Liz Greenwood does not want to return to City Hall until it has been fumigated of typhus-carrying rats and fleas
Typhus - an infectious disease spread by fleas - is sweeping LA County, infected a city hall prosecutor and more than 100 others.
Officials recorded 124 cases of the disease in the county last year, and there is no sign of the spread letting up.
The outbreak has largely been seen as exclusively affecting homeless people.
But today, Deputy City Attorney Liz Greenwood revealed she was diagnosed in November - blaming the fleas in her office at LA's City Hall.
And the symptoms Greenwood described sounded excruciating.
'It felt like somebody was driving railroad stakes through my eyes and out the back of my neck,' Greenwood told NBC Los Angeles.
'Who gets typhus? It's a medieval disease that's caused by trash.'
She believes the rats that nestle in the building's trash were carrying fleas that transmitted the disease.
'There are rats in City Hall and City Hall East,' Greenwood told NBC. 'There are enormous rats and their tails are as long as their bodies.'
She has yet to go back to work, and is calling on the city to fumigate the building before she does 'because I thought I was going to die'.
'This is a terrible illness and I wouldn't wish this on anybody,' she said, adding: 'It's not just homeless folks getting it.'
Typhus is a bacterial disease that causes fever, headache, rash, muscle ache, and fever and chills.
In severe cases, patients can require hospitalisation due to hepatitis or internal bleeding.
It is caused by the bacteria Rickettsia typhi and possibly Rickettsia felis, which are carried by fleas, lice, mites or ticks.
The pests live on animals, particularly feral and stray cats, rats and opossums, but do not make their host animals unwell.
Flea-borne typhus is endemic in parts of LA and Orange County.
The disease also often occurs in Texas and Hawaii.
Around 200 cases occur every year throughout the US, particularly in coastal regions.
Bacteria spread when faeces from an infected insect contaminate a person's cut or graze while the insect is sucking their blood.
If the person scratches the bite area, the bacteria from the faeces can enter their bloodstream.
Bacteria can also be rubbed into a person's eyes, or, in rare cases, inhaled.
Symptoms then appear six-to-14 days later.
Typhus can be treated via antibiotics, with most people recovering within a few days.
Between two and four per cent of people who do not receive treatment die worldwide.
Typhus can be prevented by avoiding contact with fleas, mites, ticks and lice via:
