Testimony of Sonya Fendorf

I am Sonya Fendorf from Shawnee, Kansas. My husband and I have a five year old son named Jesse, who was a victim of the E.coli O157:H7 bacteria. On Friday, October 28, 1994, 1 received a call at work. Jesse had lost control of his bowels at school around 11:00 a.m. I thought he probably had the flu and would be better by Monday. He had diarrhea every twenty to thirty minutes throughout Friday evening. His stool began showing signs of blood. I called his doctor on the Saturday morning October 29. He suggested that Jesse's sickness could be the flu, assuring us that blood in a child's stool was not unusual when he was experiencing the other symptoms like nausea and an upset stomach. The doctor told us to keep a close eye on Jesse for the next three hours. Instead of getting better, Jesse started to vomit and continued to have bloody -bowel movements every hour throughout Saturday evening. He was so exhausted from being in the bathroom for 48 hours that he had his head in the trash can while he sat on the toilet, sleeping.

On Sunday morning, October 30, 1994, I called Jesse's doctor again to report that there had been no improvement. He told us to take Jesse to Shawnee Mission Medical Center Emergency Room for dehydration treatment. I asked the doctor if Jesse could have gotten sick like the people who ate meat from the Jack in the Box restaurants. His response to me at the time was that "the odds are one in a million. " At Shawnee Mission they admitted Jesse, stating that he appeared to be lifeless and should be better in the morning after giving him fluids intravenously.

On Monday, October 31, 1994, the doctors at Shawnee Mission hospital ran tests on Jesse and decided that he needed to be at Children's Mercy Hospital in the Infectious Disease Unit. It was a more serious matter than they had originally thought.

From Monday, October 31 through Wednesday November 2 Jesse was on the 3rd floor at Children's Mercy in the Infectious Disease Unit. He had boon exposed to Chicken Pox a week prior. On Tuesday, the doctors decided that Jesse needed to be put on dialysis that would require surgery. The doctors ran tests on Jesse's bowel samples. On Wednesday they confirmed the E.coli O157:H7 bacteria.

By this time Jesse was very pale and had many bruises on his arms and hands because the nurses had to draw blood regularly. They attempted to draw blood from his ankle as he pleaded with the nurse "please don't hurt me". He had not slept for five days and nights. When he finally did drift off to sloop, a nurse would come in and check his blood pressure and draw more blood, waking him up. ' Jesse was hooked up to a finger monitor and was receiving liquids intravenously. He had a catheter in place and a tube through his nose leading into his stomach causing extreme discomfort. Jesse had so many wires and monitors hooked up to him that we were unable to hold him for days. The doctors also performed blood transfusions and added blood platelets regularly. But even through all of this, he did not complain. He was so sick that he virtually had no strength. I wondered if my son would ever be the happy, carefree boy I had loved and nurtured for five years.

On Wednesday, November 2, my husband explained to Jesse that he would be having surgery later on that evening at II :30 p.m.. The doctors were going to place a Hickman in his chest, so Jesse would not have to have needles poking him, and have dialysis tubes installed so it could wash his body of the toxin that was making him so ill. His condition was, by that time, HUS, which stands for Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome. This disease causes, among other things, anemia and kidney damage to the point that urine production decreases or stops.

Our family was struggling to understand what his diagnosis was and were becoming aware that other children had died of this disease he had contracted from eating tainted meat.

Although we are still not positive where Jesse got sick, we do know that it was from bad meat at a fast food restaurant.

On Friday, November 4, 1994, Jesse's 5th birthday, we brought the presents we had planned to give him to the hospital. We wanted to make this day special for him, and all of us, in spite of his condition. Instead of celebrating, we received news that Jesse was getting worse. Fluid had built up around his lungs, which was impairing his breathing. The doctors moved him to the Intensive Care Unit. It was determined that there was leakage in his diaphragm from a small hole which had boon present since birth. While he had boon laying flat in bed, it had allowed some fluids from the dialysis to seep through his diaphragm and surround his lungs. He was so thin that his eyes appeared sunken with dark rings around them.

The ICU doctor requested permission from my husband and me to insert a needle into Jesse’s side to withdraw fluids. We felt helpless and were surrounded by many families of children in the ICU with the same look in their eyes that I had. I had to look away. I could not speak to them because of the great pain I and other family and friends around us felt.

Jesse remained in ICU until Sunday, November 6 when he transferred back to the Infectious Disease Unit. He had only boon in his room for approximately eight hours when he got worse. Jesse had just begun to relax when all of the sudden he looked up with terror and cried "Daddy help me! " Jesse began to have a seizure. It was a grand mal seizure. Jesse's body became rigid and his eyes rolled backwards. The medical personnel rushed into Jesse's room and provided him with Dilantin to control the seizure and then replaced the tube in his throat. My husband was incredibly frightened. He had managed to stay calm and in control throughout Jesse's ordeal, but this incident shook even him.

Jesse was limp and unconscious as physicians worked on him. The family was called to the conference room. The doctor informed us that the seizure was not uncommon. They did not, however, know what had caused the seizure and could not tell us whether there would be any lasting effects. You could tell from their body language that they were afraid for Jesse. They did a Magnetic Resonance Imaging test and we were on our way back to ICU. Jesse was not moving. I asked myself whether he would be brain damaged, blind, or ever able to talk again. We would not know for a while. When he finally did awaken the next day, his ability to reach and touch things was off. Jesse had lost a great deal of coordination . The doctors had Jesse in ICU to monitor his nervous system. They transferred him out of ICU and back to the 3rd floor on Tuesday, November 8, 1994.

That Wednesday they transferred Jesse to the 2nd floor for kidney treatment. He stayed on the second floor from Wednesday to Sunday, November 13, 1994, when they discovered he had Chicken Pox. That following Sunday evening he was transferred back to the 3rd floor.

Jesse stayed on the 3rd floor from Sunday, November 13 to Wednesday, November 16, 1994. He was discharged from the hospital with the Hickman in his chest and dialyses' tubes in his stomach. I do not feel that Jesse was ready to be released from the hospital. His balance was off and he was so thin that the bones in his knees stuck out. He had trouble walking or standing for the first few weeks. Jesse reminded me of the pictures I had seen of children that had been in concentration camps. He continued to vomit, as he had when this wrenching ordeal began. The doctor had also informed us that the E.coli O157:H7 bacteria was still positive in his test results. A visiting nurse came to see Jesse a few times to check and change the dressing on his Hickman. Jesse will be seeing a doctor once a month for the next year to check his kidney condition.

This experience has drained us financially, as well as emotionally. To date, medical bills have reached 520,000. Because I had changed jobs just two weeks before Jesse got sick, we cannot obtain insurance for him. Jesse is now considered uninsurable, and will remain so for approximately I and 1/2 years. My husband and I wait to see if Jesse will be the energetic boy we knew before this devastating and unnecessary illness. We keep praying that the rest of the organs in his body will not suffer like his kidneys. And we desperately hope that the grand mar seizure which attacked his body did not leave any lasting effects. Even now, on a daily basis, Jesse complains about wanting to throw up and that his stomach hurts. Kids forget. Jesse still begs me to eat out. But I am afraid that this nightmare will occur again and that he might not make it this time. I believe everything happens for a reason, but I don't feel that anything was accomplished from this situation. The Health Department has still not contacted the possible sources of contaminated meat at the restaurants or the grocery stores, because they needed to find three people to be sick from the same place. Does someone have to die before something is done about this? Kansas City is unaware that this event even occurred with the exception of friends and family. Other people can become victims. WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO!? I hope that the newly elected Congress will be effective and efficient, and that the new Congressional provisions will not unintentionally eliminate necessary food regulations such as food inspection. We, as American consumers, expect our food to be safe. I was dismayed to read that, just as USDA has finally taken some action to reduce E.coli contamination, the new chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Pat Roberts, is calling on the new Secretary of Agriculture to halt the Department's E.coli sampling program, which he labels a "shotgun approach" with no accurate science which has boon a disservice to the American meat industry". Apparently, Representative Roberts did not read the recent opinion from the U.S. District Court in Texas, which upheld the sampling program, calling it a "rational response to an emerging problem. " Eliminating even this minimal step toward reducing the deadly E.coli bacteria would be a grave disservice to American consumers. I also hope that the new Congress will consider a bill like the Family Food Protection Act so everyone will fool safe in eating at restaurants and shopping at grocery stores. What happened to my Jesse, should not happen to anyone.

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