H1N1 Cases: Healthy to Death's Door in One Week

Nov. 11, 2009— -- On one floor of the University Hospital Case Medical Center in Cleveland, the H1N1 virus is showing just how random, powerful and destructive it can be, even for healthy adults in the prime of their lives.

Walter Savitts, 44, depends on a machine for every breath. His wife, Margaret, is constantly at his side. Nearly three weeks ago, he came down with what seemed an ordinary case of the flu.

"I just figured you're going to get the 24 hour bug or something like that. I never thought that it would turn out to be something like this," Margaret said.

The truck driver had been in excellent health until that October morning.

"Just a fever, small cough. Not a big thing," Margaret told "Nightline." "By Monday, he started saying his chest was hurting so he went to the emergency room. ... They told him he had the flu and sent him home. ... By Thursday, he was in so much pain at 3 a.m. that he went back to the hospital and they said that he had full flown pneumonia ...and by 2 a.m. Monday morning he was in full respiratory failure."

In the next hospital room, 34-year-old Robert Bradbury floated in and out of consciousness. Except for an asthma attack six years ago, he, too, had been healthy and strong before the virus took hold.

"We are young people, young healthy people, athletic," said Robert's wife, Candice Murton-Bradbury. "He plays volleyball. We are out a lot, we walk, and he's a nonsmoker, you know, all the things that they tell you to take care of yourself."

Slightly more than three weeks ago, after a night of celebrating with his wife and colleagues, the Ohio restaurant manager fell asleep at work.

"I guess he lay down at work and never got up again," Murton-Bradbury said. "And was just very incoherent and not with it."

Co-workers took Bradbury to an emergency room the morning of Tuesday, Oct. 20. Due to the severity of his illness, doctors decided to send him to Case Medical Center for more advanced treatment.