DEADLY MUSHROOMS NEARLY KILL TEEN

Teen-ager Brittany Frye and her friends were looking for a free high when
they picked and ate what they thought were "magic mushrooms" near her
Sumter home. The teens mistakenly gathered destroying angels, poisonous
fungi that quickly destroyed Brittany's liver and would have killed her. It
took the transplant of half her mother's liver and an estimated $350,000 in
medical treatment to save the life of the 17-year-old, who had planned to
take college entrance tests this week. Never before has a liver from a
living donor been used to treat someone suffering from mushroom poisoning,
said her transplant surgeon, Kenneth Chavin. "We had no choice.

Brittany would have been dead in 24 hours," Chavin said. Her liver was
gone, her brain swelling, her kidneys and pancreas and spleen at risk.
Brittany had experimented with wild mushrooms in the past. The euphoria
lasted about eight hours, she said Wednesday at the Medical University of
South Carolina. Never again, she said, her voice weak from her Saturday
surgery. "Don't eat mushrooms.

You can't know which ones are going to kill you," she said. "You could die
very easily." Her 16-year-old brother Andrew Frye said he's been around
friends who used wild mushrooms and then behaved as if they were drunk.

Mushrooms are attractive, he said, because they're free. "An unbelievable
amount of teen-agers are doing 'shrooms," he said. It's pretty common,
Brittany said.

The teens and their father, James Frye, talked about their experience
Wednesday in hopes of warning teens and parents. "It has opened my eyes,"
the father said. "You'd never think they'd walk out into a cow pasture and
pick mushrooms that have this effect." Adults seem amazed, but teens always
seem to know about 'shrooming, Frye said, adding he talked to a
knowledgeable Summerville teen this week. He's learned from teens that
mushrooms are free and easily accessible. Instead of trying to buy beer, he
said he's been told, "The best thing to do is run out and get a mushroom
and get high." Many mushrooms look similar to the white Amanita virosa
mushroom, commonly called the destroying angel, said MUSC pharmacist Mark
Baillie. From 10 percent to 30 percent of people who eat the mushroom die,
he said. From 90 percent to 95 percent of mushroom poisonings worldwide are
caused by Amanitas, he said, and just half a destroying angel, in its most
potent stage, can kill a person. Brittany remembers eating a handful of
caps and drinking mushshroom tea on July 2. She got nauseated six hours
later and went to a Sumter emergency room. She was dehydrated and appeared
to have food poisoning. She felt better only to get worse 24 hours later
and return to the emergency room, where doctors found she was developing
liver failure. At MUSC, Chavin said, it became clear that what she consumed
was destroying her liver. While the transplant team waited for a liver from
a dead donor, Brittany's condition declined so quickly that doctors instead
considered a far newer alternative, taking part of the liver of a living
donor. Her mother, Leisa Frye, was a good match and had a large enough
liver and good enough health to undergo the risky donor surgery. "It's
truly a mother's love that saved a child," Chavin said. MUSC began doing
living donor liver transplants about six months ago, transplant surgeon
Angello Lin said. If Brittany had eaten the poisonous mushrooms before
then, he said, "Brittany probably would not be sitting here." "The
transplant went fabulously," said Chavin, adding that success rates are
usually poorer when a patient is as sick as Brittany was. By Wednesday,
mother and daughter were doing well. Brittany might be released from the
hospital by this weekend, Chavin said. "Her life will be different
forever," he said. "She can get married and have kids, but her medical
problem will have to be monitored forever." As for Brittany's two
mushrooming companions, one developed liver problems but now seems to be
recovering. The other, who was nauseated but not severely ill, probably ate
a different kind of mushroom, Baillie said. Several similar-looking species
were growing in the same field, he said. The destroying angel - as the
Sumter mushroom was preliminarily identified - grows in woods and fields
throughout North America from June to early November. The white mushroom,
whose cap may discolor in the center with age, may sprout at a site one
year, then not reappear for 10, Baillie said.