Collaborative Treatment at UCH Leads to New Infectious Diseases Fund

“When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses – not zebras.” Medical students learned this phrase since it was first taught in the 1940s to discourage them from chasing after rare or exotic disease diagnoses, and instead assume that a patient has an illness more common to their region. For example, if patients present with flu-like symptoms in late October in the United States, it’s most likely correct to assume they have influenza. Luckily for George Sissel, his primary care physician at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital (UCH), Ron Colson, MD, heard hoof beats but had a hunch he was dealing with something more complicated than a common illness. George’s symptoms looked like the flu, and it was the right time of year for it, but something prompted Dr. Colson intuitively to order a blood culture. He instructed George and his wife, Mary, to head to the emergency room if his symptoms didn’t improve over the course of the day. They did return to UCH that evening to check into the ER.

George and Mary Sissel

The next morning, the blood culture of the day before revealed Neisseria meningitidis, a rare bacterial infection that targets the central nervous system and can prove lethal within days. Because George was treated so quickly, he and his wife believe, the deadly infection stopped at his shoulders before it could get to his brain or heart, thus saving his life. After 13 days at UCH and 10 days of rehabilitation following surgery on both shoulders, George was back to full health and thriving.

The work at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus led to George’s successful recovery. He commented, “The fact that Dr. Colson ordered the blood culture that morning meant that the morning after I entered the emergency room they had the results. They could give those results immediately to Professor of Medicine Michelle Barron, MD, in the Division of Infectious Diseases and practicing physician at UCH, who said, ‘This is a problem.’ She notified the Denver Public Health authorities.” This infection could have affected others that might have been in contact with George. The health department helped identify those individuals and offered them prophylaxes to prevent them from also getting sick.

Clockwise from top: Michelle Barron, MD, Ronald Colson, MD, Nicholas Alfonso, MD, Robert Quaife, MD

The Sissels were impressed by the constant collaboration they witnessed throughout George’s treatment. He said, “My cardiologist at UCH, Dr. Robert Quaife, was in regular consultation with Dr. Colson, and my shoulder surgeon, Dr. Nicholas Alfonso, and certainly Dr. Michelle Barron – all of them would collaborate and communicate and say, ‘What do you think we have here? We have a serious problem.’ The coordination and cooperation of all the medical personnel were just fantastic. Our family is convinced that that they all, as a group, saved my life.”

Dr. Barron impressed the Sissel family during George’s treatment. In January 2020, Mary, along with their daughter, Jenifer, and their son, Greg, generously established the Sissel Family Infectious Diseases Fund to support Dr. Barron in her research on infection prevention and control. A few months later, George also made a gift to support the fund.

Mary said, “We watched Dr. Barron in action and wanted to support her. We know that she is sincerely dedicated to finding answers to difficult and complex infectious disease challenges. We observed her expertise and her commitment, and our family decided to invest in her work — even more critical and timely today.”

When the Sissel family informed Dr. Barron that they wanted to support her work philanthropically, she was stunned. “I almost cried,” she said, “I was at a point in my research career where finding support had become increasingly challenging. Before they did this I thought, well maybe I need to wrap this up and I’ll just be done with it. Their gift has reinvigorated me. Somebody believes in me.” Dr. Barron’s plan for the Sissel Family Infectious Diseases Fund includes looking at patients who have had COVID-19 to see if there are correlations between other diseases, and whether they develop bacterial and fungal infections at higher rates than expected. Her results could inform or create new preventive measures to protect vulnerable patients from infection.

In the future, Dr. Barron hopes to tackle broader public health issues that affect overlooked Colorado residents. “There are pockets of our community that are disenfranchised in terms of medical access and literacy. It would be interesting to fund a program that would research and create helpful programs including cultural- and language- specific resources for preventive care.”

Though they met under dire and extremely unlikely circumstances, the Sissel family found inspiration in the collaborative nature of their UCH team. The family’s generosity, paired with Dr. Barron’s relentless compassion and curiosity, may one day offer the same lifesaving experiences for families across Colorado and beyond.

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