The Globe and Mail: The Walkerton survivors

The Globe and Mail: The Walkerton survivors

By Anthony Reinhart
From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Walkerton, Ont. — Their house is a handsome split-level, aglitter with Christmas lights every bit as pretty as the neighbours', set off beautifully by the early-December snow.
Inside, at the kitchen table, Trudy and Wayne Fraser can take pride: Shilo, their eldest daughter, just married and began a teaching career; Alyssa is engaged and off at college; and Brandon, the last one at home, is well on his way to becoming an electrician.
The Frasers are as close a family as you're going to find, but far from the image reflected in their shiny surfaces. They are Walkerton survivors, and for some, survival is proving to have long-term consequences.
”Life never did go back to normal,” said Alyssa, 21. ”We had to adapt to a new ‘normal' life.”
For Alyssa, Walkerton's water is now a life sentence. She is one of those who continue to suffer — 500 people in Walkerton now have chronic diarrhea and about 100 have kidney damage. She has lost one-third of her kidney function and suffers from high blood pressure. She takes medication daily and faces an uncertain future.
To those who weren't here when the water went bad in May, 2000, Walkerton is now an aging media drama; its newsy nickname, ”tainted water tragedy,” growing tired with use.
This week, as Stan and Frank Koebel pleaded guilty to the only criminal charges laid after seven people died and 2,300 became ill from E. coli poisoning, big-city reporters swept back into the quiet town of 5,000 for what seemed like a final act.
Instead, they swallowed hard as 13 people – including Alyssa Fraser and her mother – filed before Mr. Justice Bruce Durno to read accounts of grief, anger and continuing struggles with health problems, almost five years on.
”I continue to suffer every day in some way or another,” said the young Ms. Fraser, who spent four weeks in a London, Ont., hospital, two of them in critical care where she skirted death more than once.
Among the hardest-hit Walkerton victims, she is rare for her age; just 17 when hemolytic uremic syndrome, the most severe form of E. coli infection, took over her body. Others were typically much older or far younger.
As a result, ”she has grown old beyond her 17 years,” her mother, Trudy Fraser, told the court.
In interviews with The Globe and Mail the day after court hearing, the usually private family shared further details that offer a glimpse into their ordeal.
In the fall of 2000, months after the water crisis and Alyssa's brush with death, the Frasers received another shock when Shilo, then 20, fell ill with severe stomach cramps. Doctors initially tied her condition to stress, but after two years of recurrent pain and diarrhea, a specialist diagnosed ulcerative colitis and irritable bowel syndrome, connected to the E. coli outbreak.
On their own, both of Shilo's conditions are incurable and hard to treat; together, they're even worse, since they call for opposite amounts of fibre in the diet.
Now 24 and in her first year of teaching in Hanover, near Walkerton, she not only faces the stress of a new career, but the prospect of having to dash out of class to use the bathroom, and a future clouded by a heightened risk of colon cancer.
”Before, I used to be perfectly healthy,” she said this week. ”Now, I never know.”
Alyssa, who lost one-third of her kidney function to HUS, is resigned to a lifetime of daily medication to combat high blood pressure, which could prevent her from having children, and complicates treatment for minor ailments that others take for granted, such as colds.
William Clark, who heads a long-term health study of Walkerton victims, is optimistic that medication will prevent further loss of kidney function for those who suffered damage, and negate the need for transplants down the road.
Alyssa Fraser was more guarded, saying the only guarantee her doctors will provide is that her kidneys will never improve.
That sense of uncertainty only deepens when she thinks of her older sister's delayed reaction to the outbreak, and whenever something goes wrong in her own body, as it did two weeks ago.
She suffered an unexplained fainting spell at her apartment in Kitchener, Ont., where she attends college, and spent the night in hospital.
Every day, while dressing in the morning or getting ready for bed at night, her scars remind her of the chest tube they inserted just behind her ribcage, and the intravenous lines in her wrists and inner thighs.
The stretch marks on her back and hips recall the 50 pounds in fluid she gained, then lost again, from her slender, 110-pound frame over those first few weeks.
”They're really noticeable, and they really bug me,” she said.
Less noticeable, but perhaps just as powerful, is the burden of trauma Walkerton survivors carry in their minds.
In her own court statement and in an interview later, Betty Lou Bushell painted several disquieting vignettes of how the crisis has affected her granddaughter, Courtney, who turned 8 just a couple of weeks before E. coli nearly killed her.
One afternoon, months after Courtney was released from hospital, her grandmother arrived at her school to take her and older sister Brittany home with her, because the girls' parents had come down with strep throat.
Courtney began yelling, ”Is E. coli back?” as Mrs. Bushell fought off tears.
Two years later, Courtney was riding in her grandparents' pickup truck during a heavy rainstorm, like the one experts had cited as a cause of the water crisis by washing manure into a town well.
”A huge splash came over the hood of the truck,” Mrs. Bushell said, ”and Courtney yelled, ‘We have to boil the water!'”
On arriving at her grandparents' home, the girl paced up and down their driveway in frustration until her grandfather calmed her down and put her to bed. Mrs. Bushell, meanwhile, went off to bed in tears.
The Frasers, too, have dealt with the subtler after-effects of their ordeal, from an abiding apprehension over possible future health problems, to a fear of insensitive treatment from people who don't know about their experience.
Several times, from Brandon's hockey games to out-of-town social engagements, they've fought to contain their rage in the face of jokes about Walkerton's water.
Others will say things like, ”So, you're the ones we have to blame for the costs of our new water systems.”
Alyssa and Shilo, meanwhile, avoid telling people where they're from, to avoid the awkward question that always follows: ”Do you know anyone who was sick?”
”I may look okay walking down the street,” Alyssa said from her home in Kitchener, ”but there's a lot of problems they can't see.”
As numerous as their problems are, the Frasers have done their best not to dwell on them; recent family photos still show smiles all around, and their comments this week were their first public statements.
They spoke out of a need to let people know that Walkerton, for some, is anything but a fading news story.
”You can't ever get away from it,” Trudy Fraser said. ”That's just the way it is.”