Shigella outbreak hospitalizes dozens across the area
Tim Kaiser is the sort of fellow who doesn’t have a hard time expressing himself. That trait showed clearly when he strolled into the newspaper office and gave us the “what for” about what we did and didn’t have in our pages last week.
Kaiser, like dozens of people over the recent long Memorial Day weekend, spent the better part of the holiday hooked up to IVs, trying to knock fevers down and hydrating while no one knew for sure what might be wrong.
I just spent five days in the hospital,” he said. “I almost died.”
His was one of the early cases of what the State Health Department would later dub a shigellosis outbreak in Hallettsville, many of the cases stemming from what state identified as “a single common denominator,” a local favorite, one of largest and nicest restaurants in town: Cabo San Lucas.
Kaiser said he and his wife had swung by there Wednesday, May 24, for a bite to eat as they often did when neither felt like cooking at home. He dined on one of his favorites, chicken strips and French fries, and nibbled on a few chips with the red sauce before his food arrived. Then they finished, they headed home like always, planning to spend another nice quiet evening at the house.
Before he made it to bed that night, however, he said he realized it would be anything but.
When his wife finally talked him into going to the hospital Saturday morning—she managed to get through the whole incident unscathed — Kaiser said he thought he might be suffering from a case of appendicitis or something. He had a 103-degree fever when he checked in, and he was horribly dehydrated, he said. He wound up in the emergency room, where they kept him for several hours as medical personnel pumped IVs and antibiotics into him while trying to determine what he had.
Kaiser said he noticed something else, too, there in the Lavaca Medical Center Emergency Room: There were maybe five or six other patients when he first came in. It didn’t take long, however, for a line to form clean out the door, he said.
“It was terrible,” he said, fidgeting in his chair. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt that bad. I didn’t think I was going to make it.”
“I got a call on Memorial Day at about 9:30 a.m.,” said Lavaca County Judge Keith Mudd. “It was Lavaca Medical Center. They told me they had 20 people on IVs right then and some 60 other people had already come through.”
Not familiar with what the protocol might be for something like this, he turned to the folks at the hospital for guidance.
“They said we needed to get in touch with the state health department, so we called. And, voicemail. It was Memorial Day. Well, that just won’t do. So, I decided to go over there to meet with the restaurant staff myself and see what I could find out.”
He went to the restaurant. There was a sign on the door that said they were not serving chicken, on both doors, Mudd noted.
“I went in and met with them inside. I told them we had probable cause to believe that a bunch of people had gotten sick there,” Mudd said, quickly adding that the words seemed to hit hard with the manager.
“He was just stunned, kind of in shock, you know,” the judge said.
Mudd said the restaurant manager asked him, “What do you think we should do?
“That’s when I told him about the call I got from the hospital and that we tried to contact the state, as is protocol for these types of things. But we couldn’t get ahold of anyone because of the holiday. If we could, I told him, they’d probably have you close up a while so they could come in and conduct an investigation.
“So, he agreed to close the restaurant himself, voluntarily. He was very cooperative, and like I said, just stunned when he heard about all the people at hospital. Then he said he want to go there and see for himself, so we did. He left the restaurant to go see it first-hand. But he was totally compliant willing to do whatever he could to help.”
Mudd said that he and some of his family’s friends ate there themselves, just one day after Kaiser took ill. “Four of us were just fine,” he said. We couldn’t get in touch with the other person, but then found out a couple days later that they were sick as a dog.
The numbers only shot up from there, the judge said.
“I had several reports from folks … who said they saw the state people at several places around town, measuring and testing at different places. Given how many cases there were, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were multiple establishments. That’s something you’d have to check with the state, but the people hospitalized in Yoakum, Detar, Gonzales, Columbus ... I’d refer to the state on that, but I really think there could have been multiple locations with that many people.”
Attempts to contact the state health department office were not successfully press time Tuesday.
The judge added one thing more: “I want to make sure it gets pointed out that I didn’t force anybody to close up. The restaurant understood the seriousness of the problem, and they took action on their own. Isidro Sanchez is the manager’s name. He thanked us for alerting him, and he worked with the state every way he could. And I tell you, he was plum shocked by it all. Just sick about it.”
Houston attorney Jorey Lange said he knew something was going on when he started getting calls the middle of last week. He has since filed three legal cases on this in the Lavaca County district court as of last Friday, and he says, his phones haven’t stopped ringing since
Lange said he’d worked in personal injury law up until about 10 years ago, when he a read a story about a little girl here in Texas who had picked up an E. coli infection simply by going out to eat with her family and nearly died from it. So, he said it became something of a crusade for him.
He said he helps people get compensated to pay for things like unexpected medical bills and lost wages caused by events like these, but more important, the work he does helps make sure that things like this don’t happen to other people.
Lange said the state helps mediate situations and offer advice on how to correct it after the fact, but they’re not always the best at coming up with a tracing it to its source.
“That’s where the legal system can do much more,” he said. It takes no more than five shigella bacterium to infect a product and cause a violent reaction for some people, and that could come from most anywhere.
“Although food handling is often the most common way it’s introduced, it very well may have come in on a product they got from someone completely off site. If that’s the case, my goal is to hold that supplier to account,” Lange said.
“If you pay good money for food, you shouldn’t have to worry about if it might kill you or not,” he added. “Not here in our country, especially.”
Cabos San Lucas Mexican Grill also released a statement on the health ordeal that closed their doors temporarily on May 31.
“We would like to offer our apologies to our customers affected by last Thursday’s dinner service,” The statement said. “We have been working closely with our food suppliers, employees, and health inspectors on fixing this problem. The owner, Mr. Sanchez, voluntarily closed on Monday, May 31 and immediately contacted health inspectors. Mr. Sanchez remained closed and did not feel comfortable operating while not knowing what caused the illness.”
“On Thursday, June 1, health inspectors arrived at 9 a.m. and did a complete investigation. They inspected the entire facility top to bottom. As an extra precaution, Mr. Sanchez disposed and discarded all food products and will be receiving all new food products early Friday morning, June 2. This will allow his staff to prepare all food products from scratch and be ready to reopen Friday, June 2.”
“To the City of Hallettsville, we thank you very much for your support and will continue working on maintaining great food safety standards at all of our establishments.”
Side Bar:
Tuesday, May 30, the Texas Department of State Health Services issued the following from Austin. It was circulated early the next day by the county emergency management office.
“The Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) Region 8 (PHR is currently investigating an outbreak of shigellosis in Lavaca County. DSHS PHR 8 is working to identify the source of the outbreak by interviewing individuals who have become sick and collecting food samples from a location where multiple individuals have eaten prior to becoming sick.”
The press release said that common symptoms of shigellosis are: vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, fever, urge to pass stool but bowels are empty.
Preventing its spread: If you have are currently experiencing symptoms of shigella, visit your doctor to get tested. Your doctor may prescribe you antibiotics for this infection, but some people may get better without medication.
People can become sick with shigellosis by eating or drinking the shigella bacteria, or by touching something contaminated with the bacteria and then touching the mouth. It only takes a small amount of shigella bacteria to make a person sick. If you are sick with symptoms of shigella, you can protect others by:
Washing your hands often using warm, soapy water for at least 20 seconds.
Use a separate bathroom from other household members. If a separate bathroom is not available, clean and disinfect surfaces in the bathroom after each use.
• Do NOT prepare food for others while you are sick. • Do NOT go swimming. • Do NOT have sex for at least two weeks after diarrheal symptoms resolve. • Stay home from school, daycare, or jobs in healthcare or food service until your symptoms have resolved for at least 24 hours (without taking medicine that would mask symptoms).
