Macon, GA

Our ordeal began the minute I bought a fast food hamburger, though we weren't to know that for weeks. In '91 we hadn't even heard of E.coli 0157:H7 and trusted the fast food companies to do their job and cook our food safely. That day the fast food company didn't do their job well enough and it would change our lives and those lives around us as well.

Addison and his brother ate their "hamburger meals" while my husband and I ate our vegetarian meals. We had gone totally meat free 9 months earlier and only bought the hamburgers because our two small boys, ages 2 and 4, wanted the toy that came inside the meal pack, so I gave in. This would be a decision that would end up torturing me to this day.

Four days later Addison began running a low grade fever. We went to my nieces birthday party at a nice restaurant anyway, as he seemed to feel all right. Midway through the dinner, Addison became noticeably worse so we left and went home. His fever had gone up to 102 and he felt just awful. I treated the fever with Tylenol and gave him Pedialite and he went to sleep. He woke up vomiting early the next morning, which was a Saturday. He quickly moved into diarrhea and at one point was vomiting and having diarrhea at the same time. He was just 2 1/2 years old, but was potty trained, so he was sitting on the potty while I held a bucket for him to vomit in.

This had all happened so quickly! Within 30 minutes he had gotten so much worse. As he was sitting on the toilet I looked between his legs to see if he was still having diarrhea and blood just GUSHED out of him. I went into shock and autopilot in getting him to the closest ER. He was having bloody diarrhea every 2-3 minutes and screaming and crying in pain.

By the time I got him to the ER his rectum was coming out. I had never seen anything like it before. They called it a prolapsed rectum. They admitted him to the hospital as soon as they realized the severity of his condition. The first thing to do was an IV. They wrapped him up in a "mummy board" with him screaming at me to "make it stop" and they were "all finished". His veins kept blowing as they were trying to get it started. He was so dehydrated... they blew 6 veins getting an IV started. It was so awful, but just the beginning of our horrible ordeal.

They first tested for Shugella and Salmonella. Nothing would grow because of all of the blood in his stool and each try at the test took 24 hours. They said the white blood cells were destroying anything trying to grow in the dish. Our pediatrician was out of town and we had a different one those first 3 days. Addison kept getting worse and they didn't even know what was wrong with him! They did a barium enema and to this day I will regret handing my baby over to them for that.

He was having bloody diarrhea every 5-6 minutes, 24 hours a day. He was back in diapers and would scream and cry and I would hold him. He would ball himself up in my arms with his head on my shoulder and his knees almost touching my chin every time he had diarrhea. His rectum would unfold out of him, had gotten as big as my fist, and had little white ulcers on it. His little rectum was ripped in 3 places from it. He was in so much pain. Then the decided to do a barium enema to see if he had some form of a blockage.

I asked them to sedate him and they refused. My husband and I paced outside the radiology department for 25 minutes listening to Addison scream to the top of his lungs while these doctors tortured him, trying to get that enema inserted into his rectum. I wish to this day I had charged in there and DEMANDED they sedate him or stop. Finally, they came out, covered in barium, and said I needed to hold him while they sedated him. They had to torture him for 25 minutes to get that through their heads. I was so angry... and still am to this day.

The barium enema showed no kind of blockage, so they let him lay there and get worse and all they did at one point was shake their heads. They tested him for everything they could think of, but nothing showed up as positive. Finally, our pediatrician came back from his vacation and asked us, as soon as he walked into our hospital room, did we want to go to Atlanta or Augusta. I said Atlanta and he said he would be right back. I sat there half in relief he was there and half puzzled as to what was going on now.

He came back saying he had to go get Addison on a waiting list for a bed at Egleston Children's Hospital, in Atlanta. He said he didn't want to waste anymore time and he needed to get to another hospital. We waited 3 more days for a bed. I noticed Addison's diapers looking like someone poured tea in them and they smelled so terrible. He had blood in his urine now.

When the word came they had a bed for him... we didn't even wait for an ambulance to become available. His doctor said the paperwork would take 3 hours, at best, and we could be there by then. We took Addison and his paperwork and drove to Atlanta. It was a Friday, raining, and 5 o'clock rush hour traffic. He had a hep lock in his IV and his doctor told us to be so careful, because if we were in an accident, Addison would bleed to death before anyone could do anything about it. His hematocrite and hemoglobin were both bottomed out.

Upon getting to Egleston, Addison got much worse. He was diagnosed as having kidney failure and liver failure. He almost left us that first night. They didn't know what was wrong with him and considered him "contaminated". I had to shower in a separate shower from the usual and everything was very strict on anything coming in and going out of his room. His doctor, a pediatric gastroenterologist, was wonderful and knew what was going on with Addison within 2 days. It was E. coli 0157:H7 and Addison had Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome. He said all we could do was support his little body and hope he could fight it.

We started with blood transfusions. It was a nightmare. Addison was so swollen and sick he couldn't hold up his head to try to eat or drink. He would scream whenever he saw the blood going through the tubes attached to his IV line. They had to take out his IV and start another one and that was another ordeal. My husband got a taste of what Addison and I went through when he was admitted in Macon. He kept blowing veins again and they were talking of starting a central line. They even tried on his feet. Finally they got one started and we went back to blood transfusions. He had 3 units total with the last unit divided into 2 separate transfusions.

My older son... who was 4, was staying with family. John, my husband, went and got him and they stayed at the "Ronald McDonald House" near the hospital. The doctors, and Addison had a room full of them, told me to go ahead and make plans for at least the next 6 months if I was going to stay with him. He was on a list for kidneys and a liver. They said he had a 10% chance of coming out of this. I wouldn't wish this on anyone... not anyone.

But then Addison started proving them wrong! He started to sit up in bed on his own and eat and drink on his own. He was sitting in bed eating a slice of pizza one morning when his doctor came to see him. They said he could have anything he wanted to eat and he wanted pizza! He couldn't even hold down a B.R.A.T. diet in the Macon hospital, but here they said he could have anything he wanted, ANYTHING! They just wanted him to eat. They were all just amazed! One by one the doctors all came in... the kidney doctor, the liver doctor... and they were amazed! One said, in his profession they don't like to use the "M" word, but this was a MIRACLE!

Addison underwent a scope to see if his bowls were all right and they looked fine! His doctor was amazed at how wonderfully nice and pink they were. We went home on July 4th.... truly an independence day for my family. He had some problems with his rectum prolapsing, but we treated him for that at home. For almost 2 years he took mineral oil and Senekot everyday to ease the healing, help his rectum reattach, and to keep him from being constipated. BUT... we got to go HOME!!

Addison's kidneys and liver are functioning and seem to be fine now. I received a packet when he was 5 saying he was eligible for Kidney Camp and I was so blessed to be able to call them and tell them Addison was all right, and was not having any problems. We recently had some blood work done, as he sometimes gets jaundiced... but everything came out A-OK. You would never know by looking at him today that he was so close to death... he stared it right in the face and walked away a miracle child.

Copyright 1999 by Author: Carson Gernannt (Addison's Mother)

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