'30 days of hell' for US victim of German E. coli

ATLANTA (AP) — In early May, John Meyer stayed at a lakeside hotel in Hamburg, Germany. He attended a business conference. He went sailing. And he became one of the few U.S. victims in one of the worst food poisoning outbreaks in recent world history.

Meyer went to the hospital a week later with what turned out to be a rare and deadly strain of E. coli bacteria that caused thousands of illnesses, mostly in Germany. He would spend the next month in a Massachusetts hospital, much of the time a delirium, while doctors worked around the clock to save his life.

Meyer is one of six U.S. cases linked to the German outbreak and he's the first to talk about his terrible experience, …