In Mexico, relatives say flu victims were pictures of health before illness

First, one of Manuel Martinez’s children fell ill. Then others in his family -- 12 people living under a single small roof in the state of Zacatecas -- became sick. Martinez, 42, was the last to catch the disease, and the only one in his family to die.

Daniel Lucio Fiscal, 35, a robust father of a small child, taught music in the elementary and high schools of San Luis Potosi. He took his family to a resort for Easter weekend, and then the headache and fever started. He died April 25.

Colleagues of college professor Jaime Alberto Ruiz Reyes at Mexico City’s National Autonomous University knew that he was sick when he began missing class. The geophysical engineer and world traveler died nine days ago.

As Mexico struggles with a now-global outbreak of a never-before-seen strain of flu, the government has released scant, often confusing details about who is dying, or when and where.

Slowly, however, bits of information are emerging from families and doctors that paint intriguing, if incomplete, portraits: Several of the dead had been in good health, sought treatment late or perhaps were misdiagnosed, and worked in jobs that put them in frequent contact with the public.

In the cases of Martinez, Lucio, Ruiz and others, the only certainties are that they died after an intense respiratory illness, and that their doctors suspect they might have had the unique viral strain. The government says only 16 people, out of more than 170 flu deaths in the country, are confirmed to have been killed by the strain. Confirmation includes a slow identification process with multiple testing.

Cause of death is often listed as “atypical pneumonia,” and swine flu may eventually be ruled out. Still, the families are left to struggle with their grief and try to understand how their relatives got sick.

In Zacatecas, a poor state in central Mexico that sends a higher percentage of its population to the U.S. than almost any other state, Martinez, a hardworking vendor of dried chiles and garlic, died April 24. His is the only flu-related death reported in the state.

With his wife, seven children and three grandchildren, Martinez lived in a two-room house in Loreto, a small town on the southern edge of Zacatecas, and worked from dawn to dusk in the state’s capital, also called Zacatecas.

During Easter week, members of his family started falling ill, though none too seriously. Martinez came down with a cough that lasted two days, but he didn’t think he needed a doctor, his widow, Ofelia Zapata, said in an interview. He was caring for his sick children, and they seemed to be recovering without medical care. Then Martinez suffered a high fever.

“My son decided we should take him to the hospital, and when we got there they said he was in very bad shape,” Zapata said.

Martinez died a couple of hours after being admitted.

Zapata said state health officials had tested the rest of the family, but no one else was sick.

“My husband was healthy; the only bad thing is he liked alcohol a lot and sometimes went on a bender,” Zapata said. “But he worked hard. He was the family’s sole support, and I don’t know what we are going to do. What I can’t understand is how he died so fast.”

San Luis Potosi, a small, mountainous state in central Mexico, has recorded the second-highest death toll in this outbreak.

Lucio, the music teacher, took his wife and 5-year-old son to a resort for the Easter holiday. Suddenly his head started to hurt, then his bones, and then came the cough. He returned home and checked in to a hospital. A week later, he was dead.

“At first they told us he had pneumonia. Then they said he was isolated. They wouldn’t let any of his family see him,” said Lucio’s aunt, Eulogia Lucio Gonzalez.

Eventually, hospital officials told the family that Lucio had died of swine flu, she said, and they grilled the family about where he had been and whom he had had contact with in his final days. He is not on the official government list, however.

“He was very healthy, a sturdy guy, liked to play soccer a lot,” Eulogia Lucio said. “He was very clean. He always went around well-groomed.”

In Mexico City, where the most people have died, professor Ruiz was a diligent member of the engineering faculty. A beefy man, he was not the picture of health; he’d had some respiratory problems, friends recalled. But he exercised, lifted weights and was a regular in a spinning class.

Ruiz, 59, started missing class April 16; then word arrived that he was in the hospital. A week later he was dead.

“It really surprised all of us,” colleague Juan Carreon said.

The first known fatality in this epidemic was Adela Gutierrez, 39, who succumbed to the unique viral strain April 13 in the southern city of Oaxaca. A door-to-door census-taker for the tax bureau, she was in generally good health until falling ill April 2, her family told The Times this week.

In the case of Lorenzo Gomez, officials in San Luis Potosi haven’t told his family what caused the 47-year-old to die. But his widow, Rocio Vazquez, already feels stigmatized.

Gomez was the physical education teacher at a San Luis Potosi school. He too was able-bodied and healthy, Vazquez said in an interview.

She and her three children, ages 12, 11 and 9, accompanied Gomez on a field trip with his elementary school volleyball team in March. When they returned home, he started to have sniffles. It got worse.

On March 23, he went to a clinic, where a doctor diagnosed a mild respiratory infection and prescribed medicine. His condition deteriorated. Another doctor ordered more medicine: antibiotics.

On April 5, an ambulance took him to the hospital. He was placed in intensive care with pneumonia and died two weeks and four days later.

“This epidemic could have been avoided in San Luis Potosi if the doctors had treated the first patients better,” said a bitter Vazquez, who is also a teacher and has repeatedly sought explanations, to no avail. “We are suffering discrimination. The neighbors don’t want to come close to me or my children.”

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wilkinson@latimes.com

Sanchez is a news assistant in The Times’ Mexico City Bureau. Special correspondents in San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas contributed to this report.