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| 注册日期：2002-04-15 |
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9月1日阅读,美联社~
Food Allergy Tied To Death
LI woman ate shellfish dish
By J. Jioni Palmer
STAFF WRITER
September 1, 2003
A 20-year-old Bay Shore woman attending college in Miami died Thursday after spending nearly a week in a coma that was apparently the result of an allergic reaction to shellfish, relatives said yesterday.
Faith Floridia, a third-year dance student at New World School of the Arts, was unable to breathe and slipped into anaphylactic shock within minutes of tasting a seafood dish at the diner where she worked, said her mother, Donna Floridia of West Bay Shore.
Donna Floridia said that on Aug. 22, according to co-workers at the Gables Diner, Faith was one of several employees to sample a new menu item - codfish with shrimp and crabmeat stuffing. Minutes later, Faith complained that she was having trouble breathing.
"She took a couple of bites and within minutes she collapsed," her mother said. "She was rushed to the emergency room where it took them a while to resuscitate her."
No one from the diner was available to comment yesterday. Floridia was the only employee to try the codfish dish who fell ill.
Faith was taken first to Coral Gables Hospital and then to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, where she was taken off life-support, her mother said.
Donna Floridia said her daughter had been previously diagnosed with asthma, and had an allergy to mold but no known food allergies.
Faith had fallen ill last November in Florida and again in July in Bay Shore while visiting family, Donna Floridia said. Both cases, she said, were attributed to an allergy to mold.
"She had fish all the time - shrimp and sushi," Donna Floridia said.
Medical experts say people occasionally have allergic reactions to foods they had previously enjoyed without negative consequences.
"It's not that common, but it is possible," said Dr. Tom Caraccio of the Long Island Regional Poison and Drug Information Center at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola. "Usually they had a prior exposure indicating they are sensitive to it."
Floridia said Faith, a graduate of Bay Shore High School, had begun to stabilize needing less oxygen with each passing day.
"We had high hopes that she was going to come out of it," she said. "We were all hoping."
On Wednesday, Faith was moved from Coral Gables Hospital to Jackson Memorial Hospital. A day later Floridia said she and her husband, Dennis, were informed by hospital officials that Faith was legally brain dead and would be taken off of life-support.
"We said we would rather wait," she said. "They said 'you have no choice.'"
Lorraine Nelson, a spokeswoman for Jackson Memorial Hospital said she could not comment specifically on Floridia's case without written consent from her family.
Nelson said decisions about when to remove patients from life-support typically made after the facility's ethics committee, attending physicians, and family discuss the possibility of recovery. That assessment, she said, generally guides the decision.
She said that, in some cases, the decision can be made without family consent.
Florida statute says that a proxy, including a parent, may make decisions for an incapacitated patient about their care, "except that a proxy's decision to withhold or withdraw life-prolonging procedures must be supported by clear or convincing evidence that the decision would have been the one the patient would have chosen or ... that the decision is in the patient's best interest."
Besides her parents, Floridia is survived by her brothers Dennis, 23, and Ryan, 16, and sisters Amber, 8, and Natalie, 4.
Viewing will be today from 2 to 4:30 and 7 to 9:30 p.m. at the Boyd-Spencer Funeral Home in Babylon. Burial arrangements have not yet been set
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long arm of coincidence here~
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2003-09-01 20:52:31
