Food safety is very personal topic for me and for my family.
Just before Labor Day 2006, my fit and active 80-year-old mom, Mary Ann, bought a bag of pre-washed, ready-to-serve spinach that she assumed was safe to eat, if not beneficial to her health. Unfortunately, the spinach was contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 — a bacteria strain that is often deadly and always devastating. Within a few days we discovered just how destructive it is.
What started as a horrible sleepless night for her, sitting and then lying on the bathroom floor due to constant diarrhea and vomiting, quickly turned into a situation that was much more serious and frightening for our entire family. She became very, very ill and was hospitalized immediately, spending a total of six weeks in the hospital and a nursing home.
It took almost five days for doctors to determine what was wrong. By then mom was in the early stages of Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS), which is typical in victims of this strain of E. coli. In layman’s terms HUS is acute kidney failure.
In order to treat this, she had to undergo a form of dialysis called plasmapheresis. Basically, they exchange good plasma for bad plasma by accessing a vein in the upper chest. To me it was a horrific and terrifying treatment, and I wasn’t even the one receiving it. She had to endure this procedure five times.
For weeks, she was consumed with nausea and could barely speak. She couldn’t eat, walk, or even stand up. And she couldn’t control her bowels. After a month of tests and treatments and with many unanswered questions about the future, she was released from the hospital and sent to a nursing home. If you knew my mom this was the last place you’d expect to find her, even at 80.
Thankfully, she made it back home, but she is not the same lively person she was before. Her hands still shake, and she lives in constant fear that she will get sick again, or worse. She used to play the piano at every opportunity she got, but now rarely makes it to her church on Sundays, and when she does, it completely drains her of any energy. It’s upsetting to think that my mother will likely never be the same again. Because of mom’s ordeal and its lingering effects on her body, my family and I have been cheated out of many special moments together with her — if not robbed of many beautiful and fulfilling years.
Today she lives in a retirement community and because of some lingering health issues caused by her illness, she can’t enjoy many of the activities she had hoped to as an energetic senior.
Before this ordeal, I personally assumed all food poisoning was pretty much the same — like a short bout with a stomach bug: inconvenient and uncomfortable. I now know that this is far from reality.
Martha, Mary Ann’s daughter | 2009
