When he was 11-years-old Max Hall caught Q Fever on his family's beef and cropping farm, Coobong, north of Condobolin in Central West NSW.
His mother, Diana Fear, who is also chief executive officer of the not-for-profit Central West Farming Systems group, is pretty sure he picked up the bacterial infection when handling a new-born calf which had lost its mother.
It was winter time and Max was helping his father, Col Hall, put the poddy calf into the ute to bring it home.
Several weeks later Max became ill with a high temperature and suffering hallucinations but his mother thought he had a virus and would recover quickly.
He didn't and Ms Fear had to take her son to the local doctor in Condobolin.
"I literally carried him in (to the surgery). He had to have his arm swung around me and I took him into a room and laid him down," she said.
The visit to the GP started a long and frustrating journey to properly diagnose what was wrong with Max who is now 18.
Blood tests convinced the doctor Max had leukemia because of an extremely high white blood cell count.
Ms Fear didn't agree and Max's health improved slowly although he was still weak and had an enlarged spleen.
"He just wasn't right," Diana said.
They took Max to three different doctors and none would accept the possibility he had Q Fever.
Finally he was diagnosed with the infection but Diana Fear said her son wouldn't have had to endure a long period of ill-health if he had been diagnosed quickly and given broad spectrum antibiotics.
She said untreated Q Fever had the potential to cause "massive" long-term health issues.
Q Fever was not being well diagnosed and many GPs working in the bush weren't aware of it, she said.
The high turnover of doctors in rural areas was probably contributing to the problem because they weren't staying in the regions long enough to recognise the symptoms.
She said a protocol for doctors should be in place and followed when a person presented with Q Fever-like symptoms including asking whether the patient had been around livestock which spread the disease to humans.
Another problem was that children under 15 weren't meant to be vaccinated while the vaccination process itself wasn't simple and required screening.
Her husband has been vaccinated while their daughter, Emma, now 16, is going to be vaccinated.
"Everybody should be vaccinated if you are working with animals," she said.
Ms Fear said her husband probably had had Q Fever in the past but recovered without any side effects.
Another Condobolin farmer who did not want to be named said all children in rural areas should be vaccinated.
Her daughter contracted Q Fever when she was five back in 2005 and was still taking medication to treat a serious disruption to her immune system caused by the infection.
She said had her daughter, now 19, been diagnosed correctly at the start she would not still be suffering post-Q Fever chronic fatigue syndrome which could be debilitating if she became over-tired.
"My message is that the vaccine needs to be registered for children under 15 and rural children need to be vaccinated."
