Woman Dies From Fire Ant Sting

The unexpected death of a Georgia woman is being blamed on a tiny ant.

Jenny Pomeroy, 65, died Monday after having a severe allergic reaction to the fire ant's painful sting, ABC affiliate WSBTV reported. She was CEO of Prevent Blindness Georgia, an Atlanta-based non-profit that provides vision screening and funds blindness research.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with Jenny's family," Drs. Scott Pastor and Amy Hutchinson, co-chairs for the organization, said in a statement. "This is a tremendous loss to the vision community and Jenny will forever be remembered as an innovative thinker and a selfless, dedicated leader in Atlanta and across the state of Georgia. We will miss her deeply."

The sting occurred last week at the pool of Pomeroy's Buckhead condo, according to WSBTV. She went into anaphylactic shock – a life-threatening, whole-body allergic reaction – and died in a hospital days later from complications.

"If you develop an allergic sensitivity to fire ant venom you can have an allergic reaction, which in the most severe case, can become anaphylaxis," said Dr. Stanley Fineman, an allergist with the Atlanta Allergy and Asthma clinic and immediate past president of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.

Noting that Atlanta has a "significant fire ant problem," Fineman said people with allergies should carry an epinephrine autoinjector, a device that can quickly drive life-saving drugs into the blood stream.

"But the best treatment is allergy shots," Fineman added, "because they're very effective at helping patients build a tolerance so that when they're stung again, they don't have a reaction."

Pomeroy knew she was allergic to fire ant stings and had been hospitalized before, WSBTV reported. She was also carrying an autoinjector at the time of the sting and her husband immediately called 911.

The deadly sting was also surprising because Pomeroy was "very aware of her surroundings," according to Laurie Irby, a coworker at Prevent Blindness Georgia.

"This is just so hard to believe and so unexpected," Irby told WSBTV. "It's a real shock. We're still just kind of reeling and figuring out what to do now."

Pomeroy had been CEO of Prevent Blindness Georgia for 17 years, according to the organization.

Insect stings send more than 500,000 Americans to emergency rooms every year, according to the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, and more than 40 people die annually from insect sting anaphylaxis.

While the majority of stings come from wasps, hornets and bees, fire ants "may be the number one agent of insect stings," according to the Academy.

In people with fire ant allergies, a sting can spark hives and swelling distant from the sting site, cramping and vomiting, difficulty breathing and swallowing, and in severe cases, the deadly drop in blood pressure that comes with anaphylaxis.

Allergy shots containing small, increasing doses of the fire ant venom can help patients build up tolerance, according to Fineman. The shots are given weekly at first, then monthly during a "maintenance" period. The goal is to discontinue the shots after five years, Fineman said.

"It's a type of therapy that is disease-modify, meaning it changes your sensitivity so that you're no longer allergic," he said.

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Woman Builds 'LegoLeg' Prosthetic

Christina Stephens?really puts the leg in Lego.

Last year, her foot was amputated after it was crushed under a car she was rebuilding. Stephens took it in stride by fashioning a prosthesis ?out of some old Lego blocks she had lying around her basement.

Stephens, an occupational therapist and clinical researcher, said she decided to build the toy leg after a co-worker jokingly proposed the idea. While others would have laughed off the suggestion, Stephens said, “Challenge accepted.”

“I liked the idea, because I am very comfortable with my body and like encouraging others to be more comfortable with theirs,” she said.

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Stephens made a video to show how, working over two days, she created the Lego limb out of the colorful toy bricks and fit it to her leg in about two hours. The video has received nearly 300,000 views on YouTube.

The leg is comfortable though not completely practical. Its range of motion is limited, Stephens said, and the ankle and foot tend to pop off. She can walk for only short distances on it.

Christina Stephens built a prosthetic leg from Lego blocks. Credit: Christina Stephens.

Not to worry. Stephens is planning “Lego Leg 2.0,” which will include a functional ankle and foot. She’s also got several more artistic legs in the works, including one that incorporates fiber optic lights flashing behind a clear, shin-shaped casing.

“I like having this extra space below my stump that other people don’t have that I can explore,” Stephens said. “It makes me feel superhuman.”

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Woman Acts Drunk in Medical Mystery

For more than a year, Rosemary McGinn's coworkers used to think she was drunk. Or crazy.

In reality, she had a rare tumor on her pancreas that was causing her blood sugar to plummet, starving her brain of fuel.

"What happened was I noticed a few times I would get weird," McGinn, a 54-year-old realtor from Rockland County, N.Y., told ABCNews.com. "I felt just not myself. I couldn't explain it to anybody else."

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So around Easter 2011, her coworkers sent her home from work early, thinking she was drunk. That night, a client called to set up an appointment, but as soon as McGinn hung up, she forgot the time and place they'd just decided.

Not long after that, McGinn was driving with her husband when she forgot where she lived. She forgot who the president was and what year it was.

The next thing she knew, she was in her kitchen with two paramedics standing over her. They were feeding her candy and checking her blood sugar.

Normal blood sugar is between 70 milligrams per deciliter and 140 milligrams per deciliter, so most people feel symptoms of low blood sugar -- confusion, hunger and shakiness, for example -- when they hit about 60 milligrams per deciliter, said Dr. Ronald Tamler, who directs the Mount Sinai Diabetes Center in New York City and who would solve the medical mystery.

McGinn's blood sugar had dropped to 25 milligrams per deciliter, making her extremely hypoglycemic. Tamler said most people would pass out but McGinn didn't because her body had become so used to the frequent dips in blood sugar.

And doctors didn't know why it was happening considering that McGinn's insulin levels appeared to be normal. Insulin is the hormone that reduces blood sugar and allows the body to use that sugar for energy.

So for more than a year, McGinn never left house without candy and juice out of fear that she would have another episode. She gained 25 pounds.

But without warning, her blood sugar plummeted anyway. When her husband called her at work, she sometimes wouldn't pick up the phone, so he would call the front desk. Her coworkers would report back that McGinn was sitting at her desk, but in her own world, talking to no one in particular.

Another time she was standing with her husband and the next thing she knew, he was force-feeding her orange juice. He told her she began to talk about how she thought her hip might fall out, and he realized she was having an episode. McGinn said her hip didn't even hurt.

"I'd be having 3,000 different conversations with myself. It was scary," McGinn said. "I thought there's no way in hell I could live like this."

Finally, McGinn went to Mount Sinai and met Tamler. He figured it out: McGinn's insulin levels were normal, but only for a person who had recently eaten. When McGinn's blood sugar dropped, she was still producing those "normal" insulin levels, further decreasing her blood sugar.

"Some sugar needs to stay in the blood stream," Tamler said. "It acts as fuel for red blood cells. if the brain doesn't get enough sugar you're in real trouble."

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