Every year, according to CDC estimates, 48 million Americans get sick from contaminated foods or beverages. About 128,000 Americans are hospitalized and 3,000 die annually from foodborne pathogens.
Yet, despite these startling statistics and the recent highly publicized outbreaks of Salmonella and E. coli, we continue to rely on a 1940’s food safety system to regulate a 21st century food supply. I know first hand what it means to suffer from a foodborne illness and mine is just one of millions of such stories.
In September of 2006, I was a 65-year-old woman, healthy, and gainfully employed in the fashion industry. I enjoyed working, volunteering extensively with victims of domestic violence, power walking, shopping, and living in Southern California just steps away from the Pacific Ocean.
I was one of more than 25 individuals who was sickened by norovirus-contaminated salad at a work-related banquet in a California hotel. On the third day after the event, my symptoms of nausea, diarrhea, and painful abdominal cramping were so severe that I went to a hospital emergency room for treatment. It was worse than anything I’d ever felt.
A day later I received a call from my assistant saying there’d been a food poisoning incident at the hotel, and a lot of people were hospitalized. Amazingly, even with five people from the same event there, the doctors continued to ask why I thought I had food poisoning.
This hospital visit was just the beginning of an ongoing battle with food poisoning that I am still fighting. The virus-contaminated food caused severe damage to my entire gastrointestinal system. I have visited doctors and hospitals countless times, and have been through numerous diagnostic tests that have been invasive, painful, humiliating, and embarrassing. Three years passed before I was diagnosed with post-infectious Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).
I am no longer working and my bloating can be so bad at times that clothes do not fit. I can never be too far from a bathroom. I am on a very restrictive FODMAP diet and I am part of the Cedars-Sinai GI Motility Program. Seventeen years later (2023) and my life is still completely altered by this preventable tragedy.
I was healthy with no prior complaints of bowel abnormalities before I became a victim of foodborne illness. I do not want anyone else to have to suffer the way that I have. I just want the life that I had before food poisoning back.
