ATLANTA — A 12-year-old boy who should be in school right now, is instead in isolation at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta battling E.coli.
The family believes he got sick while playing in a waterfall just across the state line.
Mason Palmer has been in the hospital since last week, and his mother says he's already lost eight pounds.
Georgia had an E. coli outbreak earlier this year, likely linked to a food source, according to the Centers for Disease Control. But this family believes Mason got sick in North Carolina, not Georgia.
Mason and his family visited the waterfall on Sunday, Aug. 18. By Monday, he was so sick he had to leave school early.
His mother, Christy Palmer, says she thought he had a stomach bug. However, he was still sick by Wednesday, so she took him to the hospital.
Christy says doctors thought it was appendicitis because of his stomach cramps, but nothing stood out after his first round of testing.
"It's heartbreaking, like, I feel like this took a toll on his health," Christy told 11Alive.
Christy says he had doctors perform another round of tests, specifically looking for shiga toxin-producing E. coli. They did - and it came back positive.
"And that was the second time," she said. "He didn't test positive for it the first time."
Symptoms of E. coli can include nausea, vomiting, stomach cramps, diarrhea that can be bloody, fever, malaise, loss of appetite and dehydration.
Mason's mother says doctors told her the strain of E. coli likely came from water or beef. She says he doesn't eat much beef and didn't eat anything different than her or his grandmother during their North Carolina trip.
She says the only difference was he got in the water, and they did not.
There's no medication that you can take to rid the E. coli, it just takes time to get out of your body.
Mason's response to being sick, through his mother, was promising: "I'm healed. I walk in the strength of the Lord and God has me. I'm fine. All I need to do is rest."
11Alive reached out to the Macon County Environmental Health Department in Highland, N.C. who said they have not heard of other reports of E. coli in the area. We also reached out to the CDC on whether they are tracking any reports of an outbreak, but we did not get a statement from the agency.
MORE HEALTH HEADLINES: