Havre man slowly recovering from West Nile disease

The majority of the people who contract West Nile virus will never know it. Longtime Havre businessman Lyle Watson was not so lucky. He nearly died.

"There's a lot of it I don't remember," he said during a telephone interview from his Great Falls hospital room Wednesday. "It's tough to remember things when you're in a coma."

Watson, 75, was given a 10 percent likelihood of survival after falling into a coma caused by encephalitis, a result of West Nile. He lay unconscious for two weeks before the swelling in his brain subsided.

Although his prognosis is much better now, the damage caused by We...