A Colorado high school teen is lucky to be alive after she was rushed to a hospital and diagnosed with life-threatening E. coli poisoning from consuming Quarter Pounder burgers from McDonald's.
Kamberlyn Bowler, 15, was airlifted to a hospital and diagnosed with Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome, a disease caused by E. coli. She was given multiple blood transfusions after going into acute kidney failure but is now in dialysis, recovering at a children's hospital in Denver.
"When I first got here, it was rough, I was not feeling great, but I feel a lot better," Bowler told KKCO-TV. "I just want to go back to school," she added.
She and her family were shocked by her diagnosis since she is a healthy athlete.
"This was out of the blue," her mother, Brittany Randall told KKCO-TV. "She's been healthy, she plays softball, she never had any health problems ever. This is so out of the blue for us, and definitely a struggle I think for everyone that's involved."
Ron Simon is a food poisoning lawyer representing 33 victims of the recent outbreak, nine of whom were hospitalized, including Bowler.
"The goal of all of our lawsuits which we found, is to accomplish three things," Simon said. "The first is, of course, to get just compensation for the clients, the medical bills and the lost wages, and the pain they suffered. The second is to allow their voices to be heard, and hopefully for McDonald's to listen. And finally and most importantly, through our discovery and through the lawsuits, we'll be able to figure out exactly how this happened so we can prevent it from happening again to anybody else."
There are now 75 cases across 13 states related to the E.coli outbreak, according to the CDC, but Simon told KKCO-TV he expects to "see so many illnesses in this outbreak. There are so many more that haven't been reported but will be reported in the coming weeks."
One person from Mesa County, Colorado, has died since the first case was reported on Sept. 27.
