One family's battle with the Carolinas E. coli - Charlotte Observer

Growing up in the Gaston County town of Stanley, Tracy Roberts couldn?t wait for the yearly Cleveland County Fair.

The rides thrilled her. The corn dogs were always a favorite. The animals charmed her.

Now raising two daughters of her own in nearby Gastonia, Roberts and her husband, Mike, like many parents, wanted to pass on the fair and its 88-year-old tradition to their girls.

?It?s a place where you were free to be a kid,? she said.

Yet on Oct. 9, five days after attending the 2012 fair, her 5-year-old daughter Hannah had to be rushed to Levine Children?s Hospital in Charlotte, infected by E. coli bacteria that enlarged her spleen, attacked her liver, nearly shut down her kidneys ? and could have killed her.

Friday, she was among 106 fairgoers, 64 of them children, from nine Carolinas counties who were sickened by the animal-borne bacteria. The bulk are from Cleveland, Gaston and Lincoln counties.

The outbreak is one of the largest ever in North Carolina.

Last week, Josh and Jessica Lefevers of Bessemer City in Gaston County buried their son Gage, a month shy of his third birthday, after he died Oct. 12 from complications of the E. coli infection.

Besides Hannah and Gage, 10 others had been or are still hospitalized.

Since the outbreak, state and county health officials have investigated ? interviewing victims, their families and more than 150 other unaffected fairgoers ? to try to find a cause. The common thread: a visit to the regional fair during its 11-day run that ended Oct. 7 and the likely exposure to animals there, North Carolina health officials reported late last week.

Pinpointing the cause will bring little comfort to Mike and Tracy Roberts.

They just want Hannah home, and they want to help make sure another family doesn?t have to endure their nightmare.

?We don?t know what the future holds, or how long she?ll be here in the hospital, but we?re just relieved and grateful that Hannah is improving,? Tracy said. ?If this had to happen, I am sorry that it happened at the Cleveland County Fair. It is such an American tradition and it?s usually a fun place. But, for us at least, it?s not a tradition anymore.

?We?ll never go back.?

?She just looked?

Perplexing to the Robertses is that Hannah never touched any of the fair animals.

On Oct. 4, Tracy and Hannah picked up 13-year-old sister Allison from school and the three headed to the fair, founded in 1924 by the Shelby Kiwanis Club.

They had planned to go two days earlier, a Tuesday, but it rained.

Minutes after they arrived at the petting zoo, an animal let out a shriek and frightened Hannah.

?She said: ?I don?t want to touch them, I don?t want to touch them,?? Tracy said. ?We left the petting area immediately. Hannah didn?t pet anything. She didn?t feed anything. She wouldn?t get near any of the animals.

?She just looked.?

Before they left, they cleaned their hands at a required wash station.

Since Tracy is a self-professed ?clean freak,? she helped Hannah wash her hands several times during the four hours they spent at the fair, including using a hand sanitizer she?d packed in her purse. She said soap provided at the wash stations seemed watery.

On their way to the rides, they walked through the animal barns where pigs, ducks and a donkey were housed.

?We washed our hands again,? she said. ?We didn?t touch anything in there. We just went in there and looked.?

Three days after the fair, on a Sunday, Hannah experienced diarrhea. By Monday evening, her stomach hurt. Tracy called her pediatrician. Monitor Hannah at night, the doctor said, there was a ?big virus? going around.

Tuesday morning, Hannah complained more. She was agitated and shouted at her parents.

Her doctors told Tracy to get her to Levine. By then, they?d begun to see other cases and suspected E. coli.

Cleveland County Sheriff Alan Norman?s 13-year-old son Alex also was infected.

Alex, a member of Future Farmers of America, went to the fair several times to work in the livestock barn. He complained of diarrhea on Oct. 10 and by the next day suffered full-blown E. coli symptoms.

?We had him at the doctor at 8:30 a.m. on Friday,? Alan Norman said. ?The doctor diagnosed E. coli and gave him a strict regimen. We caught it early.?

Alex didn?t need to be hospitalized, but had to be hydrated every two hours. He plans to return to Burns Middle School soon.

The sheriff himself spent 11 afternoons and evenings at the fair and didn?t get sick. At times, 21 of his deputies worked the fair. Late last week, two came down with E. coli-like symptoms.

?I think the fair probably did everything possible to prevent this from happening,? said Norman, 52, who started going to the fair when he was 5. ?From what I know, all the preventative measures were taken. I don?t know of anything that could have been done differently.?

He was concerned about the victims still hospitalized and saddened that one child died.

?It makes you realize again that life is so fragile,? he said.

How did it spread?

On Friday, state health officials said preliminary findings ?point to animal contact? as the likely source for the outbreak.

Along with interviews, public health workers have gathered environmental samples for lab tests and conducted a geographical analysis of the fairgrounds, said the Laura Gerald, state health director with the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services..

?We may not be able to pinpoint a single source, but hope to have more conclusive results within a month,? Gerald said in a statement Friday. ?Our goal throughout this investigation is to identify how to prevent similar outbreaks and deaths in the future.?

The required precautions were in place at the Cleveland County Fair, said Dorothea Wyant, the county?s health director.

But they apparently didn?t fully protect fairgoers.

Based on the interviews, she said, one fairgoer witnessed a child feeding a goat a carrot. ?The animal took a bite and then the child took a bite,? Wyant said.

Parents rolled strollers through exhibits, muddy from the rain, despite signs urging them not to. They could have spread the exposed waste. Children picked up straw that might have been exposed and fed it to animals.

The rain washed ?animal feces everywhere,? she said. ?When feces and rain mix together, it runs into the parking lot. It could have gotten on shoes that jumped into the seat of a ride. People hopping on the ride may have touched it.

? ? When you put all this stuff that we?ve been told together, it?s probably not hard to figure things out.?

The fair?s manager, Calvin Hastings, deferred questions to the fair board?s lawyer, O. Max Gardner III of Shelby.

Gardner said the board is waiting for the investigation?s findings.

?Whatever needs to be done will be done to make sure the public is protected to the fullest extent,? he said.

Tracy Roberts wants officials to consider banning petting zoos and other contact exhibits at the Cleveland County Fair, or require cleaning rides every day, and inspecting animals and soil each day for the E. coli bacteria.

If it rains, she said, officials ought to consider shutting down the fair until they can determine there?s no E. coli contamination.

?Why take a chance with anybody?s life?? Roberts said.

Karen Beck, a veterinarian for the N.C. Agriculture Department, said animal tests for E. coli aren?t reliable so daily inspections would be impractical.

?If you don?t get a positive reading, it doesn?t mean the animal doesn?t have (E. coli),? Beck said. ?Since animals shed E. coli intermittently (through waste), there?s no way to look at an animal and say that it?s got E. coli. The testing is not a reliable method.?

Hannah?s improving

For now, the Robertses rarely leave Hannah?s side.

After more than a week at Levine, she has been showing signs of improving. Wednesday, she?d been moved from an intensive care bed to a private bed and received three days of dialysis. By Thursday, her appetite was returning. A ?snacker who usually has no trouble eating three meals a day,? Hannah declared that her ?tummy felt hungry,? Tracy said. ?That was such a good sign.?

By Thursday, her parents twice helped her out of bed to walk. She tired quickly, but was able to sit up.

Yet doctors have given Mike and Tracy no recovery timeline. Hannah hopes to be released by Halloween so she can be a pink princess.

?It was touch and go for a while,? Tracy said. ?We?re just trying to keep her strength up. To think we were just out for a good time.

?Now I won?t leave the hospital until I can take her home with me.?

Source: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/10/19/3608588/we-were-just-out-for-a-good-time.html

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