WIXOM, Mich. (WXYZ) — Over 100 people in six states got sick from an E. coli outbreak over the summer; 67 of them in Michigan. Sixteen people suffered acute kidney failure.
The outbreak has been linked to Wendy’s restaurants. A family from Wixom is speaking out after their 5-year-old little girl was hospitalized with kidney failure.
“It was my 5-year-old daughter Abby. She just had her birthday in July,” her mother Wendy Lambert said.
Lambert didn’t think anything of it this past summer when she and Abby went to grab some food.
“I was like, ‘Hey, let’s go get some lunch.’ So, you know, we just drove through Wendy’s and she was like, ‘Oh my gosh! Not school lunch. This is awesome!’” Lambert remembered.
Sadly, she said a few days later, little Abby was so sick that Lambert decided to take her to the hospital. She found out it was E. coli.
“At first we thought, ‘OK, she’s going to get over this.’ Because by the weekend, she was starting to perk up a little bit after getting some fluids. And then that Sunday, everything tanked,” Lambert explained.
She remembers those days in the hospital.
“It was painful. I mean, physically and mentally. She would cry out, ‘My tummy! My tummy! My tummy!’” Lambert said.
Lambert works in health care, so she knew to ask for more information about the E. coli.
“I said, ‘Oh, what kind?’ And they said ‘O157.’ And I said, ‘No.’ And the doctor was like, ‘Yeah. It’s really good you brought her in when you did,’” Lambert explained.
Dr. Susan Bork, the director of operations at the emergency department at Beaumont Royal Oak, described E. coli infections.
“So most of the time when we see E. coli, it’s not serious. There are certain strains of coli, though that can be very serious and deadly,” Bork explained.
This is especially true of the strain Abby had gotten, E. Coli O157:H7, which produces a toxin.
“The toxin can actually break down your red blood cells. When that happens, all the particles from the breakdown can enter through the kidney to get filtered and can cause your kidneys to go into failure,” Bork explained.
Bill Marler is an attorney who has worked in food safety since 1993. He’s representing many of the families of those who got sick, including the Lamberts.
“In this outbreak, there was 109 people sick, about half of those were hospitalized. And about 16 developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, including the Lambert child,” Marler said.
Sixty-sevent of the infections were in Michigan. Marler said the likely contaminant in the cases came from romaine lettuce produced in either Arizona or California.
