Food poisoning

[dk168]

I normally consider myself to have a cast-iron stomach, however, it was my luck that I ended up with a bad case of food poisoning from my recent trip to Hong Kong.

The most likely sources of contamination were the raw beef or raw egg yokes that made up of the two lots of oriental steak tartare that my family and friends had at a Korean BBQ joint last Thursday.

I started to feel unwell Friday evening before I boarded the plane back to UK.

Good job the DA did not start until I was home Saturday morning, otherwise it would have been very unpleasant for my fellow passengers on the plane!!!

Felt so poorly and decided against going to the work's Christmas party last night, as I could not be too far away from the loo!

Can't keep anything down except fluids, and I have lost as much as 4lb in a day, mostly fluids via DA.

The others in the party were also affected in varying extent.

The steak tartares were tasty, and next time, I shall visit the joint early in the trip (it is one of my family's favourites), so that I have time to recover if bad luck strikes again!

I can count the number of bad health episodes since I recovered from childhood asthma in one hand, all acute and none of them life-threatening, and this is one of them. I count myself lucky for being in relative good health when compared with others.

Inspired by Kenny's thread about being a house-guest and the risk of food poisoning.

DK

 

[AprilBaby]

Make sure you don't have E. coli from the beef, nasty stuff!

 

[smitcompton]

Hi,


I had a similar experience this year in Las Vegas. We ate dinner at a buffet and my son and I got sick, he more so than I. It wasn't bad, just some nausea. I really didn't connect it to the buffet. We returned the next night and it happened to me again. It wasn't bad, and didn't stop me from doing anything. We had free dinners and breakfast there and when my niece got sick, mildly, I did think it was the buffet. This is a popular buffet at a nice hotel. As soon as we changed eating places, we all felt better.

I can't pinpoint what it was. We all eat different foods, but we all had the same level of illness. Makes me wonder.

I cannot remember ever having had an illness from food. I'm glad this was mild.

Sorry for anyone that has had a bad experience.

Annette

 

[ame]

I normally consider myself to have a cast-iron stomach, however, it was my luck that I ended up with a bad case of food poisoning from my recent trip to Hong Kong.

The most likely sources of contamination were the raw beef or raw egg yokes that made up of the two lots of oriental steak tartare that my family and friends had at a Korean BBQ joint last Thursday.

I started to feel unwell Friday evening before I boarded the plane back to UK.

Good job the DA did not start until I was home Saturday morning, otherwise it would have been very unpleasant for my fellow passengers on the plane!!!

Felt so poorly and decided against going to the work's Christmas party last night, as I could not be too far away from the loo!

Can't keep anything down except fluids, and I have lost as much as 4lb in a day, mostly fluids via DA.

The others in the party were also affected in varying extent.

The steak tartares were tasty, and next time, I shall visit the joint early in the trip (it is one of my family's favourites), so that I have time to recover if bad luck strikes again!

I can count the number of bad health episodes since I recovered from childhood asthma in one hand, all acute and none of them life-threatening, and this is one of them. I count myself lucky for being in relative good health when compared with others.

Inspired by Kenny's thread about being a house-guest and the risk of food poisoning.

DK

Oh no, I AM SO GLAD for you that you didn't have it hit you ON the plane! We came down with it right before we left NYC on our last adventure up there, so our flight home was less than delightful for EVERYONE.

I am literally getting over a round right now, it hit DH and I on Thursday evening. We suspect our lunch as we had EXACTLY the same thing, but mine was so much more severe that he's thinking something from our Thanksgiving dinner got me twofold. No one else was sick at all though, or has said so. I had a Dr. appt for followup on something else today, and he actually said the fact that I still have distress is of concern, and that if there's an issue still by tomorrow night he wants me to go to the ER. I am hoping that I can avoid that.

 

[NOYFB]

I had the worst food poisoning of my life in August of 2004. DH, some friends and I were driving back to IL from CO. We had stopped at a fast food taco/pizza place somewhere in Nebraska. I was the only one who ate from the pizza place. I had cheese pizza. That was it. About 8 hours later, I was sleeping in the back seat and suddenly told DH's friend to "Pull over right now!" because I had to vomit. It was awful. I could not stop puking. After about an hour or so, I was finally feeling a little better, so I got back in, this time in the front passenger seat (It was my car, so there was no way I was going to puke in my own car!), laid the seat back and kept the window open for some air. That didn't last long and we ended up pulling over to a gas station where I continued to hurl for another few hours, in between having diarrhea (while puking in the trash can) in the gas station bathroom. It was like 2:00am, and we were 80 miles from home and I could tell from the look on everyone's faces that they just wanted to get in the car and go home. But, I couldn't. I started fearing that I was suffering from liver damage because the whites of my eyes looked yellow. I told them at one point that I thought I was going to die, so they should just go on home without me - LOL (a bit overdramatic, yes, but that's how I felt at the time). I was FINALLY able to get back in the car for the final leg of the trip home and DH put me to bed with a bucket by my side. I didn't throw up anymore, but I was still nauseous for 2 days after that. I have never felt worse in my entire life. It was the most awful experience ever.

 

[JewelFreak]

I had a life-threatening case in London. The culprit was the salad dressing at the Hard Rock Cafe, where I ate lunch; I thought it tasted odd, but shrugged & ate it. About an hour later I told the clients I was meeting with I'd be right back -- & ended in the hospital. After a couple hours vomiting in the ladies' room at the Grosvenor House hotel, where my meetings were held. It was afternoon & the hotel dr. had gone home. The "nurse" got me a bucket to barf into while I sat on the john -- eventually I began going into shock. She kept telling me not to be dramatic when I asked for an ambulance!

Finally she called one as I began sinking onto the floor. Haha, they stretchered me out through the lobby where a passel of Arabs in their gowns stared down at me in fascination, like a bug on a pin. At the hospital it was bloody diarrhea & dry heaves, nothing left in my stomach, until they gave me a muscle-relaxant shot to stop it all. My companions in the ER at Marylebone Hospital were mostly drunks (of which the dr. at first assumed I was one, in my business duds & all); a nurse tried mightily to get through to one fellow, shouting, "Pete, did you swallow any broken glass?!" "Huh?" "BROKEN GLASS, PETE! DID YOU SWALLOW ANY WHEN YOU BROKE THE BOTTLE?"

My blood pressure was dangerously low, heart rate dangerously fast. At first they suspected salmonella, but it turned out to be a bad case of staph poisoning. By IV they replaced an entire liter of fluid & I drank another liter. Stayed the night & they wanted me to stay another, but I wanted to go home to Amsterdam, stat.

I staggered back to my hotel, took a shower & went to check out. The clerk at the desk put the final comment on the adventure when she remarked loudly, "You look so much better now than when you walked in earlier!" Er...thanks.

 

[ksinger]

Lord! Some of these tales! Makes my 2 trips to the ER for excessive vomiting seem tame. The first was a virus I think, since I'd not been out for 2 days before. The other was most likely a bad oyster - lightly cooked, and at a top-end restaurant where I know the proprietor handles all food perfectly. Even more ironic, was the fact that I HATE oysters and truly only ate this one to be polite and adventurous.

I WILL NEVER AGAIN INGEST ANOTHER OYSTER OR ANY OTHER SHELLFISH COOKED OR IN ANY FORM. PERIOD.

And let me just put in a little PSA here, really people, no matter how much you might like it, staying away from undercooked or uncooked foods like sushi and steak tartare, is increasingly important in our ever more polluted world. You do not want to hear the tales of one restaurant owner I know, about the things he has found in fish muscle. You just really do not. And with the end of antibiotics and the rise of resistant e-coli (among other things), you could not PAY me to eat raw stuff.

 

[Hudson_Hawk]

I normally consider myself to have a cast-iron stomach, however, it was my luck that I ended up with a bad case of food poisoning from my recent trip to Hong Kong.

The most likely sources of contamination were the raw beef or raw egg yokes that made up of the two lots of oriental steak tartare that my family and friends had at a Korean BBQ joint last Thursday.

I started to feel unwell Friday evening before I boarded the plane back to UK.

Good job the DA did not start until I was home Saturday morning, otherwise it would have been very unpleasant for my fellow passengers on the plane!!!

Felt so poorly and decided against going to the work's Christmas party last night, as I could not be too far away from the loo!

Can't keep anything down except fluids, and I have lost as much as 4lb in a day, mostly fluids via DA.

The others in the party were also affected in varying extent.

The steak tartares were tasty, and next time, I shall visit the joint early in the trip (it is one of my family's favourites), so that I have time to recover if bad luck strikes again!

I can count the number of bad health episodes since I recovered from childhood asthma in one hand, all acute and none of them life-threatening, and this is one of them. I count myself lucky for being in relative good health when compared with others.

Inspired by Kenny's thread about being a house-guest and the risk of food poisoning.

DK

I totally *get* that sometimes western systems aren't acclimated to food and microbes from other parts of the world, but given that you were eating raw meat, please see your doc to confirm it's just run of the mill FP and not something parasitic.

 

[ame]

The aforementioned fastfood taco/pizza joint is responsible for 3 of my MANY bouts with Food Poisoning. I can't even drive by it anymore!

 

[ksinger]

The aforementioned fastfood taco/pizza joint is responsible for 3 of my MANY bouts with Food Poisoning. I can't even drive by it anymore!

If you know that a particular restaurant for sure gave you food poisoning multiple times, you really should have reported it to the state health department. It sounds like that place just needs to be shut down.

 

[ame]

The aforementioned fastfood taco/pizza joint is responsible for 3 of my MANY bouts with Food Poisoning. I can't even drive by it anymore!

If you know that a particular restaurant for sure gave you food poisoning multiple times, you really should have reported it to the state health department. It sounds like that place just needs to be shut down.

It's been reported. It's a GIANT worldwide chain, and money talks, shutting it down will NEVER happen.

 

[ksinger]

The aforementioned fastfood taco/pizza joint is responsible for 3 of my MANY bouts with Food Poisoning. I can't even drive by it anymore!

If you know that a particular restaurant for sure gave you food poisoning multiple times, you really should have reported it to the state health department. It sounds like that place just needs to be shut down.

It's been reported. It's a GIANT worldwide chain, and money talks, shutting it down will NEVER happen.

It sounds as if your state health department doesn't have the will, or maybe the funding, to respond to outbreaks of food poisoning. A common situation these days, sadly. Still, when an individual restaurant is a repeat offender, you would think they could close that facility down at least.

I got caught up once in an outbreak of hepatitis caused by one restaurant in regional chain. It was all over the news, and we had to all get shots, a general mess. But corporate not only paid for the shots, they then sent out 2 free meal vouchers for everyone affected - those vouchers covered pretty much anything you wanted, including drinks. It was a shrewd move really, because without those, I would never have eaten at one of their restaurants again.

 

[Tekate]

Many years ago I went to Jamaica for a week.. had a fun time.. last day eat at a Buffet at Couples Hotel (probably gone).. back in the day you were given meals on an airplane even though the flite was only 3 hours back to JFK... started feeling 'odd' on the plane, got back to Long Island NY went to sleep woke up and 3 weeks later I started to remember.. lost 17 pounds.. prognosis gastroenteritis.. happened again after eating in a taco chain restaurant.. well known.. same thing.. lost about 25 pounds in and out of hospital.. it was horrible.. moral: I NEVER eat buffets never ever ever.. I don't trust lettuce out, bean sprouts, cheese, I don't eat cold things, only really hot items.. I was a pain in the derriere at my office because at holidays I would never eat the catered food or what people 'brought' from home.. no one wants to lose weight this way.. I am happy to read you are feeling better.. it's not fun.

added after reading all posts: I agree with the above poster who ate a lightly cooked oyster.. Sushi is just too scary to eat.. we were recently on a cruise and they served sushi twice and husband loves sushi and he dived for it.. he's been lucky but I always say to him.. just a matter of time DH ... raw food should not be eaten.

 

[monarch64]

I've experienced food borne illness twice in my life. The first time, I was in college and my boyfriend and I had grabbed a quick 3 a.m. roast beef and fries at Arby's on campus. We were both so incredibly sick about 6 hours later and it lasted for a good 24 hours. I remember being the one to go out and get us popsicles and Pedialyte at the store even though I was pretty desperately ill myself. My ex-husband became violently ill in 2007 after eating a gyro at a beef stand by our house very late after coming home from a football game on Sunday. So ill that he apparently couldn't clean up after himself, I remember cleaning the kitchen blinds in the bathtub the next day because there was vomit all over them.

Last time I had it myself was Thanksgiving Day, 2012. I don't remember what I ate, but it wasn't meat; I stopped eating that over 8 years ago. It lasted 24 hours and I would not wish that sort of illness on my worst enemy. I don't remember ever having a virus that was that short-lived or made me so ill...I may have consumed something with dairy in it that was compromised.

 

[FrekeChild]

PSA: Unless someone actually puts poison in your food, you do not have food poisoning.

These are all food borne illness. Very swift cases (1-6 hours) are brought about by toxins released by bacteria into the food, but are actually quite rare because it takes a lot of toxin to make you that sick. Most food borne illness takes at least 24 hours to take effect - bacteria and viruses need time to multiply before you will feel their effects. Symptoms of food borne illness can take 24 hours to roughly 30 days before showing up. Which is why it's very hard to pursue restaurants/food companies with these complaints. Barely anyone keeps accurate food records for months.

...stepping off soapbox...

 

[dk168]

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Food-poisoning/Pages/Introduction.aspx

That's the terminology I am used to, not splitting hair, of course.

DK

 

[monarch64]

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Food-poisoning/Pages/Introduction.aspx

That's the terminology I am used to, not splitting hair, of course.

DK

Yup, pretty sure "food poisoning" is an expression for "food borne illness" and the two are basically interchangeable.

 

[iLander]

I had a life-threatening case in London. The culprit was the salad dressing at the Hard Rock Cafe, where I ate lunch; I thought it tasted odd, but shrugged & ate it. About an hour later I told the clients I was meeting with I'd be right back -- & ended in the hospital. After a couple hours vomiting in the ladies' room at the Grosvenor House hotel, where my meetings were held. It was afternoon & the hotel dr. had gone home. The "nurse" got me a bucket to barf into while I sat on the john -- eventually I began going into shock. She kept telling me not to be dramatic when I asked for an ambulance!

Finally she called one as I began sinking onto the floor. Haha, they stretchered me out through the lobby where a passel of Arabs in their gowns stared down at me in fascination, like a bug on a pin. At the hospital it was bloody diarrhea & dry heaves, nothing left in my stomach, until they gave me a muscle-relaxant shot to stop it all. My companions in the ER at Marylebone Hospital were mostly drunks (of which the dr. at first assumed I was one, in my business duds & all); a nurse tried mightily to get through to one fellow, shouting, "Pete, did you swallow any broken glass?!" "Huh?" "BROKEN GLASS, PETE! DID YOU SWALLOW ANY WHEN YOU BROKE THE BOTTLE?"

My blood pressure was dangerously low, heart rate dangerously fast. At first they suspected salmonella, but it turned out to be a bad case of staph poisoning. By IV they replaced an entire liter of fluid & I drank another liter. Stayed the night & they wanted me to stay another, but I wanted to go home to Amsterdam, stat.

I staggered back to my hotel, took a shower & went to check out. The clerk at the desk put the final comment on the adventure when she remarked loudly, "You look so much better now than when you walked in earlier!" Er...thanks.

Laurie! This is awful! You poor thing! How awful! You are like my crazy DH who just keeps eating even if it's weird tasting. Promise me you'll never do that again!

It reminds me of how sick I got at DS's wedding. All that vomiting did lead to chills, and an overwhelming weakness, I couldn't walk. From your story, I guess I realize I was going into shock. I didn't know that was even possible, so I learned something from your horror.

So, promise me, in the future, that if it tastes funny you WON'T EAT IT! Promise me!

 

[April20]

DH and I have both had food born illnesses in the last two months. We think DH got sick from one piece of bad conch. He was swiftly and violently ill and spent a night in the hospital thanks to massive dehydration (they pumped like 2 L of fluid in him). I think I got salmonella last month. I had intestinal issues for a week solid. It was NOT fun. Neither one of us wishes to ever repeat the experience again!

 

[House Cat]

I've managed a restaurant in my younger years and have taken many food safety classes as a result. Many people think they can allow food to drop into the danger zone of below 160 degrees and then heat it up again to kill the bacteria and all will be fine. This is incorrect. Bacteria are living beings and they create waste (toxins.) Foodborne illness can be can be caused by the bacteria or by its toxins. When you reheat the food, you can kill the bacteria, but no amount of heating will get rid of its toxins.


http://food.unl.edu/web/safety/poisoning