A Montana woman who met a prolonged and painful death after eating poisonous mushrooms from China at a sushi restaurant spent her final days telling her loved ones, “I’m not sure I can go on much longer,” her heartbroken husband has revealed.
Donna Ventura, 64, fell seriously ill with food poisoning just one hour after consuming a roll filled with salmon and the morel mushrooms at a local restaurant, Dave’s Sushi, last April, KBZK reported.
She then spent the next two weeks desperately clinging to life in the intensive care unit at Bozeman Deaconess Regional Medical Center as the toxins from the mushrooms slowly destroyed her liver and kidneys.
Before she died on April 29, the illness had damaged her throat so severely that she was unable to speak — so she communicated only by scrawling messages with a red magic marker.
Among her final words were: ‘I’m not sure I can go on much longer, how are we going to manage, I can’t stand the pain’,” her husband, Jon Ventura, told the outlet in a new interview.
“The last couple she wrote were to me and our son where she wrote, ‘I love you’, and to our son, she wrote, ‘I love you, Mr. C’.”
Donna was one of two people who died after falling ill with the gastrointestinal illness after dining at the sushi restaurant a year ago, a probe by the local Gallatin County Health Department found.
At least 51 people fell ill.
The investigation pinpointed morel mushrooms imported from China as the likely source of the outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
While morel mushrooms are generally considered edible, the CDC warns they need to be fully cooked to prevent potential toxic effects.
“It was surreal to think that the simple act of eating lunch would end up putting her in the intensive care unit,” Ventura said.
In her final days, Ventura said his wife of 34 years was “was in enormous pain”, adding that “her skin was tight, fluids were building up in her system.”
He vowed on Donna’s deathbed to “hold those accountable for what they’ve done to her.”
In the wake of the probe, Ventura slapped the restaurant with a wrongful death lawsuit.
The sushi restaurant closed down briefly following the outbreak but reopened the following month.
“I worry greatly about the people who eat at Dave’s Sushi,” Ventura said.
“If you look at the records available through the Gallatin County Health Department, they’ve had multiple health code violations.”
The Post reached out to the lawyers representing Dave’s Sushi, but didn’t immediately hear back.
