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April 9, 2007

Mothers suspect dinner led to E. coli poisoning

By Dan Irwin

One dinner, two hospitalized boys.

Earla Marshall and Amy Champion believe there’s a connection.

Their sons, 17-year-old David Marshall and 8-year-old Devin Bookamer, both ended up in Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh for several days last month. Each was found to have an infection caused by E. coli bacteria.

David lives in Ellwood City, Devin in New Brighton. Both attended a March 11 event at the Ellwood Moose Lodge featuring a gun auction and a wild game dinner. Their mothers believe that’s where the two got sick.

The two women did not know each other prior to their sons’ illnesses. But when each discovered that another young patient at the same hospital as her son was showing similar symptoms, the two found each other and began comparing notes.

“We spent an hour or so trying to figure out where they would have been at the same place,” Champion said. “She (Marshall) made the comment that the only place he (David) had been other than the grocery store would have been the gun show.

“The she said, ‘But Devin wouldn’t have been there.’ And I said, ‘Oh, yes, he was.’ ”

David’s symptoms, which were similar to the stomach flu, appeared a week after the dinner, his mother said. He spent five days in Ellwood City Hospital, then was sent to Children’s for another eight.

Devin, meanwhile, was diagnosed with hemolytic uremic syndrome. According to www.nlm.nih.gov, the condition “frequently occurs after a gastrointestinal infection, one caused by a special E. coli bacteria.” The Web site calls the condition “a serious complicating illness” that can result in kidney failure and even death.

“There’s no antibiotics or anything for it,” Champion said. “When he was admitted at Children’s, he had to have a blood transfusion the next day. They said they could keep giving him transfusions, but if they didn’t work, they were talking about consulting kidney specialists and possibly, dialysis.”

Fortunately, one transfusion did the trick for Devin, and he went home after six days.

In the meantime, Marshall and Champion busied themselves trying to find other people who had attended the dinner, which Marshall said featured such meat as elk, moose, duck, bear and deer.

“We discovered six other people who had gotten ill and were diagnosed with E. coli,” Marshall said, noting that between 200 and 300 people attended the event. She added that leftovers from the dinner were given to the Franklin Township Volunteer Fire Department, and that some of the firefighters there fell ill as well.

However, Jim Norton, treasurer for the department, refuted that.

“I’m the guy that brought it in,” he said. “I had some smoked meat that I made into sandwiches and fed the guys, but no one got sick from it.”

Still, Norton said, the department still has some of the meat in its freezer, and he doesn’t plan on using any of it until he can find out more about what happened.

“But I think it’s probably all right. We didn’t have any repercussions.”

Attempts to reach Todd Sarver, president of the Ellwood Moose lodge, were unsuccessful.

Richard McGarvey, spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Health, said that his agency has checked out “a handful” of reports concerning people who had become ill after the dinner, “but we can’t confirm anything yet.”

“What makes it difficult,” he said, “is that normally, we would want to be testing food, trying to find out if something was contaminated. But being as the dinner was in early March, that’s difficult to do at this point.

“I will say that it is our understanding that this was a potluck-type dinner, and that most of the stuff was prepared somewhere else and brought to the facility. So if there was something, at least you don’t have the type of mass risk that you’d see if it had happened at a restaurant.”

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