Less than two weeks after having lunch at a popular sushi restaurant, Donna Ventura said goodbye to her husband and son from her hospital bed.
The retired financial advisor, 64, suffered complete kidney and liver failure and was put on a ventilator at Bozeman Health hospital, where she had fought for her life for 13 days against raw mushroom poisoning.
Scribbling with a red magic marker on scraps of computer paper, Donna told her husband Jon and son Christopher, “I’m not sure I can go on much longer,” and to her son, “I love you, Mr. C.” .
Donna was one of 51 Dave’s Sushi diners who became seriously ill and one of two who died after eating a special roll topped with raw morels.
Donna Ventura, 64, pictured here between her son Christopher on the left and her husband Jon on the right, died just 13 days after eating raw morels in a special sushi roll at a restaurant in downtown Bozeman, Montana.
Some of the messages she wrote to Jon and her son included: “I’m not sure I can take much longer,” “How are we going to cope?”, “I can’t take the pain,” and “I can’t take it.” I love you.’
Morels are generally considered edible and all tests for pesticides and other toxins on their surfaces came back negative.
However, they found that people who got sick ate raw mushrooms, while those who ate cooked mushrooms were fine.
Morel toxicity is rare, but not unheard of. In the last 15 years, there have been about 150 reports of fungal diseases caused by morels.
Donna was in severe pain, could not speak, and could not breathe on her own. In final scribbled messages to her husband and her son, she said she didn’t think she could go on much longer and she told them both “I love you.”
In April 2023, Donna and Jon went to lunch at Dave’s Sushi in downtown Bozeman, where Donna ordered a special roll.
A nice lunch date turned into a nightmare when Donna had to be loaded into an ambulance and taken to Bozeman Health, where she went into cardiac arrest.
From April 17 to early April 29, Donna was in the intensive care unit, on a ventilator because she couldn’t breathe on her own.
The toxins from the mushrooms had caused his liver and kidneys to fail.
The mushrooms were found to be true morels which, compared to the “false” variety, tend to have lower levels of the toxin hydrazine and are poisonous if consumed raw.
Consuming foods containing hydrazine can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain that can swell and damage organs.
The compound causes direct damage to kidney and liver cells, disrupts their ability to clean the blood, and destroys red blood cells, leading to inflammation and failure.
In a new interview with KBZK News In Bozeman, Jon Ventura, Donna’s husband of 34 years, described her final days.
His entire body hurt, his skin was tight due to the massive buildup of fluid in his system, and he could no longer breathe independently of a ventilator.
Dave’s Sushi in Bozeman, Montana, served raw morels on one of its specialty rolls in April 2023, sickening a total of 51 people, sending four to the hospital, and killing two.
Donna with her son Christopher as a child
Jon gave her paper and a red marker to write what she wished she could say.
Some of the messages she wrote to Jon and his son included: “I’m not sure I can take much longer,” “How are we going to cope?”, “I can’t stand the pain.”
Jon said: “And then the last couple he wrote was for me and our son, where he wrote ‘I love you’ and for our son, ‘I love you Mr C.’
Donna made the decision to refuse a feeding tube and died on the morning of April 29, before Jon could get to the hospital and say goodbye.
A few months after her death, the state and Gallatin County health departments concluded an investigation that found that between March 28 and April 17, 2023, another 50 people who ate morels at Dave’s Sushi became ill. Four, including Donna, were hospitalized.
Donna was the second of two customers who died after dining at Dave’s. William Lewis, 74, of Toston, Montana, died just one day after eating there, on April 18.
‘TILL DEATH DO US PART: Donna and her husband on their wedding day
Jon said: “I told my wife on her deathbed that one of my jobs would be to hold those who had done to her accountable for what they had done to her.” I’m very concerned about the people who eat at Dave’s Sushi.
Jon is suing the restaurant for wrongful death, as is Mr. Lewis’ family. Dave’s temporarily closed in April but reopened the following month.
Jon told the Montana Free Press: ‘Frankly, what horrifies me is that the restaurant posts statements about how we are in their thoughts and prayers. Actually? “That level of hypocrisy is hurtful, painful.”
Since the deaths of Ventura and Lewis, and the spate of gastrointestinal illnesses, the local health department has discovered nearly two dozen other violations at the sushi restaurant, including dangerous temperatures in a sample of raw fish and problems with the restaurant’s dishwasher. .
At the restaurant, the mushrooms were served raw, marinated in a cold liquid but not cooked.
An FDA investigation later found that other restaurants that had purchased mushrooms from the same distributor had cooked them before serving them and no customers became ill.
According to CDC researchers: ‘On April 8, morels were served partially cooked: a hot boiled sauce was poured over the raw morels, after which they were marinated for 75 minutes.
“On April 17, the morels were cooked raw and cold marinated before serving.”
The researchers found that people who ate less cooked mushrooms on April 17 were about nine times more likely to get sick than people who ate the partially cooked mushrooms on April 8.