"On her 14th birthday, Kayla Boner got her driver's permit and then went home complaining of stomach-bug symptoms that landed her in the hospital two days later. Antibiotics didn't work. Kayla's condition deteriorated. Her kidneys failed. She had a seizure and went on a ventilator. Soon after, her brain activity ceased. Just 11 days after her symptoms surfaced, Kayla's distraught parents decided not to keep her on life support."
"The culprit: E. coli. Not the strain responsible for most serious food-borne illnesses, but a lesser-known one that her parents researched in vain when Kayla died in 2007.
'We were told it was E. coli O111,' said Dana Boner, Kayla's mother. 'Where did it come from? What could it have been? All these years, and we still don't know.'"
Dina ElBoghdady reports for the Washington Post May 12, 2012.
