Colorado teen fights kidney failure after eating McDonald’s Quarter Pounders

A 15-year-old high school freshman is hospitalized with severe complications of food poisoning after eating McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers three times in the weeks before a deadly E. coli outbreak was detected.

Kamberlyn Bowler, of Grand Junction, Colorado, had to be flown 250 miles to a hospital near Denver in mid-October, where she received dialysis for 10 days in an urgent effort to save her kidneys.

She is one at least 75 people sickened and 22 hospitalized in the outbreak tentatively traced to contaminated onions. In Mesa County, where Kamberlyn lives, 11 people have fallen ill and one person died. Federal health officials have said that slivered onions used on the burgers are a likely source of the outbreak.

The ordeal left Kamberlyn’s mother, Brittany Randall, worried about her daughter’s health and shaken at the idea that a burger could potentially cause so much harm.

“It’s pretty scary to know that we put so much faith and trust that we’re going to be eating something that’s healthy and for it to be broken,” said Randall.

She is moving to sue the fast-food chain after Kamberlyn was infected with the E. coli O157:H7 bacteria confirmed in the outbreak.

That bacteria produces a dangerous toxin that can cause a severe kidney disease complication known as hemolytic uremic syndrome, according to medical experts. Many children are hospitalized for weeks and some go on to require kidney transplants, said Dr. Myda Khalid, a kidney specialist at Riley Hospital for Children in Indiana who is not involved in Kamberlyn’s care.

“Time is critical,” Khalid said. “We have to get through this window and we have to get through it with a lot of care,” she said.

The condition can be fatal, but most children eventually recover, she said.

Kamberlyn said she ate McDonald’s Quarter Pounders with cheese, extra pickles -- and onions -- three times between Sept. 27 and Oct. 8. She said the burgers were easy to grab during a football halftime and while watching a school softball game.

She started feeling sick in the days after and experienced fever, vomiting, diarrhea and painful stomach cramps.

“I couldn’t get out of bed,” she recalled. “I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t drink. I was surviving on Popsicles. I felt like crap.”

Randall, who works as a jail guard, has three older children and thought that her young daughter might just have the flu. But when Kamberlyn texted to say she had blood in her stool and urine and was vomiting blood, Randall said she knew it was serious.

On Oct. 11, Kamberlyn went to a hospital in Grand Junction. Doctors said she likely had a stomach bug. She was sent home, with instructions to stay hydrated. By Oct. 17, she was feeling no better and returned to the emergency room. That time, tests showed Kamberlyn had acute kidney failure, her mother said. She was flown to Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora, near Denver, where she remained on Tuesday.

Randall said her daughter’s future health — and medical costs — are uncertain.

“The hospital bills are racking up,” she said. “And I’m a single mom and I just don’t know that I can necessarily afford all of what’s coming after all of this. And I don’t know what the future looks like, either.”

JoNel is a national reporter covering food and nutrition.