As Children Suffer, Parents Agonize Over Spinach

毒菠菜折磨孩子，父母操心

The hardest moment came when Elaine and Dennis Krause's 9-year-son, who had stoically undergone kidney dialysis, blood transfusions and drug treatments that made him hallucinate that spiders were all around him, quietly asked his parents whether he was going to die.

对伊莱恩和丹尼斯·克劳斯还说，现在是一个极度痛苦的时刻。他们9岁的孩子经历了肾透析，输血和药物治疗，这一切让他产生了幻觉，好像有很多蜘蛛在他身边爬来爬去。他平静的问他的父母他是不是快要死了。

"What do you say when your child asks you, am I going to die？" asked Elaine Krause, who has spent nearly all of this month beside her son's bed at a hospital here, watching his skinny, lanky body do battle with E. coli. "I told him, 'These people are trying to help you, and you are getting good care.' But the truth is, I couldn't answer him directly. We didn't know."

“当你的孩子问你他是不是快要死了，你有什么想法？”伊莱恩·克劳斯问到。她这个月来几乎每天都在医院陪在自己孩子的身边，看着自己的骨瘦如柴的孩子与大肠杆菌抗争。“我告诉他说大家都在帮你，你会没事的。但事实上，我却不能直接回答他，因为我们也不知道。”

By this weekend, a national outbreak of E. coli linked to fresh spinach grown in California had sickened 170 people in 25 states and killed at least one here in Wisconsin, where more people have grown ill than in any other state. The authorities in Idaho and Maryland were investigating the deaths of two others, including a toddler whose parents said they gave him a fruit smoothie with spinach days earlier, trying to determine whether their deaths, too, were linked to the outbreak.

到本周为止，因为在加利福尼亚州新鲜菠菜导致的全美爆发的大肠杆菌已经导致了25个州170人患病，并造成了至少一例威斯康星州的病人死亡。在威斯康星，患病的人数是全美最多的。爱达荷州和马里兰州的官员正在调查其他的两例死亡病例，其中包括一位幼儿，他的父母说他们在孩子死前几天给孩子食用了一种含有菠菜的水果汁。他们想证实他们的死亡是否与本次爆发的疫情有关。

But beyond the raw statistics were individual stories of a sudden, mysterious, life-threatening illness, one that struck most often in the homes of those who viewed themselves as more health conscious than many other Americans.

但是，单个的突发神秘致命疾病并没有在原始的统计材料上。这些疾病通常会在那些自认为比其他美国人更有健康意识的家庭中出现。

In many cases, it crept up with frightening force after what had seemed a harmless, even healthful meal - a spinach salad with walnuts, a sandwich layered with spinach or, as for the Krause family, a baked, boneless, skinless piece of chicken on a small bed of spinach. Then what had seemed a simple bout of diarrhea in the morning often led to a harrowing, bloody race to the emergency room by midnight.

在许多情况下，这些疾病都悄无声息的从那些看上去无害，甚至很健康的饮食中以令人恐惧的力量侵入人体，像菠菜核桃沙拉，含有一层菠菜的三明治，甚至也可能是像克劳斯家的情况一样，即把一块经过烘烤的去皮去骨的鸡肉放在作为配菜的菠菜上。然后，一场早上本来看似简单的腹泻却导致了深夜突奔急诊室的惨剧。

And around the country, some families still wait by bedsides, wondering which foods they could ever again feel safe giving their children, what the government or the spinach industry could have done to protect them, and, most of all, whether their loved ones will ever fully recover.

全国的一些家庭还在床边等待，琢磨他们给孩子们提供什么样的食物才是健康的，政府和菠菜行业本应该做什么来保证他们的安全，更重要的是他们心爱的孩子能不能完全康复。

"Here you think you're feeding your child a great, healthy meal," Dennis Krause said sadly. "But here I was, poisoning him."

“你本来想你正在给你的孩子喂非常健康的食物，”丹尼斯·克劳斯杯悲伤的说。“但是恰恰相反，那些东西是毒药。”

Not all E. coli is harmful to humans, but certain strains produce toxins that kill cells in the gut and in the blood vessels, leading to abdominal cramps and watery to bloody diarrhea, said Dr. John Flaherty, associate chief of the division of infectious disease at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.

西北大学芬伯格医学院传染病部的副主任约翰·弗兰哈提博士说，并非所有的大肠杆菌都对人体有害，但某些特殊的大肠杆菌却能产生毒素，杀死肠内或者血管内的细胞，导致下腹绞痛，引起稀的带血的痢疾。

One area where the toxins can wreak particular havoc is in the kidneys； when it happens, Dr. Flaherty said, the inflamed cells lining the blood vessels get "roughed up," causing red blood cells to break open as they pass by and jam blood flow to the kidneys.

毒素能够产生严重破坏的地方是肾；弗兰哈提博士说，当出现这一情况时，排列在血管上的发炎的细胞会遭到破坏，致使在红血球经过肾脏时流出来并使血液流到肾脏里。

"In the course of one week, he went from this healthy, lively little boy to a boy in a hospital bed fighting for his life," said Anne Grintjes, of Brookfield, Wis., whose 7-year-old son developed a dangerous form of kidney failure linked to E. coli, called hemolytic uremic syndrome. "He turned yellow and gray, literally. It was shocking and terrifying and unbelievable to watch."

“就在一周的时间里，他从一个将康活泼的小孩子变成了一个躺在医院病床上苟延残喘小孩”，威斯康星州布鲁克菲尔德的安·格雷杰斯说，他的7岁的孩子感染了一种与大肠杆菌有关的极为危险的肾衰竭疾病，叫做溶血性尿毒综合症。“确切的讲，他面黄肌瘦，苍白不堪。太可怕了！简直惨不忍睹！”

Of the 171 cases that have been confirmed as part of the spinach outbreak, more than half required hospitalization, and about 16 percent developed the dangerous hemolytic uremic syndrome.

在因菠菜爆发的疾病确诊的171例病例中，超过一半的患者需要住院治疗，大约有16%的患者感染了溶血性尿毒综合症。

Doctors say they cannot be certain what long-term effects the syndrome may have； it varies from person to person. Many patients recover entirely, they say, while others may suffer from chronic kidney problems and other health risks.

医生表示他们还不能确定该综合症是否会有长期的影响，每个患者的情况各异。他们表示，很多患者完全恢复了，但其他的患者可能会受到慢性肾病和其他健康疾病的困扰。

Although the youngest children and the oldest adults are considered most vulnerable to getting sick from the bacteria and to struggling to recover from its effects, more than 70 percent of those who grew ill in this outbreak were somewhere in between： older than 4 and younger than 65.

虽然年幼的小孩和年老体衰的老年人最可能感染病菌，他们很难从疾病的影响中解脱出来，但是在本次达爆发中70%的患者是出于4到65岁之间。

At 27, Gwyn Wellborn of Salem, Ore., described a sudden onslaught of slicing, stabbing abdominal pain and bloody diarrhea in late August, days after eating baby spinach at work, thinking she was being especially virtuous. At first, doctors sent her home, Ms. Wellborn said, with a painkiller and a diagnosis of food poisoning. Hours later, though, the pain became so excruciating and the bleeding so constant, she said, that her husband rushed her back to a hospital.

俄勒冈州塞伦市27岁的温格·威尔伯详细描绘了她在上班的时候吃了些菠菜幼苗，当时她想绝对不会有事的，几天之后，也就是8月底，她经历了一次腹部刺痛，并伴有带血痢疾。威尔伯说，开始的时候，医生诊断她是食物中毒，给她开了些止痛药后让她回家。但是几小时后，疼痛加剧，便血不断，于是她的丈夫迅速把她送往医院。

From there, she quickly deteriorated. Her kidneys began failing. "At one point, the doctors told my family there was nothing they could do, that that was it," she recalled. But after three transfusions and several weeks in a hospital, Ms. Wellborn went home.

从那时开始，她的身体状况急剧恶化，他的肾开始衰弱。她回忆说：“医生甚至于告诉我的家人他们无能为力了，当时的确如此。”但是经过3次输血和在医院几周的修养，她出院回家了。

Hers is one of at least four lawsuits filed in courts around the country by William D. Marler, a Seattle lawyer, in connection with the outbreak. Ms. Wellborn said she would not consider eating spinach anytime soon. "Not in a million years," she said.

她的案子是西雅图律师威廉·D·马勒接手上诉的全国4起与本次疫病暴发有关的四个案件中的一个。威尔伯夫人说近期任何时候她都不会想吃菠菜。她说：“一百万年夜不会！”

Marion Graff, 77, a former bank clerk and widow from Manitowoc, Wis., is the nation's only confirmed fatality in the outbreak, but deaths in Maryland and Idaho are also considered "suspect" cases, federal authorities said on Friday.

威斯康星州马尼托沃克77岁的寡妇马里恩·格拉夫曾是一位银行职员。她是疫病暴发中唯一的一位证实死亡的患者。但是，联邦官员星期五表示，马里兰州和爱达荷州的死亡病例也认为与疫病相关。

Kyle Allgood, 2, of Chubbuck, Idaho, died at a Utah hospital from cardiac arrest after contracting hemolytic uremic syndrome, his family said, a case Idaho authorities said was "probably connected" to the tainted spinach, although laboratory tests have been inconclusive. Kyle's mother, Robyn Allgood, said she had mixed vegetables into blended fruit and juice smoothies, as a way to get Kyle and her two daughters to eat vegetables, and had given him such a drink on Sept. 12.

爱达荷州查巴克2岁的凯尔·安尔古德因感染了溶血性尿毒综合症引起的心脏骤停在犹他医院里死亡，他的家人说。爱达荷官员称这一病例“可能”与菠菜污染有关，尽管实验室化验没有直接的证据。凯尔德母亲罗宾·安尔古德说她曾把蔬菜与水果和果汁混合成饮料，以便让凯尔和另外两个女儿能够吃到蔬菜，她在9月12日给凯尔喂食了这种饮料。

Three days later, she said, Kyle had flu-like symptoms, including severe diarrhea.

3天以后，她说，凯尔出现了流感症状，包括严重的痢疾。

On Wednesday, despite specialized treatment at a hospital in Salt Lake City, Kyle died, hours after his father, Jeff, said he had urged the boy "to fight for me."

在星期三，就在他爸爸杰夫说他鼓励孩子“为了我要加油”后几个小时，虽然在盐湖城的医院里接受了特别治疗，凯尔还是死了。

Relatives tearfully recalled Kyle as generous and good-natured though mischievous - a boy known as the "stuntman" for his antics, which inspired fear and awe in adults.

亲人满含热泪的回忆凯尔虽然有点淘气，但是一个大方，生性善良的小孩，因为他令人敬畏的滑稽的动作，被人们誉为"绝技演员"

He liked to twirl his hair into knots, dance wildly to the music of Jack Johnson and give lingering kisses to his aunts, the family said. He was also impish；at Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City, Kyle was pinching his nurses and ripping at his IV's until near his final moments, they said.

他的家人说，他喜欢把他的头发打成结，跟着迈克尔·杰克逊的音乐狂舞，跟他的阿姨亲吻。他也很顽皮。他们讲，在盐湖城第一儿童医疗中心，凯尔在他生命的最后时刻还掐护士，去拔静脉注射器。

In Maryland, an elderly woman died of E. coli on Sept. 13 after eating fresh spinach, state health officials confirmed, but because of a lack of DNA specimens from the victim, officials have yet to determine whether it was the same strain of E. coli that infected others who ate spinach. Family members identified the woman as June E. Dunning, 86, of Hagerstown.

在马里兰，一位年长的妇女９月１３日因大肠杆菌去世。她是在食用了新鲜菠菜后去世的，周健康官员证实，但是由于缺乏受害者的ＤＮＡ样本，官方还没有决定是否是感染了与其他食用菠菜的患者一样的大肠杆菌而致病死亡的。其家人证实，她叫朱·Ｅ·邓恩，现年８６岁，住在黑格斯敦。

Warren Swartz, Ms. Dunning's son-in-law, said she had eaten steamed spinach from a package on Aug. 30 and Sept. 1 and baby spinach from a bag on Aug. 30. She had signs of E. coli, including rectal bleeding and bloody diarrhea, on Sept. 1 and went to the hospital the next day.

邓恩夫人的女婿沃伦·舒瓦茨说她在８月３０日和９月１日食用了包装好的蒸菠菜，在８月３０日食用了袋装的菠菜苗。她有感染大肠杆菌的症状，包括９月１日她出现的直肠出血和带血痢疾，第二天她就被送往医院。

For the Krause family, of McFarland, Wis., the illness began a few days after a family dinner on Aug. 24. First, their 15-year-old daughter grew ill. Then their 9-year-old, who was healthy enough that he had a perfect attendance record last year in third grade, grew even more ill, and has suffered debilitating effects, including acute renal failure, fluid buildup near the heart, raised blood pressure, soaring blood sugar.

对于威斯康星州麦克法兰的克劳斯一家来说，疾病是在８月２４日后一家人吃完晚饭后开始的。首先，他们１５岁的女儿染病了；然后是他们一向十分健康的９岁孩子。他在去年他们年级的的出勤率非常好。他的病情越来越重，出现了虚弱的症状，包括明显的肾衰竭、心脏附近积水、血压升高和居高不下的血糖。

In a hospital cafeteria here, miles from their home, the Krauses at first could only bring themselves to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Everything else - lunch meats , salads, everything - scared them.

在距家几英里的医院食堂里，开除克劳斯一家仅仅只能带花生酱和果冻三明治来吃。别的一切东西，包括午餐肉、沙拉，都让他们草木皆兵。

"For me, there's anger and paranoia and fear for others - for the safety of food we get that's supposed to be monitored," Ms. Krause, 47, said. "I don't know what to trust. Should we grow it all ourselves？"

“对我来讲，我对那些据说是受到监测的食物的安全性感到愤怒、多疑甚至是恐惧，”47岁的克劳斯夫人说。“我不知道还能相信什么。难道得我们自己种植我们要吃的食物吗？”

On Friday, their strawberry-blond boy lay weakly in his hospital bed, surrounded by balloons and cards from the school where he says he fears falling behind his class. He had physical therapy, then occupational therapy to begin rebuilding his body. He told his father he only wanted to be well, to somehow rewind to the day before the spinach.

星期五，他们红头发的孩子躺在医院的病床上，身边摆满了学校里用的气球和卡片，他说他担心在学校里落下功课。他接受过物理疗法，然后是作业疗法，开始复原他的身体。他告诉他父亲他只想好起来，重新回到他们吃菠菜以前的日子。

A few days ago, his body seemed to turn a corner and doctors removed him from the dialysis machine, a crucial step toward recovery. His parents have not asked when he might be well enough to go home； they said it was too early to look ahead.

几天前，他的身体看起来有了转变，随后医生把他从透析机上解脱下来，这是身体恢复健康的关键一步。他的父母还没有询问他什么时候能够出院，他认为现在问这个问题还为时过早。

"I keep thinking we will at some point go home and it'll all be like it was," said Mr. Krause, 52. "But we don't know yet what the long-term effects are. He will be monitored probably for the rest of his life. It'll never be the same."

“我一直在想我们应该可以回家，一切都会像以前一样，”52岁的克劳斯说。“但我们不知道会有什么长期的影响。可能他将来一生都需要留意，绝对不可能跟完全没有伤害一样。”(