Illness forces Brookings official to resign

Dave Kitchen

He sent his decision to the remainder of the city council, city staff members and friends in an e-mail Friday, saying he planned to attend the Dec. 2 council meeting to formally resign at that time.

Kitchen said he would also resign from the North Bend Housing Authority Board and the Curry County Homebuilders Board. He has not made a decision, he said, about his post on the Coos-Curry Electric Co-operative Board.

Kitchen came down with a fever earlier this fall, and was hospitalized after not responding to treatment. “I came within hours of dying,” he said.

He credits Dr. Carl Utterback at Curry General Hospital with finally identifying the problem: Legionnaire’s Disease, an acute, sometimes fatal respiratory disease caused by a bacteria and  characterized by severe pneumonia, headache, and a dry cough.

Kitchen believes he was exposed while attending a seminar for the electric co-operative in San Diego.

“The symptoms then made sense and they changed the treatment and I began to get better right away,” Kitchen said. “They let me out of the hospital the next day.”

While Kitchen says he is recovering, he remains very weak, and is able to work for only a few hours each day.

“I have stopped smoking, slowed down on eating, started exercising, cut down on coffee and most of all tried to quit worrying about stuff.”

Kitchen, a contractor, was first appointed to the city council in 2007, but did not seek re-election last year because he was running for a seat on the Curry County Board of Commissioners. He lost the county election, but was re-elected to the city council by write-in votes.