A person’s life can change in the blink of an eye. One moment a person can be perfectly fine and then the next, deathly ill. That is just what happened to Barbara Pruitt. CNN reports that Pruitt nearly lost her life after eating lettuce infected with salmonella.
While Pruitt is fortunate enough to be alive today, her story highlights the importance of being prepared for the unexpected. A health insurance policy assures that people who become sick from salmonella will get the emergency medical attention they need.
Today, Pruitt still struggles to live a normal life.
“My whole day revolves around dealing with my medical issues or us working around my medical issues,” Pruitt told CNN. “We now plan how I can participate rather than focusing on the enjoyment of anything that we would like to do.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says roughly 40,00 0 people become sick with salmonella each year. Most of the time people people who become ill with food poisoning suffer relatively mild symptoms that last a few days. In more severe cases, however, the CDC estimates that 400 people die each year.
In August 2010, the CDC estimated that 1,340 illnesses were linked to a salmonella enteritidis outbreak that caused the recall of half a billion eggs that originated from two farms in Iowa.
