Colorado teen fights kidney failure after eating McDonald's Quarter Pounders

A 15-year-old precocious schoolhouse freshman is hospitalized pinch terrible complications of nutrient poisoning aft eating McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers 3 times successful nan weeks earlier a deadly E. coli outbreak was detected.

Kamberlyn Bowler, of Grand Junction, Colorado, had to beryllium flown 250 miles to a infirmary adjacent Denver successful mid-October, wherever she received dialysis for 10 days successful an urgent effort to prevention her kidneys.

She is 1 astatine slightest 75 group sickened and 22 hospitalized successful nan outbreak tentatively traced to contaminated onions. In Mesa County, wherever Kamberlyn lives, 11 group person fallen sick and 1 personification died. Federal wellness officials person said that slivered onions utilized connected nan burgers are a apt root of nan outbreak.

The ordeal near Kamberlyn’s mother, Brittany Randall, worried astir her daughter’s wellness and shaken astatine nan thought that a burger could perchance origin truthful overmuch harm.

“It’s beautiful scary to cognize that we put truthful overmuch religion and spot that we’re going to beryllium eating thing that’s patient and for it to beryllium broken,” said Randall.

She is moving to writer nan fast-food concatenation aft Kamberlyn was infected pinch the E. coli O157:H7 bacteria confirmed successful nan outbreak.

That germs produces a vulnerable toxin that tin origin a terrible kidney illness complication known arsenic hemolytic uremic syndrome, according to aesculapian experts. Many children are hospitalized for weeks and immoderate spell connected to require kidney transplants, said Dr. Myda Khalid, a kidney master astatine Riley Hospital for Children successful Indiana who is not progressive successful Kamberlyn's care.

“Time is critical,” Khalid said. “We person to get done this model and we person to get done it pinch a batch of care,” she said.

The information tin beryllium fatal, but astir children yet recover, she said.

Kamberlyn said she ate McDonald’s Quarter Pounders pinch cheese, other pickles -- and onions -- 3 times betwixt Sept. 27 and Oct. 8. She said nan burgers were easy to drawback during a shot halftime and while watching a schoolhouse softball game.

She started emotion sick successful nan days aft and knowledgeable fever, vomiting, diarrhea and achy tummy cramps.

“I couldn’t get retired of bed,” she recalled. “I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t drink. I was surviving connected Popsicles. I felt for illustration crap.”

Randall, who useful arsenic a jailhouse guard, has 3 older children and thought that her young girl mightiness conscionable person nan flu. But erstwhile Kamberlyn texted to opportunity she had humor successful her stool and urine and was vomiting blood, Randall said she knew it was serious.

On Oct. 11, Kamberlyn went to a infirmary successful Grand Junction. Doctors said she apt had a tummy bug. She was sent home, pinch instructions to enactment hydrated. By Oct. 17, she was emotion nary amended and returned to nan emergency room. That time, tests showed Kamberlyn had acute kidney failure, her mother said. She was flown to Children’s Hospital Colorado successful Aurora, adjacent Denver, wherever she remained connected Tuesday.

Randall said her daughter's early wellness — and aesculapian costs — are uncertain.

“The infirmary bills are racking up,” she said. “And I'm a azygous mom and I conscionable don't cognize that I tin needfully spend each of what's coming aft each of this. And I don't cognize what nan early looks like, either."

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