11/5/12 - Mary Rogers, the wife of Brighton Township Trustee John Rogers, has meningitis. Rogers, in an interview over the weekend, confirmed that his wife has the disease. Mary Rogers is 82. Rogers' wife recently had received a series of steroid shots for back pain in Brighton and ended up in severe pain, to the point where it hurt for someone to touch her. Rogers tells WHMI she was admitted to St. Joseph Mercy Hospital near Ann Arbor when it was determined she had contracted a full-blown case of meningitis. Rogers says his wife is understandably sore from the surgery, which was performed to remove the infected areas on her back. The meningitis has also been tough on Rogers himself. He is devoted to Mary, and despite his 82 years has been commuting twice a day from his Brighton Township home to the Washtenaw County hospital to sit by his sick wife's bedside. The current outbreak of meningitis has resulted in the deaths of at least 28 people nationwide so far. Seven people have died in Michigan, and at least 112 have been infected, from the disease. The 2012 outbreak, with more than 300 illnesses in at least 16 states, is the result of contaminated serum formulated at the Framingham, Massachusetts-based New England Compounding Center. The investigators have linked the outbreak to fungal contamination in steroids that were produced by the firm and administered to an estimated 14,000 people for back pain. John and Mary Rogers were childhood sweethearts who reconnected after each of their first spouses had passed away. They got married in 2010, both at the age of 80. While Mary Rogers had two daughters from her first marriage, John fathered five sons through his marriage with Joyce Rogers. They include Congressman Mike Rogers, State Rep. Bill Rogers and Major General Jim Rogers, who retired from military service earlier this year. (JK)
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