ALERT: Mom Paralyzed After Eating Gas Station Nacho Cheese. Now There's A Warning To Others
By Michele
Lavinia Kelly went from being a busy, happy mother of three to a partially paralyzed hospital patient after putting nacho cheese on her Doritos at a gas station, family members say.
Lavinia remains partially paralyzed and on a ventilator as her family and friends wonder whether this will be her last birthday. She had no way of knowing when she stopped for a snack of chips and cheese sauce on the way home from work on April 21 that she would be admitted to an intensive care unit less than 48 hours later.
“She has remained in intensive care ever since, unable to move much, speak, breathe on her own, or open her eyes. Family members must pull her eyelids up to enable her to see at all,” according to a civil lawsuit filed in the Superior Court of California in Sacramento County.
“Lavinia Kelly experiences significant pain all over her body constantly. She is receiving methadone and Neurontin for pain control. (Her) medical condition is poor, and her prognosis uncertain.”
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The Sacramento resident, who turned 33 on Wednesday, is one of at least five confirmed cases of botulism involving people who had eaten at Valley Oak Food and Fuel in Walnut Grove, with another four probable or suspected cases, the Sacramento Bee reports.
All nine are still being treated at area hospitals. According to a lawsuit filed this week, Kelly, who became ill within hours of eating the cheese, remains in the hospital in intensive care, unable to speak or even open her eyes on her own, Food Safety News reports.
Relatives say Kelly's symptoms started with fatigue and progressed to double vision, vomiting, and difficulty breathing. "We just don’t understand why this happened over a bag of chips and nacho cheese," partner Ricky Torres tells the Bee.
"Really? How does that happen?” Bruce Clark, an attorney specializing in food safety cases, is handling the family's negligence lawsuit. He says "only human mistakes create the environment for botulinum toxin to form," and those mistakes are thankfully rare.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's most recent botulism report, only 15 of the 161 US botulism cases in 2014 were food-borne. (This woman ended up paralyzed after a trip to a city park.)
Persons who consumed prepared food, particularly nacho cheese sauce, from Valley Oak Food and Fuel gas station and have symptoms should contact their medical provider immediately, according to the update from the county.
“Botulism is a rare but serious paralytic illness caused by a nerve toxin that is produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. Symptoms can include double vision, blurred vision, drooping eyelids, slurred speech, difficulty swallowing, dry mouth and muscle weakness.”
Share this and spread the word so everyone is aware of this serious problem.
source: Fox News
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