2-Time Cancer Survivor, 24, Facing Life-Threatening Illness After She Ate Friend’s Homemade Meal

NEED TO KNOW

• Trinity Peterson-Mayes, 24, is facing a life-threatening illness after eating a homemade meal with her friends

• “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 recalled

• Previously, Trinity was diagnosed with a rare childhood cancer when she was 2 months old and an aggressive bone cancer when she was 11 years old

An Arizona woman, who is a two-time cancer survivor, contracted a rare, life-threatening illness after eating a homemade meal with her friends.

Not long after Trinity Peterson-Mayes, who was diagnosed with a rare childhood cancer when she was 2 months old and an aggressive bone cancer when she was 11, tried her friend’s homemade fermented swordfish alongside five of her other friends in February, she noticed that something didn’t quite feel right.

“It tasted horrible, I’m going to be so honest,” Trinity, 24, told local outlet 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.”

Within days, however, she began to notice that she was unable to chug water without it going down the wrong pipe.

“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,” she explained.

After completely choking on a sip of coffee, Trinity decided to go to the hospital. And although the first hospital she went to nearly sent her home because they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, she was diagnosed with botulism shortly after being transferred to St. Joseph’s Medical Center and Barrow Neurological Institute for specialized neurological care.

“I woke up and I had three IVs,” Trinity said. “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. I wasn’t able to talk before. I wasn’t able to walk.”

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, botulism is a rare but serious illness that is caused by “a toxin that attacks the body’s nerves and causes difficulty breathing, muscle paralysis and even death.”

The illness is so rare, in fact, that emergency physician Dr. Frank LoVecchio told KPNX that “most emergency physicians go their whole career without seeing a case.”

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“It causes this paralysis of your muscles, and most important being, you know, your chest muscles, those that are responsible for breathing,” he explained. “In the United States, there’s about two dozen cases per year on average of food botulism.”

Of Trinity’s five other friends who joined her in trying the fermented swordfish, two ended up getting botulism as well. While her friends are now out of the hospital, Trinity expects to be released in the coming days.

“After everything she had been through as a child, we believed the hardest battles were behind her,” Trinity’s mom, Loren Amatruda, wrote on GoFundMe. “Recovery from botulism can take weeks to months, sometimes longer, and often requires extensive rehabilitation and therapy.”

“Even through all of this, Trinity continues to show the same strength and resilience that helped her survive cancer twice as a child,” she continued. “She is already fighting hard every day to regain the basic abilities most of us take for granted — speaking, swallowing and moving normally again.”

Read the original article on People