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ATLANTA (AP) — In early May, John Meyer stayed at a lakeside hotel
in Hamburg, Germany. He attended a business conference. He went
sailing. And he became one of the few U.S. victims in one of the
worst food poisoning outbreaks in recent world history.
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Meyer went to the hospital a week later with what turned out to be
a rare and deadly strain of E. coli bacteria that caused thousands
of illnesses, mostly in Germany. He would spend the next month in a
Massachusetts hospital, much of the time a delirium, while doctors
worked around the clock to save his life.
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Meyer is one of six U.S. cases linked to the German outbreak and
he’s the first to talk about his terrible experience, speaking to
The Associated Press by phone from his home in Franklin,
Mass.
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“It was 30 days of hell,” said his wife, Loreen.
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Meyer was in Hamburg as that city was emerging as the epicenter of
a food poisoning disaster that would be among the deadliest in
memory. More than 4,000 people in Germany and other countries
became ill since the outbreak was detected in May, including
several hundred who developed a serious complication that can lead
to kidney failure. At least 53 died.
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The outbreak ultimately was traced to a batch of fenugreek seeds
from Egypt. The seeds, which taste a bit like burnt sugar, are
sometimes used as a spice in cooking. Fenugreek sprouts are used in
salads.
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Meyer believes he must have eaten fenugreek while attending a
business meeting at the Hamburg hotel. He thinks the tainted seeds,
or sprouts, could have been in the fresh fruits and vegetables at a
breakfast bar. There would be some irony if that was the case: It’s
hard to find good produce during hurried business trips, and Meyer
had welcomed the opportunity to eat healthy.
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“In this case, it backfired,” he said.
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Meyer’s lawyer provided the AP with lab results and government
investigation reports into his illness. Massachusetts state health
officials also confirmed he was infected with the rare German E.
coli strain. Meyer declined to allow his doctor to speak to the AP
and he would not agree to be photographed.
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Some common forms of food poisoning can cause symptoms within a day
of eating tainted food, but Meyer said he felt no ill effects
during a six-day European business trip that included two days in
Hamburg and a brief stop in France afterward. He returned home on
May 13 feeling fine.
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However, this unique and dangerous E. coli bug takes a week to
announce its presence. Meyer first became aware something was wrong
on May 18. He was at his desk at Senior Aerospace that morning when
his abdomen began hurting.
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At 52, he is a cyclist who eats two Greek yogurts each day. He says
he’s never had food poisoning, but on that day he went home in
pain.
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By midafternoon, he was hit with bloody diarrhea and a dawning
sense of alarm. “Whatever it was, it wasn’t a minor thing,” Meyer
said. His wife Loreen, a high school biology teacher, was home by
then and worried. She took him to nearby Milford Regional Medical
Center.
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Doctors there saw him quickly but weren’t able to diagnose him.
They recommended follow-up with a gastroenterologist the next day
and sent him home for the night. But when he got home the diarrhea
accelerated. “Every hour, and then it started getting even closer,”
he recalled.
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Loreen took him back to the hospital that night and he was
admitted.
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Though it all happened less than two months ago, Meyer’s memory is
fuzzy on what happened the next several weeks. He had intense
stomach pain and his kidneys stopped working. Doctors put him on
fluids to rehydrate him. They treated him with different
antibiotics, and cleansed his blood using dialysis and other
measures.
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The infection affected his mind. He recalled staring at a clock in
his hospital room and not being able to tell time. “I was thinking,
`Why do they have this strange clock in here, and why is it set up
differently?'”
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Meyer said he grew paranoid, believing that his doctors had written
him off for dead. Doctors had not given up on him, but were
perplexed. A test for the most dangerous form of E. coli familiar
to Americans came back negative. They sent specimens for additional
analysis to lab with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
lab in Atlanta.
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In early June, CDC confirmed it was the German strain.
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Around that time, he had begun to recover. His kidneys were
improving. His awareness returned. He was moved out of intensive
care more than three weeks later, and on June 17 he was sent
home.
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But he was far from normal. He and his wife said his muscles had
atrophied, his red blood cell count was still down, and the lining
of his colon had become a layer of dead tissue, unable to absorb
nutrients. A man who had been an athletic 6-foot 2 and 185 pounds
was down to 162 pounds and able to walk only short distances using
a cane. He was hungry, though. Voracious, even, eating two
breakfasts, two lunches and two dinners each day.
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“He had such a huge appetite because he was still not able to
absorb as many nutrients,” his wife said.
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Now he’s up to 170 pounds and working part days from home. He’s
been in physical therapy and regaining his strength, though he’s
months away from the kind of vigorous exercise he used to
do.
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Meyer and his wife contacted a local attorney, saying they were
worried about possible problems with getting health insurance to
pay his hospital bills. That turned out not to be an issue. But the
attorney referred the couple to Bill Marler, a Seattle lawyer
considered the nation’s pre-eminent plaintiff’s attorney in food
poisoning cases.
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Marler is looking into the possibility of a lawsuit, with potential
targets including the company that owns the Hamburg hotel where
Meyer stayed.
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He called Meyer’s suffering “horrific,” and echoed Meyer’s wife in
worrying that he may suffer long-term problems.
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For his part, Meyer feels lucky to have survived, crediting his
doctors for saving his life and his good health and fitness before
the illness for helping him get through it.
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“Many unfortunate people didn’t survive,” he said. “It really is a
frightening thing.”
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