Anyone want to talk Food Poisoning?

What was your worst experience?

Me, I spent all of yesterday in nauseated misery with accompanying dysentery every 15min. Wound up at the hospital by evening to get an IV as I could take nothing in. It's the next day now and I am feeling marginally better, but still about the level of a normal stomach flu. However, I am jonesing for some jello at the moment. I was able to keep myself going with flat coke over night.

I forget I happened to have buscopan and motillium on hand otherwise I would have vomited the whole time. Woohoo for meds.


Apparently, my poisoning was caused from a juice I had in an outside cafeteria. Strawberry and avocado (ie. something wasn't cleaned properly).

because you have no way of knowing exactly what mushrooms are in it. I ate some wild mushroom soup once and my stomach had spasms every 15 minutes for 4 days afterwards.

I was there. Within three hours, I was hurling violently. Couldn't keep food down for the next four days. From my reaction, I'm guessing every single person in the kitchen spit on that burger before serving it

Why would they have done that?

of different subcultures, that are not always tolerant of each other and that can be quite superficial in their intolerance. These subcultures are sometimes regional, sometimes class or race based, and are sometimes based on gender stereotypes

At the time of the hamburger incident, I probably had several days' growth on my face; I'd eaten at that place several times before, because it was a convenient stop on my way from work to church choir practice, and the staff was always unpleasant. Maybe their sanitation was just bad: I'd felt minor queasiness a few times the day after eating there, but this time it was just out-and-out poisonous food -- and they were incredibly rude to boot

There was an identifiable socio-economic component in the interaction

I was just curious if you had done something like sent something back to the kitchen, or if it was a racial thing, or whatever.....

from every side. I'd never complained about anything there; in fact, the attitude I encountered communicated clearly to me that a complaint would have no effect. It was easier just to stop giving them my business

But pleasantness, like anything else, apparently admits multiple readings -- although I've worked out a style of interaction that almost always serves me well, it does not always serve well, as I noticed again yesterday with a new clerk in a convenience stop store, who handed me my change with the gratuitous Here ya go, wuss. That's not the typical reaction I get -- I more frequently encounter bored clerks who initiate friendly conversations that may ramble on longer than I would like -- but it's a reaction I've seen enough times over the years that I don't even really pay much attention to it anymore. My general inclination for people who want to start p!$$!ng contests is to remain friendly, alert, uninterested, and uninvolved: but those tokens also admit multiple readings. When he says Here ya go, wuss, I form an immediate stereotype (not much education, work experience mainly manual labor, prejudiced knee-jerk conservative -- without necessarily believing I'm right) and say Thanks as courteously as if I didn't notice, and then I'm out of there, not in a hurry, wondering about the many resentments of Americans

Amazing. I mean, I guess he would have had more respect for you if you had taken a dump on his counter.

I'll give you a form

I am __________________ and they are ________________, so they fucked me over.

is too often constructed by filling out such forms -- using categories that exist only in our minds or in our traditional languages, but do not reflect the actual world -- then filling out such forms is counter-productive

By critical thought, anybody can make a certain amount of progress, overcoming somewhat the tendency to fill out such forms: but personal success in such an effort does not overcome the fact that other people are still busily filling out their own versions of such forms. Naturally, one often has no direct knowledge to support the suspicion that others are busily filling out their own form and so must infer it indirectly, from some principle such as Those people's minds are probably wired a lot like my own is or I really can't imagine another explanation, so I'll stick with this one until I have a better insight -- which is why sociology and psychology will never become hard sciences like chemistry or physics

Many people believe that food poisoning means they will get sick shortly after eating something (within a few hours), but those cases are actually quite rare. Usually it takes days or even weeks before a foodborne pathogen will make you sick. Generally finding the source of the pathogen means taking a number of people who have the exact same illness and find the common denominator among them. It's very difficult to find the source of a pathogen based on one instance.

develop rapidly, within 30 minutes, or slowly, worsening over days to weeks. Most of the common contaminants cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal cramping. Usually food poisoning is not serious, and the illness runs its course in 24-48 hours."

http://www.emedicinehealth.com/food_poisoning/page3_em.htm

bacillus cereus, clostridium perfringens, or staphylococcus aureus but not with (say) brucella, campylobacter, enterohemorrhagic escherichia coli, or salmonella typhi

Since I'd had next-day gut-rumbles three or four times after eating that particular place before, I'd regard them as a natural suspect: my daily eating routine was fairly constant at the time, and I never had problems except after eating there

Thanks for playin

Guide to Confirming a Diagnosis in Foodborne Disease
http://www.cdc.gov/foodborneoutbreaks/guide_fd.htm

...Campbell, CA. Sick as a dog for three days, and another four before I had my appetite back. May have been the grease, but I think it was bad meat.

Johnny Rockets went away...it's a "Mojo Burger" now. Some people swear by Mojo, and they supposedly use angus beef, but I still think that In 'n' Out kicks their ass.

refers to nothing more than the breed of the cow. :shrug:

...I have friends who say "Mojo is supposed to be good, they use angus beef," and rather than get into it with them, I nod to myself and think "It's time for a Double Double..."

True story. The "angus" thing came from a conversation I had with a friend last week. Two days later I was at the drive-thru at In 'n' Out.

:rofl:

I lived in Campbell for a few years but I'm now in San Jose. I haven't been the Johnny Rockets in the Pruneyard but I have been to the one by Oakridge on Santa Teresa and Blossom Hill. Luckily, the meat wasn't rancid when I went there.

Nothing beats In N Out though, when it comes to burgers.

The day I went to Johnny Rockets it was hard to tell, because the meat was really, really, really greasy. The other thing that struck me about the place was that it was supposed to be this fun, happenin', period diner, and it was staffed by some of the most joyless people I've seen outside of WalMart greeters. I'm going to assume they hated every single moment of being in their 50s uniform. The day I went to Barnes & Noble and looked over and saw the brown paper covering up their windows was one of the happiest days of my life. I go to the Pruneyard at least once a week and every time I saw the place it reminded me of THAT DAY...

:toast:

transmission route, but a number of pathogens associated with human food poisoning are not uncommon in human saliva

Staphylococcus aureus and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in workers at a university hospital: colonization and beliefs in health
... workers presented high prevalence of Staphylococcus aureus in saliva ...
http://www.uff.br/objnursing/index.php/nursing/article/viewArticle/j.1676-4285.2008.1864/418

Miniaturized Lab Permits Saliva Screening On The Go; Tests Could Detect Drug Use, Disease Or Bioweapons
... Malamud will present their work on creating a prototype oral swab kit that detects HIV and Bacillus cereus ...
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050223135635.htm

Campylobacter showae can be found in dental plaque and infected root canals
see: Campylobacter By Irving Nachamkin, Martin J. Blaser p 12
http://books.google.com/books?id=TqnlLt8Or6MC&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=%22dental+plaque%22+%22Campylobacter+jejuni%22&source=bl&ots=cEKWh6zRws&sig=PNmqxgj75ZRMtTCa7XLn59fsr3U&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result

I feel with you :hug:

Two years ago on our way back from the Ukraine we stopped in Warsaw, Poland. I had a red beet soup with pelmeni (Polish tortelini). Later that night I became so sick ... both sides. I couldn't hold down anything the whole night and pretty much the whole day. That day we wanted to visit Auschwitz. No chance, I was too sick. I couldn't even keep the coke down.
It got better that evening but I still felt queasy.

That one also got my wife as well... We thought it would be a fun break during the women's studies conference we were attending... WRONG.

Then, OMG we had our flight out the next day. :(

That must have been bad. I hope the flight wasn't too bad. x(

It was like a roller coaster :(

from something on the buffet. Mr. 48 got it too, either that or perhaps from the moron in front of me on the plane who had the flu?

Hope you are feeling better. Food poisoning sucks :puke:

was able to keep down jello for lunch.

we were still sick on the way home on the plane. That was a real blast, no pun intended. :rofl:

food poisoning/stomach flu.

was feverish and couldn't keep anything in my digestive track all weekend. Literally lost 5 pounds.

and collapsed in the tiny bathroom of a bar (but I had not been drinking; it just happened to be the closest bathroom). I was 'revived' by the repeated sensation that someone was kicking me. Turns out, my near-lifeless corpse was blocking the bathroom door- and people kept trying to get in; the door kept banging into my shoulder. I staggered to my feet and through the bar, and I could see people chuckling and pointing at the 'drunken loser' who passed out in the bathroom. I got outside again and spilled my guts.. then somehow made it back to the hotel room. That was the only time I had 'fresh' prawns -and its the last.

I ate some bean soup that had been sitting OUT on my stove for near two weeks. I still don't know why I did it. I was sober and everything. I just went in kitchen for a meal, warmed up the soup, and ate it.

The next 12 hours were hell.

Hope you're feeling better now.

:hi:

NEVER eat at inchworm's house. :puke:

More for meeee!

I'm usually not that stupid. I still wonder what I was thinking.

:crazy:

There are two problems with your story:

1) You had old food on the stove for two weeks.

2) You ate it.

Both of these things combined make you an unappealing host. x(

I seee. Put that way it makes perfect sense.

I would lay out several explainations about why the food was there and why I could have thought it was ok, but I won't. :P

:blush:

First the wife threw up for six hours until she felt better. An hour later, I started in, and threw up for the next six.

Barley is not fun to throw up.

and I got really drunk one night in Lima, Peru. Pisco and cerveza. We got thrown out of a few bars.

When we started throwing up, we did it together. We were really close; we did everything together.

I remember looking over at him and seeing a whole shrimp - a small one- coming out of his nose.

My drinking slacked off considerably after that night.

An entire small shrimp? Oh, my...that one will haunt me. Somehow.

Should have gone to the ER, but I was by myself and could not drive.
Later drank lots of fluids and slept for a day or so.
If I got it now, I'd call an ambluance ASAP - I'd fear for my life.

mark

I never got the explosive runs, but goddamn I'm a pro at hurling bile every half sec.

When my stomach was ready to be cooperative, Dr. Pepper was my friend.

I am no longer a projectile vomit virgin, having finally experienced that rather amazing experience a few months ago. I'm a small lady, and who KNEW I could hurl something that far? If it had been a spittin' contest, I would have totally rocked it. I'm still not sure what was the culprit, but I'm thinking a rice dish that just tasted "off." It was weird enough I only ate two bites, but that may have been enough...

Ginger ale and jello kept me going the next day until my stomach decided it would stay in our normally beneficial long-term relationship. :-)

And I should have known better.
Just wasn't thinking.

I was a pilot at TWA and was deadheading (passenger) on a JFK-CDG (Paris) flight to work a flight the next day.
The original 747 had some kind of mechanical at the gate so they had to bring another over from the hangar.
It was summer.

The refrigerated food carts were pulled from the first aircraft and parked on the hot jetway. They should have been returned to the refrigerated truck until the new a/c arrived.

I'm pretty sure it was the lobster hors d'ouvres that did it.
(Yeah, back in the good ol' days we had food like that.)
I started throwing up about an hour after I got to my hotel room.
Spent the next 2 days there under a doctor's care.
Needless to say, I didn't make my flight out of Paris.
Wound up deadheading back home clutching a barf bag (just in case) and was off schedule for another week.
yuck

once gave me some foreigner food. He was trying to poison me and take over the USA.

First was with peanuts in shells. The expulsion, which came about six hours after ingestion, was violent and complete. My body basically wanted everything out of the GI tract--NOW!--and I complied as quickly as I could. I couldn't eat anything for a couple of days. Didn't even want to. Finally I was able to manage blackerry yogurt. My limbs felt useless for days. It felt as though I'd aged 40 years overnight. I wondered if I'd ever be active again. In about a week, everything was back to normal.

The second was probably caused by shellfish at a restaurant in Maine. My ileum, I later learned from doctors, clamped shut. I wound up in the hospital for five days, four of which with a tube up my nose and down my throat.

I hate food poisoning.

The last thing I had eaten was fruit salad. I still can't harldy eat it today.

I was extremely close to being hospitalized for dehydration. Nothing went in my mouth that didn't come back out of it. I had to drink a tablespoon of sprite every 20 minutes. I was so thirsty from being dehydrated that that was a tease. It was rough. Even those small tablepoons of sprite came back up.

I despised green peppers for about 25 years after eating them the "last meal" before a particularly bad bout of food poisoning. It's something hard to shake. I can tolerate them now, but only in smallish doses. Time does heal, eventually, I suppose...

As for the "everything came back up," I had that too with a bout of viral encephalitis when I was a young teen. I couldn't even hold down water. Now that's sucky to the extreme, though it wasn't food poisoning. I was IV'ed and tubed for that one, and according to my pediatrician, lucky to be alive.

It's weird how you internalize those moments of extreme sickness. They stick with you, for sure.

of food poisoning.

That was NOT pretty.

I had just graduated from high school a few weeks earlier when I got food poisoning for the only time. As near as I can figure, it was some bologna I had eaten the day before that must have gone bad. My sister had some too and got sick as well, but not as badly as I did. I was sick for a week, and I barely ate anything. Anything I ate would rocket out of one end of my body or the other anyway, so there was no point.

Worst. Graduation. Gift. Ever.

Nobody else got sick, so I'm guessing that I just got "lucky." It could have been cross-contamination from a few sources, but I suspect that she put the cooked burgers back onto the plate that had the raw patties after grilling. But the next day, at work...OMG. It was a summer archaeology job, and thank goodness I was starting to get an inkling of what was coming and arranged to do lab work (near a toilet) rather than go to the site that day (no bathrooms anywhere near). I had about an hour and a half drive, all highway, back to where I was living...that evening, I had to wait to leave til right after one projectile puke. I *just* made it to the toilet in my apartment!

The weird thing is, I didn't get an aversion to burgers from the experience, I got an aversion to corn dogs instead, as that's what was being served for lunch -- and that's what I smelled just as I was starting the severe-nausea-throwing-up part of the experience. :-(

Taco Loco, I think?

Anyway, I went to go order my burrito and they were "out" of a lot of the ingredients. My mom got chile colorado, and she said it was cool when she got it. She kept sending it back to the kitchen for reheating, and you know I thought she was being a damn pain in the ass.

Sure enough, about 5 hours later I was on the can wishing I was dead. It hit her the next day.

We called the restaurant, and they said they had gotten a few complaints. They gave us free meal passes, but we never did take them up on that.

I developed it less than 2 hours after eating. I was simultaneously vomitting and having diarrhea for a few hours straight. Then I got several minutes break and usually could do one or the other rather than sit on the toilet with a bucket. I was pretty ill this way for about 24 hours. I was on an athletic trip in another state and the coach wouldn't take me to a hospital. He thought I'd be fine. I guess I was eventually, but I felt like I was going to die.

Lets just say two hours after that was not a pretty sight

I never puke. I will do anything to keep from puking.

But that night I vomited a river. It was so nasty.

I still remember lying in some friends' apartment, and this little abuela from Chile was placing lemon slices on my forehead to cool my head or something. I had no idea why she was doing it, but I was so out of it, I didn't care.

You would not believe the restaurants that will tell you there is no mushrooms in something after being told that HE IS ALLERGIC!

We usually find them before he can take a bite, but two that didn't: one was a blended stuffing fried into a wonton and one was a steak that had been topped with them. We told the server before the fact, but of course the steak still came with mushrooms. We sent it back and got what we thought was a new steak. Apparently they just scraped them off and reheated. :grr: He was up the whole night that night.

Mine was something I ate at a Chinese restaurant. I had the worst stomachache for the whole day. As soon as I :puke: I was alright. Took me awhile to eat Chinese again - and not from that restaurant again!

As I'm munching happily on my wontons, I look at one and think "Hmm, I've never seen meat THIS color before". I quit eating right away, but felt fine for the rest of the evening and thought I had escaped. I woke up at 3AM and projectile vomited on everything then spent the next three days in bed with a bucket. Should have bought some Depends, too. It was nasty.

No Chinese food for me, thank you.

I've had stomach bugs of the "going around"-ish variety, but it seems like there isn't much in the way of old, raw, or scary food that can throw my tummy over. I tend to thank regular prophylactic doses of anti-biotic alcohol, just to be sure, though.