MILWAUKEE – An athletic and mentally tough Jeanna Giese who defeated the deadly rabies virus started her new year Saturday by leaving Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin a month early and going home to a waiting holiday celebration.

The 15-year-old Fond du Lac, Wis., girl is said to be the first person in medical history to have survived the disease without having received a vaccination after becoming infected through a bat bite.

Equally as impressive is Jeanna Giese’s recovery. Her body is undergoing a “rebirth,” physicians said Saturday. Nerves ravaged by the disease are reconnecting to muscles and organs including her heart, a phenomena that the medical community will monitor for years to come.

The physician who led her treatment team during almost 80 days of hospitalization said he had never seen an “evolution of healing” like this, nor had his colleagues at other national and international medical institutions.

“She’s one of a kind,” said Rodney E. Willoughby, the pediatric infectious disease physician.

The new growth is forcing the resilient girl to again learn the use of her arms and legs, to speak and to swallow.

Physicians expressed amazement Saturday that she can mostly dress herself, walk from a wheelchair to bed and send e-mail to high school friends.

“She wants to get up and get active,” said her father, John Giese. “I’m surprised she isn’t down here now.”

The disease did not affect her intellect, Willoughby said, and Jeanna can return to school when physically able, although that will not be any time soon.

Jeanna Giese’s father and mother, Ann, met with news media representatives Saturday to talk about their daughter’s recovery shortly before taking her home. Joining the discussion were Willoughby and Michael Chusid, medical director of infectious disease at the hospital. Chusid had overseen her medical care in recent weeks.

Her three brothers, 20, 18 and 12, were in the audience. Jeanna briefly greeted the media while leaving Children’s.

“We are really proud of our daughter,” John Giese said at the news conference. “She could have given up the fight, but she didn’t. Everyday that we see her something new is going on.”

John Giese said his daughter was able to go home at least a month early because of her remarkable progress in physical and speech therapies.

When she awoke from her coma, Ann and John Giese began testing her memory, asking her about school friends and personal things that make the Gieses a family.

“One day I went for a high five, and I put my knuckles like this (in a fist) and she gave me the knuckles to knuckles (greeting),” John Giese said. “That was something that was kind of special. It was something that she remembered. Then, we started talking about her sports.”

She attends St. Mary’s Springs High School, and on Tuesday the entire basketball team paid her a visit, Ann Giese said.

Jeanna Giese’s battle for her life caught the attention of the international media and offers of prayer poured in. Her mother expressed appreciation Saturday for the spiritual support and well wishes.

When asked about the wonderment of Jeanna Giese’s recovery, Willoughby said, “I think it’s been one of perpetual motion. Initially, we went with some stuff we knew how to do and with a theory, which hadn’t been tested, and it turns out that we’re lucky for the miracle occurred, and she came out the other side.”

Physicians admittedly were not optimistic when the Gieses brought their daughter to Children’s Hospital, where she was diagnosed with rabies on Oct. 19.

“Rabies starts with a lot of dysfunction to the brain and then a second phase to the illness … is the complete loss of nerves to the body,” Willoughby said. “Some of the motions she came back with were that she literally was reconnecting nerves to muscles, reconnecting nerves to her heart. She’s just been fixing all sorts of things as we sit back and marvel.

“She’s had a variety of involuntary movements that have come and gone, really almost looking like the rewiring of the brain. It’s really almost like watching a rebirth.”

Willoughby said his patient “has far to go.” She has lost a lot of muscle mass, almost 30 pounds, and it could take a month to regain the weight. But there’s no reason to suspect that she won’t stop healing, he said.

A bat bit Jeanna Giese’s hand on Sept. 12 as she picked up the animal by the wings to remove it from a service at St. Patrick’s Church in Fond du Lac. She simply washed the 5-millimeter-long wound, thinking it was only a scratch, and did not seek immediate treatment.

Rabies can be prevented with a vaccine after initial exposure and before symptoms appear. It’s a usually fatal viral disease that’s transmitted through an infected animal’s saliva. The virus is so highly contagious that some medical experts believe the infection can be transmitted from saliva-to-eyeball contact, Chusid said.

Jeanna Giese had first sought hospital treatment on Oct. 15 at St. Agnes Hospital in Fond du Lac with symptoms of unconsciousness, double vision, slurred speech, and weakness in her left arm, which was also jerking, Willoughby said.

On Oct. 19, a team of specialists put Giese into a coma, just hours after her arrival and diagnosis of rabies.

Children’s physicians performed an “informed gamble” of letting Jeanna Giese’s immune system fight the disease while medicine was administered to protect her brain as she slept, Willoughby said. She never was given a rabies vaccine, which is ineffective after symptoms develop.

Early symptoms in humans include fever, headache and general malaise. Later, neurological symptoms appear, including insomnia, anxiety, confusion, slight or partial paralysis, hallucinations and difficulty swallowing. Death usually occurs within days of the onset of symptoms.

Physician Chusid said the medical team hopes the treatments they used on Jeanna Giese can be applied as a treatment for other neurological disorders that can harm the brain.

“There’s a lot to be learned from this,” Willoughby said.

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