WORCESTER — An Amherst mother and son who took ill after eating foraged mushrooms are continuing to recover from a near-fatal experience that required significant medical intervention from a team led by a toxicology expert at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center.
Kam Look, 63, and Kai Chen, 27, joined by Dr. Stephanie Carreiro and Dr. Babak Movahedi, related their experience at a press conference Thursday, following several weeks of treatment that included use of an experimental drug for both patients and a liver transplant for the mother.
“I am very grateful for you guys here, your wonderful doctors, for helping us out, for taking our case and helping us get well,” Chen said.
The saga began about three weeks ago, when Look picked the mushrooms from the back yard, and near the edge of woods, at a friend’s home in Amherst. The mushrooms looked like the brown cap mushrooms that she would pick and eat in her native Malaysia.
Like she has done previously, understanding the dangers that can be posed by poisonous mushrooms, Look put ginger in the pan as she was preparing them, both to determine if the mushrooms were toxic and to remove any toxins. When they showed no signs of being poisonous, she was comfortable in preparing the meal and then eating them.
“For me, it looked like any other cap mushroom that would be safe to eat,” Chen said.
But with his mother the first to experience vomiting, and then him falling ill several hours later, they recognized something was wrong.
“It feels like a type of food poisoning, a slight discomfort,” he said.
It was two days later that Chen said his father took him and his mother to Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton. There, though, the professionals realized that their lives were in danger, and they would need a higher level of care. That prompted their transfer to UMass Memorial Medical Center.
The doctors at the Worcester hospital note that the mushrooms can cause severe, life-threatening liver damage, with the death rate for this type of Amanita-induced liver injury at between nearly one-third and half of all patients. Such mushroom consumption has been an increasing issue both in the United States and elsewhere.
Carreiro, a toxicology expert, said she knew that the patients didn’t have time to waste and started searching for Legalon, an investigational new drug that requires what is known as “compassionate use” approval, since no other therapies are available.
That drug was flown in from Philadelphia and colleagues with similar toxicology expertise from around the country then consulted with Carreiro and dozens of UMass Memorial caregivers, and New England Donor Services, on how to save the lives of Look and Chen.
For Chen, the drug was able to improve his condition slowly and he was able to be discharged from the hospital, but his mother had a more significant medical need. Look was put on liver transplant list and then a few days later, after receiving a liver from a donor, had the surgery, and has spent time recovering in the hospital’s intensive care unit and is now at a rehabilitation center.
“Thankfully, an organ became available, and we were able to do a transplant,” Movahedi said.
What has happened has been an emotional and physical toll for Chen, who works as a laborer at a FedEx warehouse. He described the extreme nausea and extreme exhaustion during his illness, but also the feelings he had seeing his mother in distress.
“Seeing her in the condition she was in, I have never experienced that before,” Chen said.
Look, speaking through her son as interpreter, which he regularly does for his parents, said it is safer to buy mushrooms at a grocery store
“This should be a cautionary tale about what you find out there in the woods, especially mushrooms,” she said.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
