Wayne Flippant
Antagonist

Three members of the UW System Board of Regents remain hospitalized after catching “Pioneer Fever” following a visit to the UW-Platteville campus Oct. 5 and 6. A spokesperson for the board said Regent Vice President Mark Bradley as well as board members Brent Smith and Chris Semenas were “showing progress in their recovery efforts.”

The three board members were initially transported to Southwest Health Center in Platteville after complaining of stomach pains and orange coloration of their skin. Doctors at Southwest Health Center were later baffled at the transformation of the board members’ skin color as it shifted from an orange tint to a “sickly blue.”

“ You see a lot of things when you work in the emergency room, but this was one of the strangest cases I had ever dealt with,” Southwest Health Center Chief Surgeon Walter
Glenndale said. “It’s a great day to be a surgeon though, you rarely get the chance to witness something like this happen when you are on duty.”

Glenndale, the first to coin the phrase “Pioneer Fever,” said he has been working very closely with the three board members and the staff at the University of Wisconsin Medical Center in Madison, where the patients were transported Oct. 10.

Following numerous tests, hours of observation and referencing hundreds of previous cases, Glenndale and the rest of the center’s staff reported they had reached a conclusion.

“ Bed rest and plenty of liquids; it’s what a cure should be,” Assistant Lab Technician at the medical center Ben Watson said.

The staff was also pleased to report that the “Pioneer Fever” is not contagious, and no one on the UW-Platteville campus or anyone in the community should worry about catching “Pioneer Fever.”

“ These three individuals just weren’t ready to handle the environment. With many students reaching campus before school starts, they are already exposed to the elements [at UW-Platteville] and are totally immune to the effects of ‘Pioneer Fever’,” Watson said.

Bradley, Smith and Semenas declined to comment, but Regent President David Walsh said the three are expected to return to active duty just in time for the board’s two-week Thanksgiving vacation to Cancun, Mexico.