Kelley Hanano’s career was just taking off, literally, as a new flight attendant for Hawaiian Airlines, and the last thing she wanted to do was call in sick.

But she started feeling lousy and it kept getting worse.

“It started with body aches, fever, then, over the course of a few days, it turned into vomiting, and shortly afterward it was diarrhea,” Hanano said. “I actually went to a doctor, and they just diagnosed me with having the flu.”

It wasn’t until a week later, when her oldest son and husband noticed the whites of her eyes had turned yellow, that she was diagnosed with hepatitis A.

“At that point I didn’t even know what hep A was,” the Kona resident said.

Health authorities later traced the outbreak to contaminated scallops from the Philippines that had been served raw at Genki Sushi. Hanano had eaten at Genki in Kaneohe with a couple of girlfriends and was the only one to eat the creamy seafood roll.

That celebratory meal has come with a heavy price.

A mother of three boys ages 5 to 16, Hanano has been miserably ill for six weeks. Nauseated, weak and with a rebellious stomach, she has lost 22 pounds.

She feels exhausted all the time but has a hard time sleeping. She even ended up in the emergency room when she developed a kidney stone from dehydration.

“The hard part is there’s no treatment for it,” she said. “There’s fatigue, there’s itching, your skin is just crawling constantly. You’re not thinking straight because you’re so tired. Only recently have I started having good days, usually in the morning. I’ll have maybe four hours when I don’t feel like throwing up.”

Hepatitis A, a contagious liver infection, can cause a mild or serious illness lasting from a few weeks to several months. The virus spreads when a person ingests even microscopic amounts of human fecal matter in food, water or objects, in this case raw scallop sushi. Cooking to 185 degrees destroys the virus.

People who get hepatitis A are contagious before symptoms appear. So Hanano’s case set off alarm bells, even though the chance that she had passed the virus to anyone aboard her planes was very slim. Like other flight attendants, she has excellent hygiene and uses gloves to distribute meals, not touching the food.

The Health Department publicizes any food service employee who tests positive for hepatitis A, to minimize any risk of transmission. Passengers and crew who had been on her flights got vaccinations to prevent the disease, as did her husband. Her kids already had been vaccinated.

“Even though you didn’t even know you had it, you still feel guilty,” Hanano said. “All you can do is hold your breath and say, ‘God, I hope I didn’t make somebody else feel like this.’ Thankfully, none of that has happened. I didn’t pass it along to anyone.”

“I had done nothing wrong. I was the one who was the victim,” Hanano said.

State Epidemiologist Dr. Sarah Park said Friday that out of the 241 cases identified so far, only a few have been transmitted from one person to another, and that happened at home.

“We’ve only really seen maybe a handful at this point, and they are all in the household,” Park said. “Knock on wood. We like to think that it’s because people are being very circumspect with thorough hand-washing and being mindful not to share their germs.”

Hanano is frustrated and angry that a restaurant she trusted served tainted food, even unwittingly. So far 64 people have had to be hospitalized for the disease.

She hadn’t worked long enough to earn sick leave or temporary disability insurance, so her income has dropped to zero. Fortunately, her husband has a job.

Hanano is hopeful that Bill Marler, a well-known food safety attorney in Seattle whom her mother recommended, will be able to help her out.

“I’m too sick to fight anybody,” she said. “I’m too weak to fight. I’ll leave it up to Bill.”

She added, “Hepatitis A is very serious and scary, so the more people know about it, the better. And the stricter food companies are, the better.”