I wish people knew that building muscle, strength and physical resilience is the best life insurance you’ll ever get,” he said, adding, “It’s too easy to put yourself last in your life.” priority list between work and school. , children and other obligations.’
‘We all think we have time to get our affairs in order, until we don’t. I found that out the hard way.”