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in the spring of 1991 a group of Boy Scouts spent the weekend in the woods hoping to earn
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merit badges for survival in the wilderness but just 10 days later one of the scouts Damien heyn was fighting for
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his own Survival as he lay near death in a hospital doctors wanted to find the cause
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and they also needed to find a cure [Music] [Music] the hear SN family have a quiet active
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life in the small town of Dothan Alabama Marx heyn is a busy eye surgeon and he met his wife Mary while he was in
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medical school the heyn family soon grew to include four children three boys Damian Sebastian Bane and a daughter
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named Mila all intelligent active and healthy about a week after Damen heyn returned from The Voice Scout trip his
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mother prepared to take Damian and his brother to Florida Daman was headed to space camp and Sebastian was going to
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tennis camp Sebastian and his mother packed the van because Damian wasn't feeling well he had a slight fever and
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some diarrhea his parents thought it might have been the pizza Damen ate at a friend's house or perhap perhaps it was
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just a virus going through Damian's school and like you respond to all of those kinds of bugs and little illnesses
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as a as a parent you think okay I'm going to fix it Mary packed anti-diarrheal medicine and some drinks
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to replenish the fluids and they headed to Florida intending to drive straight through the night Damian's symptoms
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didn't respond to the medicine and they were forced to make frequent stops on
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the trip if became apparent that he was dealing with something more complicated than a flu Mary decided it was best to
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stop for the night and let Damian rest then we went through a night where he just lived in the bathroom back and
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forth uh the hotel room uh all night using the bathroom and the next morning I woke up thinking okay it was one of
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those weird things we're okay let's go on our way get to space camp get to
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tennis camp the next day day Daman was no better in fact as his mother drove towards Tampa she noticed that Damian
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was getting worse she was really getting pretty worried that Daman was uh really
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pretty sick that he had uh pretty frankly lot of diarrhea and there was some blood in
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it they drove to a local hospital where x-ray showed his intestines were swollen
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the news was not good additional test showed that there were deadly toxins collecting in Damian's blood evidence
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that his kidneys were shutting down it needs to be very carefully watched because it could be the start of
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something disastrous doctors didn't know what was causing Damian's Illness but if
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the problem wasn't identified quickly Damian would die as daman's condition worsened he was
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quickly transferred to a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at another hospital when the diarrhea turned to hemorrhaging
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it was like literally all hell was breaking loose now it just poured out of and it wasn't so much diarrhea as it was
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just Hemorrhage just pan after pan of clotted uh blood pouring out of them Damian's red blood
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cells were being destroyed and his kidneys were shutting down tests showed that he was was suffering from a rare
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life-threatening condition called hemolytic ureic syndrome or hus although his father was a doctor it
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was a disease he had never heard of I didn't know what this disease was so I
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fortunately had some books with me Etc and I looked it up and I really realized that this was a uh this is a bad disease
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Terry shoes was the first nurse who cared for Damian we all knew in our hearts what might happen and when we
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were sure it was hemolytic heric syndrome that's when the fear set in and we knew we had to become very aggressive
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H is caused by a lethal bacteria one which creates a toxin a chemical poison that attacks the blood vessels and the
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blood it triggers a deadly Cascade of Events first red blood cells are shredded the blood loses its clotting
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ability but at the same time the broken cells Clump together creating a life-threatening dam in the bloodstream
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and when the clump reach vital organs it deprives them of blood and oxygen Damian's parents read all they could
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about this mysterious blood disease desperate to find out what caused it Mary poured over the medical literature
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she learned that hus is usually linked to contaminated food but no one else in the family had gotten sick could it be
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the pizza Daman had at a friend's house what about the Boy Scout trip was the
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bacteria in the water or was it something in the food I needed to get on the phone call home nobody in our town
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was aware of what kind of trouble Damian was in at that point call the scoutm and and ask him was anybody else
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sick because that became my concern is that there were other kids who may have been poisoned Mary was surprised and
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confused by the answer none of the other boy scouts were sick how on Earth can this child fall
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into this deep whole with no explanation the source of Damian's illness remained
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a mystery but its severity was becoming all too clear Dr Daniel Placencia led a team of doctors who would try to keep
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Damian alive it was affecting different organs and that process kind of put him in the severe category onto the stomach
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doctors told Mary about hus and its unpredictability that it launches random attacks on the body's critical organs
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creating deadly complications without warning and there was little doctors could do to stop it and you realize he
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could die it's an impossible thought for someone like me for most parents and at
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that point uh the doctors told me that there was really nothing that you could do that we just had to watch cross our
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fingers wait and hope that this Beast didn't take a lethal hit on on one of Damian's major organ systems Damian's
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condition worsened by the minute blood test showed that his system was overflowing with toxins Damian needed
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dialysis to cleanse his blood just to stay alive then in the middle of the night I got a phone call from Mary
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saying that uh it's really to a point where you need to come dialysis kept Daman alive but the disease was raging
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like a fire through his body as a doctor Marx understood the test results and he
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knew his son was dying he was in a very bad downward spiral every turn seemed to be on the
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downside I was really seeing the actual disease take its ravaging effects on him
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right before our eyes and X-rays showed that fluid was collecting around daman's
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heart more than a liter of fluid was siphoned away allowing his heart to beat more freely but a few hours later his
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parents were in his room when tragedy struck help us we need help without warning Damian's blood pressure went
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into a free fall the hear sinks were watching their son die before their very eyes Damen started to shake and convulse
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and turn blue and he was dying and it is so terrifying that you you just are reduced
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to begging God to let your child live for one more minute there was a frantic effort to restore daman's blood pressure
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before it damaged his heart or brain we gave him extra fluid intravenously we must have given him half a liter to a
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liter of fluid to restore his fluid volume gradually his blood pressure increased and Damian survived a brush
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with death but the disease had only begun to reveal its power the hear sinks agonized what caused this terrible
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tragedy to happen to their son and why wasn't there a [Music] treatment while Damian lay near death in
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a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit his father desperately searched for answers he called an old friend from medical
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school who specializes in blood disorders John uh heyn here from medical school they hadn't spoken in nearly 10
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years but Marx was desperate so my in personal feeling was that the doctors here are very good but they don't see
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this very often Marx began to describ the symptoms to his friend but before he could finish Dr Kelton knew the
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diagnosis I knew what he had in two sentences on a telephone John Kelton had spent his entire career studying rare
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blood diseases many doctors had never seen and he knew from his experience that the worst wasn't over in subsequent
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telephone calls it became apparent to me and of considerable concern to me that Damian was moving from this localized
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illness called hemolytic ureic syndrome into the far more severe illness called thrombotic thrombocytopenic perpus Dr k
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knew something the local doctors did not there was only one thing that would keep
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Damian alive a risky unproven treatment many doctors believed was too experimental it was called a plasma
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exchange what it is doing is washing out toxic substances from the bloodstream the massive transfusions would mean
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additional risks a possible HIV or hepatitis infection but Dr Kelton knew that the greater risk was not doing
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anything I emphasized that when I've known of similar patients who did not receive
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treatment they invariably worsened and the outcome was death once the daily plasma exchanges started
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Damian's condition began to improve and I could see that in my judgment toxins
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and poisons and really awful things were being suctioned out of his body meanwhile Mary hn continued to educate
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herself on hemolytic ureic syndrome and the bacteria that caused it 96 to 98% of
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the cases of hus are caused by this new lethal microbe exploding in our food supply this is the bacteria it's called
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eoli 0157 watch and you can see how one bacteria can multiply and become a deadly threat epidemiologists can trace
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it back only as far as the early 1970s but it's already the leading cause of kidney failure in American children
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it kills 500 people in the United States each year most of them children somehow
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the eoli bacteria entered Damian's system and triggered the horrible blood disorder Damian probably ingested the
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deadly bacteria about a week to 10 days earlier a single bacterium could have ignited the chain of events wildly
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multiplying in the warm moist recesses of Damian's intestines but where did it come from
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contaminated water meat unpasturized juice and if it happened while he was on the Scout camping trip why weren't any
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of the other Scouts infected before doctors knew if the plasma therapy would work the disease struck again
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an echocardiogram revealed that Damian's heart was still under attack they have
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to go in and pull off this fluid which is accumulating around his heart in in essence drowning him now drastic
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measures would be needed to keep Damian alive he needed more heart surgery if something isn't done then the heart will
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eventually stop was the plasma exchange started too late to Halt the damage to his internal organs his doctors and
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nurses weren't sure it was really hard it was because you just can't let kids
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die without a fight Damian did fight and he survived the heart surgery soon Daman
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started to show some improvement the plasma exchanges continued Damian could breathe on his own but the disease Was
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preparing another deadly assault on his weakened body it started innocently enough he was so thirsty he was just
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really dying to get some fluids in and we started with a little bit of fluid and then Mama went to get him some ice
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drink that she' promised him when Damen took a few sips disaster [Music] struck an excruciating abdominal pain
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overwhelmed him and Marx was certain at that moment that we had another catastrophe x-rays confirmed
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mx's worst fears the disease had blown a hole in Damian's intestines poisonous
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bacteria were now being released into his body and Damian would need emergency surgery is the first time I think I
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really accepted that Damian could and would die and you know I had to get ready now for him to die that this is
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going to be the end the anesthesia the surgery the bacteria pouring from his intestines any one of these were enough
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to kill Damian he had uh very little to fight with you refuse to lose your hope though but you get this Grim feeling
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inside like you just don't know if you can do any more for them Damian's
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parents and his doctors didn't know if he could survive another battle how did did the deadly eoli
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bacteria enter Damian Hearn was it from the water at Boy Scout camp or was the bacteria in the food and if it was
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something he ate at Boy Scout camp why weren't any of the other boys sick told
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surprisingly the answer came from Daman himself it came to him in a dream as he lay in the
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[Music] hospital it happened at Scout camp it was my job to make hamburger patties and
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we cooked them on a grill over the campfire we stacked them up on a tray and I went up to the table to get one I
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was really hungry and I saw a small piece of meat on the plate it was just a tiny piece which looked like it fell off
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one of the burgers I was so hungry that I grabbed the piece and ate it I knew there was a problem it was cold it
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looked like it was CED but it was almost raw all my friends were around I didn't
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want just spit it out in front of him so I just swallowed it when Damen woke up after his dream he told his father what
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happened but he independently came to the realization and reported it almost as a confessional to his dad that I know
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it made me sick Dad it was when I swallowed that I knew that was wrong something was wrong about that that's
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what made me sick thoroughly cooking hamburger usually kills the eoli bacteria but since Damian ate a piece of
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rare meat the ecoli bacteria were multiplying inside his system within minutes of ingestion by the time Damien
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left for Space Camp a week later the ecoli bacteria had begun to produce toxins which attacked his vital organs
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ironically the medicine Daman took to relieve his diarrhea during the trip probably made his condition worse
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because it hindered his body's attempt to flush the bacteria from his system
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fortunately for Daman the experimental plasma exchange worked it saved his life by removing the deadly toxins from his
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bloodstream after 5 weeks in intensive care seven operations and many agonizing brushes with death Damian survived his
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war against the deadly eoli bacteria at the same camping trip that Damian was on
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other children ate the same food it only happened to him why did it happen to him
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well the answer on a trivial level is is that it was fate but obviously there is
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something in certain individuals that put them at risk of having this reaction it's pretty scary just whenever I get a
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chance to think about it and think about everything that happened to me I see I'm
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pretty lucky to be alive right now but others haven't been as fortunate in 1993 an outbreak of Eola at several Jack
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in the Box restaurants killed three [Music] people and it left this victim 10-year-old Brienne ker with permanent
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brain damage and in the summer of 1996 more than 9,000 Japanese school children were infected with the eoli
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bacteria 11 died eoli bacteria usually come from the intestines of cattle cow manure with ecoli can get washed into
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streams and cause contamination and when manure is used for fertilizer it can contaminate apples which fall to the
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ground if those same apples are made into cider and it's not pasteurized The
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Cider can also be contaminated but the most common method of ecoli infection is through contaminated ground beef when it
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isn't properly cooked one study found that 3 and 1/2% of the ground beef sold
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in supermarkets was infected with the deadly eoli 0157 and there's also the problem of
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cross contamination liquids from tainted ground beef can contaminate other Foods
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in a refrigerator or on countertops this was a disease that was unheard of or very very rare even 105 years ago and
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it's now in just a DEC become the leading cause of kidney failure in United States children it's
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one of the leading causes of pediatric death in certain countries like Argentina Daman heyn's brush with eoli
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has not only changed his life but also his families his mother has written a book about daman's story and founded an
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international organization dedicated to eliminating eoli from our food supply Damian is one of the the lucky ones
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today he's a healthy 16-year-old he plays on the high school basketball team watches his brother's
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play on the school football team and is starting to look at colleges whenever I think about everything that happened to
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me and everything that could have gone wrong but didn't you know I'm very
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fortunate he has lost 25% of his lung capacity and will always be at risk of future kidney problems but his story has
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continued to to help others Damen is our Masterpiece he is probably one of our best accomplishments and and successes
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because he had so many critical problems and he came out so well I believe that a
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lot of the things that I have in my life are because of things other people have
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done for me and our family and and certainly myself I we have an obligation to try to make things better for others
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because what we have is uh we have life we have our son and we have a uh a wonderful family and we need to be able
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to give back and that's what we're trying to do just want to say hi to everybody down in Tampa like Dr placenia
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all the nurses Terry Sarah Mt all the L nurses they know who they are and thank you and watch what you eat
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a [Music]