Steve Marcus
Judy Ryerson holds a photo of her Ester Kathy during an interview at the Kemp Jones law offices on Friday, August 13, 2021. The photo was taken about three years ago during a 50th high school reunion, she said. Kathy Ryerson, 69, a Real Water consumer, died of severe liver failure on November 11, 2020.
Sunday, August 22, 2021 | 2 a.m
A small group of Kathy Mustain Ryerson’s friends and family gathered in the living room of her Las Vegas home, surrounded by about half a dozen computer screens streaming across the country for the many others who couldn’t be there.
But on Ryerson’s 70th birthday on May 1, the group instead honored the life of the retired nurse who gave birth to thousands of babies as a midwife.
Ryerson’s life was shortened in November by liver failure attributed to Real Water, a Las Vegas-based alkaline water company, according to a lawsuit filed in Clark County District Court in May. The lawsuit is one of several the company faces for alleged liver damage caused to dozen of victims over a six-year period. Ryerson’s sisters’ lawyers filed the lawsuit on behalf of several victims.
At the gathering, the mourners shared stories of Ryerson’s past escapades, from countless road trips to a 1980s Caribbean vacation where they and a friend were treated “red carpet” by a tourism minister.
As the memorial ceremony ended, Simon Sutherland, Ryerson’s nephew, played the iconic Christian hymn “Will the Circle be Unbroken?”
It’s what Ryerson has long wanted to be played at her funeral.
When Sutherland, then a child, went on a road trip with Ryerson in Arizona, she apparently asked him a favor out of the blue: “I want you to promise me – if you’re still at my funeral – I want you. I want you to promise me.” play (that song), ”recalled Simon’s mother, Pat Sutherland, from the family attorney’s office in Las Vegas this month. More specifically, Ryerson wanted a honky-tonk version of Asleep at the Wheel’s song.
Family members had a better idea – they played the song themselves. “I said to this undertaker, undertaker, please drive slowly because this lady you are carrying, sir, I hate to see her go,” the group sang at this one Day with, hardly a dry eye among the mourners.
Younger sister Judy Ryerson, Kathy Ryerson’s longtime Las Vegas roommate, said the past year has been tough. “I hate it,” she said.
Kathy Ryerson, her sisters’ attorneys say, is the only person who has died from complications related to using the product. According to the lawsuit, a batch of the product manufactured in October 2020 resulted in dozens more liver failures, causing emergency brain surgery, miscarriages and liver transplants, according to the lawsuit, which saw more than 48 patients in the intensive care unit
In the lawsuit, the manufacturer Milwaukee Instruments is also accused of having failed to detect the poor water quality with its measuring device.
The attorneys listed for Real Water and Milwaukee Instruments’ parent company could not be reached for comment.
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Ryerson was always looking for ways to improve her health. In the summer of 2019, her sister returned home from a work trip and found five-gallon jugs of Real Water, which the lawsuit advertised as “the healthiest drinking water available”. Her sister consumed 64 ounces of water every day, Judy Ryerson said.
On September 23, 2020, Kathy Ryerson received a call from a doctor who was doing blood tests and said, “Kathy, your liver enzymes are really high, you need to go to the hospital right away,” her sister said.
She was released after four days of testing, but when she returned home “it became increasingly difficult for her to move and do things,” said Judy Ryerson.
She returned to the hospital on October 16. She never recovered and died on November 11th.
Her family did not associate her death with Real Water until news about the product surfaced this spring.
Southern Nevada Health District announced in March that it was working with the Federal Food and Drug Administration to investigate five cases of acute non-viral hepatitis – a disease of the liver – in children in Clark County that reported November 23 through December 3, 2020 became. possibly caused by real water.
The following month, the FDA linked the cases to the water and issued a full recall, which the company did not deny, according to The Associated Press.
As of May, the health district announced it had identified 16 cases of acute non-viral hepatitis in Clark County. “So far, it has been found that consumption of ‘Real Water’ branded alkaline water is the only common exposure associated with all identified cases,” the health district said in a press release
In June, a federal court permanently blocked the marketing of Real Water products after the company agreed to halt distribution and destruction of all plants it owned in Las Vegas, Henderson and Mesa, Arizona, according to the AP.
Eric Pepperman, one of the attorneys representing Ryerson’s family, described the litigation as “complex,” involving various lawsuits, plaintiffs and defendants.
“It is very clear that Real Water was the cause,” said Pepperman. “But the exact … mechanisms of what happened, what went wrong, these details (will) be the subject of further investigation.”
Because there was a lot of overlap between the lawsuits, law firms worked together during the investigation period, he said. An initial hearing on the discovery took place last week.
“It’s scary that something like this should have been allowed to happen, and something like this could happen,” he said. “Especially on the massive scale we’ve seen.”
The grieving sisters would rather not talk about the lawsuit, although they hope it can bring them comfort, responsibility, and regulation for other water companies.
They want to remember their funny, adventurous sister: the woman who posed in a beloved photo that shows her with a big smile, wearing a goofy, brightly colored umbrella hat during a day at the lake.
“We deal with her loss every day and it is just beyond belief that she is gone and how much unnecessary suffering she is,” said Pat Sutherland.
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Kathy Ryerson was born into an upper-middle-class family in Wisconsin and was the oldest of four siblings two years apart.
Pat and Judy remember a happy home where their parents insisted that they pursue their passions through higher education. The surviving sisters recall that their mother went back to school in the mid-1960s to do a Masters.
Then married with four children, including her brother Rick, their dad took over the cooking and put them to bed on school evenings, Judy Ryerson said. “We had a very fantastic perspective on the world from our parents.”
“She was a real smart guy,” says Pat Sutherland of Kathy, who sang as a child, played theater and was involved in the German Club. She graduated from high school in sixth grade and was a member of the National Honor Society.
Inspired by the feminist movement and antiwar protests that led to the 1970 massacre in Kent, Ryerson earned a bachelor’s degree from Grinnell College, Iowa.
She fought fiercely for George McGovern’s presidential campaign a few years later, but became disillusioned with politics after the humiliating loss of the candidate to Richard Nixon.
“The pendulum swung,” and Ryerson, to the great surprise of loved ones, was accepted into the Yale School of Medicine. The federal government covered her tuition on the condition that she worked in a medically underserved community for two years.
She was offered a job at a hospital in Chicago, but she was tired of the Midwest and “went as far away as possible,” said Pat Sutherland.
That led her to Arizona, where she worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs on a Navajo reservation.
Judy Ryerson recently came across an information log with 243 babies she assisted in childbirth. She also found an abundance of cards and photos of the families she had helped and who stayed in contact with her for years.
She continued to practice as a midwife across Arizona, caring for a child born with congenital complications for several years before retiring and moving to Las Vegas in 2014, where her sisters and late mother had since moved.
The sisters grew closer and loved chatting and having barbecues by the pool. To honor their mother on her birthday, they went to IHOP to enjoy their favorite food: pancakes.
Ryerson, mostly a couch potato, read the newspaper daily, sewing and sewing beads. She was also a prolific artist who loved making scrapbooks, including one she made for Pat to commemorate a Beatles concert they attended in 1964.
Every September 4th they talked on the phone to remember the day, Pat Sutherland said.
Judy Ryerson said they had begun making travel plans for her retirement from the UNLV.
“I was looking forward to doing all of these things with her. … She was way too young, “she said.
