My Grandmother Saved Our Lives With A Magazine Article

Posted on Oct 25, 2026 UTC

My little brother Sal was given two days to live. I was given one.

I was 8 and he was 6, and we had been admitted to a Florida hospital in the summer of 1985. We had high fevers, red spots, sensitivity to light, were losing control of our bowels, and were so lethargic we slept through the days and could barely walk to the bathroom.

The doctors had run out of answers. All of the tests they’d run were inconclusive, and it looked like they weren’t going to be able to save us.

My grandma Beverly was not a medical professional. She was a secretary who had raised four kids and was an avid reader. She was one of a kind. She left such a lasting impression on my life, and she was the only person in the world I let call me Jenny.

She had been sitting at home reading one of her magazines when something stopped her: an article with a description of symptoms exactly like ours. She didn’t hesitate or talk herself out of saying something. She didn’t worry about looking foolish. She grabbed the magazine and her keys, and drove to the hospital to speak with our doctors.

The article was about Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

Within hours of her walking through that door, they were treating us for the potentially deadly bacterial disease, which is transmitted by the bite of infected ticks. The doctors decided to give it a go because there was nothing to lose at that point. My grandmother had shown up just in time.

"This is a photo of my grandma in 2006, and it's exactly as I remember her now," the author writes.

I was anemic for months, fell asleep at my desk at school and got held back a grade that year. But I recovered.

I have spent the four decades since then trying to understand how my grandmother knew to trust her gut.

Here is what I’ve figured out: She paid attention, and she believed what she felt. It wasn’t because she had special training or a healthcare background. She always paid attention to the people she loved, to the world around her and to the information passing through her hands on any given afternoon. When something matched — when she felt it in her bones — she spoke up. Even in a room full of people with more credentials than she had. Even when she wasn’t sure. Even when she might be wrong.

She was the crazy lady in the room that day. She saved our lives.

My grandma was the kind of woman who showed up. She loved thrifting and fishing and baking, and she taught me that the best things in life are the ones you find for almost nothing. I still go to garage sales and think of her every time I discover something good. What I did not know back then is that she also left something behind for me in that hospital room. Not a lesson. Just a way of moving through the world. Present. Attentive. Unwilling to let things go unexamined.

Paying attention is not a superpower you’re born with. It comes with practice. Some days, you might end up doing it better than others. But I have never once spoken up for someone I love and wished I had stayed quiet. Not once. Being wrong only stings for a second. Being right when it matters is something else entirely. It can save a life. I learned that from my grandma.

The author (left) with her dad and her little brother Sal. "This was the day we were released from the hospital following our recovery from Rocky Mountain spotted fever," she writes.

Six years ago, my husband got five ticks on his back on a beautiful summer afternoon in Washington state. We were not hiking through the wilderness or camping in tall grass. We were walking a paved path at a wildlife refuge, just chatting and enjoying the day. That evening at our hotel, he took off his shirt, and I counted them one by one. Five plump ticks were embedded in his skin, and they’d probably been attached to him for hours without us knowing. That is how little it takes. You do not have to be doing anything dramatic. You just have to be outside. We removed the ticks and monitored him because we knew what to look for, and thankfully, he’s fine.

Forty years after I spent weeks in that Florida hospital, tick-borne illness is still a problem. And that problem is growing. An estimated 31 million Americans are bitten by ticks every year. Emergency room visits for tick bites are up 25% in 2026 compared to the same period last year. Rocky Mountain spotted fever is still being missed at alarming rates. This is partly because the rash that gives it its name is absent in more than 50% of early cases, and partly because ticks are now showing up in places they haven’t historically been seen before, which is catching both patients and doctors off guard.

When my brother and I got Rocky Mountain spotted fever, cases were relatively rare in Florida. Having two people come down with a tick-borne illness at the same time was even rarer. The name “Rocky Mountain spotted fever” threw people off, because nobody was looking for it there.

That’s still happening today, in states and communities that haven’t seen many cases before and aren’t prepared to recognize them. Sadly, even in states where ticks are abundant, it’s still flying under the radar.

Because detection has not caught up to the spread, the thing that saved us in 1985 — a person paying close attention and refusing to ignore their informed suspicion — is still the thing most likely to save someone today.

The author (right) at her wedding in 2002 with her grandma.

I write about all of this because I think this information is valuable. It isn’t because my story is the most important one. It’s because the thing at the center of my experience is one ordinary person who paid attention, spoke up and refused to stay quiet out of fear of being dismissed. This is something every reader already can do. You don’t need a medical degree. You don’t need to be certain. You just need to pay attention and be willing to be the crazy lady in the room.

My grandmother paged through magazines for decades. She probably never imagined anything she read would be life-saving. Then, one summer, her grandchildren were dying, something she read matched something she was seeing, and she acted on it.

Pay attention. Don’t brush it off. Speak up. It could mean the difference between life and death.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.

Jennifer Saterdal is an author, tick-borne illness survivor, and advocate. She published her debut book, “Bitten: A Tick Survivor’s Warning About the Growing Tick Crisis,” in 2026. She writes and speaks to raise awareness about the growing threat of tick-borne illness and the gaps in medical diagnosis. She lives in Washington state with her husband and children. Learn more at jennifersaterdal.com.

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