Trinity Peterson-Mayes ended up paralysed in hospital after eating fermented swordfish. Photo / Loren Amatruda
Trinity Peterson-Mayes ended up paralysed in hospital after eating fermented swordfish. Photo / Loren Amatruda
An Arizona woman who survived cancer twice ended up in hospital after developing a life-threatening illness from eating fermented swordfish.
Trinity Peterson-Mayes, 24, who was diagnosed with a rare childhood cancer at 2 months old and an aggressive bone cancer at 11, fell ill shortly after sharing the homemade dishwith five friends in February, according to a GoFundMe set up to pay her medical bills.
“It tasted horrible,” Peterson-Mayes told KPNX. “It’s supposed to be healthy and I figured I might as well try, if it’s bad and I’ll just get a bad stomach ache.”
After a day she began to feel strange.
“I noticed that when I was chugging water, I wouldn’t be able to chug it. It was going down the wrong pipe, and then slowly, over the course of 24 hours, I went from not being able to chug water to not being able to drink any water at all,” Peterson-Mayes told KPNX.
Then a sip of coffee caused her to choke so badly she went to hospital.
Trinity Peterson-Mayes ended up paralysed in hospital after eating fermented swordfish. Photo / Loren Amatruda
The hospital staff nearly discharged her after they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, but she insisted something was wrong.
It was only after she was transferred to St Joseph’s Medical Centre and Barrow Neurological Institute for specialist neurological care that she was diagnosed with botulism, according to KPNX.
“Botulism is extremely rare and most emergency physicians go their whole career without seeing a case,” medical toxicologist Dr Frank LoVecchio said.
“It’s a neurological toxin which can cause blurred vision,” LoVecchio said. “It causes this paralysis of your muscles, and most important being, you know, your chest muscles, those that are responsible for breathing.”
Trinity Peterson-Mayes noticed she was struggling to drink before going to hospital. Photo / Loren Amatruda
Once in the hospital, Peterson-Mayes’ condition deteriorated.
“I woke up and I had three IVs. I was intubated, I had a central line in my neck, and I had an NG [nasogastric] tube … and I just woke up and I couldn’t move at all. It was very scary,” she said. Two of her dinner compainions also developed botulism.
“I wasn’t able to talk before. I wasn’t able to walk,” she said.
Her mother started a GoFundMe to pay for her medical bills, which has raised US$13,000 ($22,000) to date.
Trinity Peterson-Mayes faces a long road to recovery. Photo / Loren Amatruda
Peterson-Mayes was given a life-saving antitoxin and is now in recovery.
“Her vision has improved significantly and the double vision is now gone,” her mother, Loren Amatruda, posted in an update on GoFundMe. “Her speech has also gotten much better, although it is still a little muffled as she continues to regain strength.”
From now on, Peterson-Mayes said she will be more cautious with food.
“I am scared of sushi now too. Canned food, sushi, I don’t know about that anymore.”
