Lou Dobrydnia ordered up a life-changing sandwich at a Peoria restaurant four decades ago.
The patty-melt was something Lou had never tried before during her many previous trips to the Skewer Inn in the lower level of Northwoods Mall. She usually went for a gyro, or opted for the salad bar.
But on this Wednesday in October 1983, Lou wanted to branch out. So she ordered up a patty-melt sandwich: a hamburger, cheese, and grilled onions on Texas toast.
"I ate the whole entire sandwich. I actually offered it to three of my friends and none of them took a bite," she said.
She now thanks God they didn't.
The 28-year-old Limestone Community High School gym teacher was active in field hockey. She had a tournament coming up at Western Illinois University in Macomb that Saturday.
She had a couple drinks that Friday night, but not enough to explain the headache she woke up with on Saturday morning before the big game against the University of Iowa. But she drove to Macomb with a friend, anyway.
"I had to pull myself out of that game. Because I could not breathe. I couldn't believe I was doing that," she said. "(It) wasn't like I was out of shape. I had played all season long. But I couldn't breathe. I felt like I had an elephant sitting on my chest, still had the headache."
Lou finished out the game on Saturday, but when Sunday rolled around, her vision began to blur.
"And when I say blurred, I mean like if I was looking at you, part of you, the top part of your head would not be in clear focus. It was like, 'What in the world is going on?'"
It's not until she got home Sunday night that her roommate gave her a hint what might have been the cause. The local news was reporting something had gone wrong at the Skewer Inn. Her roommate said it was food poisoning.
Lou thought it would wear off on its own, but her roommate urged her to go get tested at the hospital. The ER was packed with people who had seen the news and feared they were ill. Lou sat in the emergency room for hours.
"This one young intern would come and check on me all the time. He said, I really think that by the way you're describing things that you have the botulism outbreak that we are seeing right now," she said.
The doctors evaluated her, but couldn't find anything conclusive, so they told her to go home and come back if things got any worse.
Things get worse
Lou went back to work on Monday. She was teaching a driver's ed course in a tiered lecture room on the third floor of Limestone Community High School in Bartonville when her vision again began giving her trouble.
"I'm looking at the third level of my students. I can't see them. They are outlines of figures. And my eyes are becoming half mast, so to speak. They're closing. I mean, I have no control over it. And I all of a sudden can't get my neck up. It just would droop in my chin, would touch my chest. So I said, 'Oh no. Something is really bad. Something bad is happening here,"' she said.
Lou tried to make it the 50 feet to the teacher's lounge next door to phone for help. But she couldn't walk in a straight line. Her body bounced off the lockers as she collided with them. She said the floor was spinning as if she were on a merry-go-round.
Her assistant coach ends up carrying her down the stairs and drives her to a friend's house. Within a couple hours, Lou's having trouble breathing. She goes back to the hospital.
"Your body just isn't right"
Botulism is an illness which attacks the body's nervous system. Some of the hallmark symptoms include difficulty breathing, paralysis, or even death, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
The illness is caused by a toxin secreted by bacteria. These bacteria are usually harmless to humans, but under certain conditions, they produce the deadly toxin. That includes when foods are improperly canned, preserved, or fermented.
The 28 people hospitalized with botulism in Peoria all ordered patty-melt sandwiches at the Skewer Inn sometime between Oct. 14-16, 1983. As the CDC would later discover, the sautéed onions on the sandwich were the poison's source.
At the time, the Peoria incident marked the third-largest foodborne botulism outbreak reported in the United States since 1899.
Lou remembers paralysis setting in as the toxin began to attack her central nervous system. Gradually, she began to lose muscle mass as the botulism assailed her eyes, neck, hands, and legs. Her muscle memory was obliterated in the process.
The CDC was called in to administer an experimental antitoxin to the 28 patients.
"We had to sign a document saying it was okay that they use this experimental kind of drug on us, which was a slow dripped IV, a very thick substance. But none of us could write, so we would have an 'X.' And they would intravenously drip this antitoxin into us," she said. "And then we were to wait for the results."
The patients ranged in age from 20 to 72. Twenty were women. Twelve patients were put on ventilators to help them breathe. Lou considered herself fortunate to avoid the vent, but doctors continually monitored whether enough oxygen was getting to her brain.
The patients recovered gradually at different paces. One man spent 170 days in the hospital, but no one died. Lou got around in a wheelchair while she recovered, but she had to take work off for a year and a half.
She gradually regained the use of her hands and extremities, but she still suffers residual effects to this day. Lou is sensitive to light, and frequently wears sunglasses to protect her eyes. She sometimes has difficulty swallowing, and she limps if she's exhausted.
"When I'm tired, I used to call myself 'bochy.' You just get a headache and you feel like your whole body doesn't want to function," she said.
Still, she considers her side effects minor compared to some of the other patients. They stayed in touch at first, having a reunion for the first five years after the outbreak, and another get-together 25 years later. But gradually, the survivors drifted apart.
"But, you know, life moves on, and you move on with it. And so, no, unfortunately we haven't been in touch," she said. "And it will be 40 years next October."
Life throws another curveball
Lou gradually continued to build up her strength. She completed two half marathons, just so she could say she ran a marathon. She finished the second one in late 2012, when she was 58.
"Then in January of 2013, I got another curveball thrown at me and got hit with another neurological disease called Guillain-Barre, or GBS. And that one actually hit me harder than botulism," she said.
With Guillain-Barre syndrome, the body's immune system attacks a person's nerves. The illness often starts with tingling in the hands and feet, but can quickly spread into whole-body paralysis.
"I was paralyzed from the neck down, lost everything. I only had head movement. I was trached this time. I had no movement," she said. "I was in the hospital for 105 days. I had to relearn everything."
Even after she was discharged, Lou was frequently in and out of the hospital. She got around in a motorized wheelchair. She went to Easterseals for aquatic therapy. She received physical therapy, occupational therapy, recreational therapy, and speech therapy.
She even had to relearn how to hold a fork.
"Because your main control of all your muscles is in your central nervous system, or all the nerves are attached to one main part, when that's paralyzed, muscle memory has to be regained," she said.
"I beat a disease with the hand of God at my side"
Lou said her first thought was to wonder what she did wrong when she was struck with paralysis for the second time in her life. But she also has strong faith - in both God, and free will.
"I could choose to look at it and say, you know, I'm done. I give up. Or I could choose to fight and say no, not gonna beat me this time. Life has thrown me a curveball, but it's life. And I can beat this," she said. "I beat a disease with the hand of God at my side."
Botulism had an 87% death rate until the CDC's experimental botulism antitoxin was concocted in the early 1980s. Lou said if she could beat those odds, she could beat GBS, too.
"I had a great team of physicians, PTs, OTs, nurses. But especially at home, I had the care and the love and the support group like no one could ever have. And that's what you really need. And I had the faith that God would see me through this one way or another," she said.
Lou mentors several people who lost bodily autonomy due to GBS, a stroke, or a brain injury.
"What I say is, please let yourself get mad. Please let yourself cry, please let yourself be taken care of. Because that was one of the hardest things, that I had to be taken care of 24/7. But never give up the faith that God has your back. And never give up the faith that you can make this," she said.
It's okay to become overwhelmed, but it's important not to allow those feeling to consume you, she said.
"You get mad because you're like, 'What just happened to me? I was planning to go on vacation, and now I can't even pick up a fork,'" she said. "So feel all your feelings. And cry, scream, yell, whatever you got to do. Not just one time, but 100 times if that's what it takes. But get back on the horse, so to speak, and ride it."
