A Colorado teen was hospitalized for kidney failure after allegedly chowing down on a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder with cheese in the weeks leading up to the fast food chain’s deadly E.coli outbreak.
Kamberlyn Bowler, 15, a freshman and softball player at Grand Junction High School, had a clean bill of health until mid-October, when she started exhibiting flu-like symptoms, including a high fever and stomach pain, according to NBC News.
“We both kind of thought I just had a fever, like just the flu or something — a stomach bug,” Bowler told the outlet.
“But then I started throwing up, having diarrhea, and it was bloody, so it scared me.”
Her local doctor believed it could be her appendix and recommended she be taken to the emergency room, her mother, Brittany Randall, said.
However, scans at the hospital didn’t show anything significant, so the teen was brought home — but her symptoms only worsened.
“I think it was day six that she said: ‘Something’s not right. I don’t feel good. I need to go back to the hospital,’” her mother shared.
During her second visit, a test revealed that the teen was in kidney failure due to a severe E. coli infection.
Bowler was diagnosed with enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli-associated hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a rare complication of an E. coli infection caused by the bacteria attacking the kidneys.
She was then airlifted 250 miles to Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora on Oct. 18, where she received dialysis for 10 days in an urgent effort to save her kidneys.
It was then revealed the teen had been to McDonald’s multiple times in the weeks before she started feeling ill, ordering her favorite meal: a Quarter Pounder with cheese and extra pickles.
Bowler is now one of at least 75 people, 22 of whom were hospitalized, believed to have been sickened by the slivered onions atop the famous burger.
Of those affected by the outbreak, 11 of them were from Mesa County — where Bowler lives — and one has died, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
“It’s been definitely a roller coaster from the time that we’ve gotten here until now. Every day has been new tests or new things that pop up, or it’s basically watching her body just not work,” Randall told the outlet.
Randall said that her daughter’s kidneys are beginning to show “some signs” of functioning after being hospitalized.
It remains unclear, however, how much damage has already been caused and how it will affect the teen in the future.
“She went from being super healthy and no issues at all to possibly kidney damage for her whole life,” Randall told the outlet.
A McDonald’s spokesperson told NBC News stories like Bowler’s are “devastating to us” and that the “well-being of our customers is deeply important to us.”
The mother and daughter now plan to sue McDonald’s.
Multiple lawsuits have already been filed against McDonald’s over the E. coli Quarter Pounder outbreak.
Food Poisoning Lawyer Ron Simon, who is representing the teen and 32 others from 10 states, told NBC News that he has received hundreds of calls since the outbreak began.
“It’s going to be a lot more cases in this outbreak than 75,” Simon said.
Last Wednesday, the day after federal health agencies reported the E. coli outbreak, customer visits to McDonald’s plunged 6.4% across the country and 24% in Colorado. By Friday, visits had cratered 10% in the US and 33% in Colorado.
McDonald’s had yanked Quarter Pounders from its menus but has said it would resume sales of the burgers without slivered onions in all of its locations this week after the Colorado Department of Agriculture said a sample of the company’s beef patties tested negative for E. coli.
