As many parents do, mother Vivienne Wardrop placed her 10-month-old into a shopping cart as she walked around a Gold Coast supermarket.
Within the next 24 hours, her son Logan started showing the symptoms of severe illness.
He suffered from high fever, bloody diarrhea, and vomiting symptoms as a result of contracting meningitis and a salmonella infection from the contaminated cart.
The initial diagnosis of a simple virus was proven wrong when Gulf Coast University Hospital staff ran numerous tests to uncover a dangerous combination of rotavirus, meningitis, salmonella, and adenovirus.
Vivienne reported that the supermarket was the only location away from home that she had visited with her son, concluding that the shopping cart was to blame. Logan was finally on the road to recovery from severe dehydration, considerable weight loss, and painful symptoms after 10 days in the hospital on antibiotics.
Parents are advised to work proactively to clean shopping carts with a sanitizing wipe unless laying down a protective blanket for the child. Children are more susceptible to illnesses, and some potentially deadly viruses can pass simply through contact with a contaminated surface.
Although Logan is expected to make a full recovery, other children may not be as lucky to get a second opinion from a team of fast-acting doctors.
