posted
Two nights ago, on my way back to my parents' house, I stopped at a local McDonald's for some late night junk food. I ordered a double cheeseburger and a diet coke. Next morning (yesterday), i woke up to vomit violently about 5 or 6 times, then fell asleep again. then i repeated this process about 4 more times, until i was taken to the hospital. turns out being diabetic and getting food poisoning doesnt mix well. it elevated my bloodsugar so much that the doctors said that there were high levels of keytones in my blood and i had to stay overnight. i was released this afternoon, and still feel nauseated and have a headache, but am much better compared to yesterday.
Im not asking for any prayers or good wishes. save those for blackblade and his sister. I just was wondering what places anyone else may have gotten food poisoning from and what it was like for you. Maybe we can make a list.
Posts: 813 | Registered: Nov 1999
| IP: Logged |
There is a long humorous story involving me simultaneously vomiting and crapping my pants while wearing my Sunday best all thanks to food poisoning that I had tried to avoid. I had it for a week, lost 12 lbs in a week and bled quite a bit out of my rectum. Perhaps I'll write out the whole thing some other time.
Moral of the story, if you are eating at a hot pot restaurant and a piece of meat you just boiled falls onto the raw meat plate, even if it did not land on the raw meat itself DONT eat it!
This all took place in Taiwan by the way.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
i threw up quite a bit of blood. and yeah, i would have just recooked the meat. but i guess it wouldnt have been as good a story then. thanks for the speedy responses.
Posts: 813 | Registered: Nov 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
krynn, I was talking to BB. He said he dropped the meat while doing hot-pot, where you cook the meat yourself. Why not re-cook the meat before eating it?
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Interesting. I wonder how long a piece of food would have to be boiled in order to kill new bacteria, and if the meat would still be tasty when it was done.
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Actually, blood in the stool is more of a symptom of food infection (from E. coli or Shigella), rather than food poisoning, which usually just causes vomiting or diarrhea.
Hope you feel better soon Krynn.
Posts: 2069 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
KQ, i saw that you were talking to BB, and i was adding to it. i was agreeing with you by saying i would have cooked the meat as well. weird of him not to think of that eh?
EDIT: thanks maui
EDIT #2: the kid who does the voice for aang, the avatar, also did the main char, Louis, from Meet the Robinsons.
posted
oh, and keytones are things found in your blood. usually you test for them by peeing onto these test strips, but at this hospital it was checked for in my blood. lucky me. they were worried that i might have had keytosis. it makes your blood somewhat acidic and eats the proteins in the cells. my keytone count was high, but from some other test they found out that i didnt have it. so yeah, it was some seriously nasty food poisoning. im going to have to have a word with Ronald McDonald next time i see him. a few choice words i can assure you. or just the management of this Mcdonald's by my parents' house.
EDIT: sorry for double post. it was relevant i think.
Posts: 813 | Registered: Nov 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
oh, i think you are right. i didnt bother to look it up because i was watching a movie in another tab. same thing.
Posts: 813 | Registered: Nov 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Sympathies. I seemed to be getting food poisoning about every year-and-a-half for a while there. Right now I'm on about a two-and-a-half-year streak (knock wood.)
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
The day after the Red Sox parade when they finally won the World Series.
I thought it was food poisoning, but I just looked like a drunk guy puking in the streets along with 30,000 adults in costumes. I was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance....they had them stationed every other block....and I had to tell them 5 times that I had not had a single drink that night.
I filled every barf bag they had.....in the 7 min it took to get the the hospital.
Turns out it was a kidney stone. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
The last time I had food poisoning is when I was about 10 (I think). I was at a sleep away camp in Quebec, and we were going to go hiking up a "mountain" and eat breakfast at the peak while watching the sunset. We woke up at 4 AM and I started puking. Moral of the story... I don't know, but I still don't trust camp food.
Posts: 2705 | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by ketchupqueen: You COULD re-boil the meat, BB.
If you have ever witnessed the speed with which Chinese people shovel food into their mouths you would know there is no time to reboil, geez!
TBH in retrospect I honestly had no idea just what a mistake I had made when I picked the piece back up and ate it. Within 45 minutes I was developing a fever and my vision was going funny.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I don't think I've ever had serious food poisoning, but on occasion I'll et fast food and end up with diarrhea the next day.
Posts: 349 | Registered: Oct 2007
| IP: Logged |
posted
I've also never had it seriously. There was this one time though I ate at a college cafe for dinner I woke up around 3 am and I felt like I was going to die I was in so much pain. I didn't know if it was going to be vomit or diarrhea.
That was bad, I hope I never come across anything worse.
Posts: 106 | Registered: Nov 2007
| IP: Logged |
posted
I was violently ill once in Guatemala. My whole group was careful to drink only bottled water and to eat what our guides provided, but we did go out to a restaurant one day for lunch, and I'm pretty sure that's what made me sick. Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I made the mistake of eating airline food in China. I spent the next day in the bathroom. I was on a tour group at that point and they decided that I must be pregnant, which made the rest of the trip with that group interesting. Of course, now that I am older adn wiser, I would have milked that for all it was worth (at the time, I was very anti children).
Posts: 1001 | Registered: Mar 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
the last time i had food poisoning was new year's eve of 2002-2003. i was in brazil visiting an exchange who stayed with my family. we were out walking the beach going from party to party and i stopped at this guy who was cooking hamburgers on the beach. i had a little diarrhea the next day, but thought it was from all the alchohol. the day after i flew home. and the next day i was up most of the night throwing up. thirst thing my dad said to me was similar to what he said to me this time, "Who gave you the alchohol, and why were you drinking so much?" I had to explain that i hadnt had anything to drink in days. in both situations.
Posts: 813 | Registered: Nov 1999
| IP: Logged |
The voice actor for Young Lewis is Jordan Fry (Best known as Mike Teevee from Burton's Charlie & the Chocolate Factory). http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1627748/
For whatever reason, their voices do sound very similar, though.
PS: Food poisoning sucks, you all have my sympathies.
Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I've gotten terribly sick from eating Del taco twice. Losing too much weight and the whole nine yards.
I think every time I ate food from the 24 hour drive-thru, and I'm willing to believe that most rules like how hot the meat must be and how often the meat must be thrown out aren't strictly followed around 3 a.m. Before I was really aware of all this I worked at McDonald's at 18 years old, and on occasion (during the middle of the day) we would leave the same 5 cooked chicken breasts in a tray in the heat racks--for about 3 hours. That I can't recollect when they should have been changed is a bad sign.
Moral of the story: don't eat fast food, or if you absolutely must, never around 10 p.m. and after.
Posts: 368 | Registered: Aug 2007
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Noemon: That's a little quick for it to have been a reaction to the meat, don't you think?
I should think so, but I only knows what I felt. Also remember it was 45 minutes after the meal. The meal itself was at least an hour if not 1.5 hours. I'm willing to believe I underestimated how much time had passed as it also takes about 20 minutes to bike from the restaurant to the cyber cafe I started feeling sick at.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by EmpSquared: Moral of the story: don't eat fast food, or if you absolutely must, never around 10 p.m. and after.
My theory is that if you order something special, like a fish sandwich plain (something I would order), they will have to make it up fresh.
Posts: 2034 | Registered: Apr 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Noemon: That's a little quick for it to have been a reaction to the meat, don't you think?
I should think so, but I only knows what I felt. Also remember it was 45 minutes after the meal. The meal itself was at least an hour if not 1.5 hours. I'm willing to believe I underestimated how much time had passed as it also takes about 20 minutes to bike from the restaurant to the cyber cafe I started feeling sick at.
Even so, that's still too soon for bacteria from the raw meat's juices to have had a chance to reproduce in large enough numbers to cause the symptoms you described, I think. I'd guess that either the cooked meat contained toxins from bacteria that had previously been living on it, and that those were what poisoned you, or that something that you ate earlier in the day or sometime the day before was the real culprit. Did anybody else at the dinner get sick from it?
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Noemon: That's a little quick for it to have been a reaction to the meat, don't you think?
I should think so, but I only knows what I felt. Also remember it was 45 minutes after the meal. The meal itself was at least an hour if not 1.5 hours. I'm willing to believe I underestimated how much time had passed as it also takes about 20 minutes to bike from the restaurant to the cyber cafe I started feeling sick at.
Even so, that's still too soon for bacteria from the raw meat's juices to have had a chance to reproduce in large enough numbers to cause the symptoms you described, I think. I'd guess that either the cooked meat contained toxins from bacteria that had previously been living on it, and that those were what poisoned you, or that something that you ate earlier in the day or sometime the day before was the real culprit. Did anybody else at the dinner get sick from it?
Nope, nobody else got sick as far as I recall.
The only reason I am pretty sure it was the meat, was that not only did I get violently ill, I went from feeling fine to early stages of delirium inside a 1 hour period. The symptoms just came on me so fast.
Also I do not believe I ate anything prior to the hot pot lunch.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think food poisoning symptoms can come on as quickly as 30 minutes after ingestion, though I suspect (as Noemon notes) that the very quickest cases are due to reactions to preformed toxins. IIRC, most cases fall into the 2-6 hr period.
The length of time is often associated with the bug involved, though there is a lot of overlap. Things like your height and weight, level of hydration, exhaustion, etc., all can influence the progression.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
That's a useful link CT; thanks! I was disappointed, though, that it didn't list the incubation periods for each of the strains. Don't go looking for it, but if you happen to know off the top of your head of a site that does, I'd be interested in bookmarking it.
I had been under the impression that the incubation period for almost all active infections from foodborne bacteria was longer than 2-6 hours, and that symptoms of food poisoning that fell within that window could fairly reliably be attributed to preformed toxins. Is this not the case?
I also know that I've read that it's fairly common for people to misattribute the source of their food poisoning, blaming a very recently eaten food when in reality it was caused by something eaten a day or so before. I probably read that back in my pre-internet days, though, so I don't have a link. If the above paragraph is accurate, though, it makes sense.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
The only reason I am pretty sure it was the meat, was that not only did I get violently ill, I went from feeling fine to early stages of delirium inside a 1 hour period. The symptoms just came on me so fast.
Also I do not believe I ate anything prior to the hot pot lunch.
Many types of food infection (as opposed to food poisoning) can cause very sudden onset of symptoms.
And of course you ate prior to the hot pot lunch. We eat every day, several times a day. Severe symptoms like you described can be days or weeks in the making. For example, shigellosis has an incubation period of 1-8 days. For hemorrhagic colitis (E. coli) 2-8 days. For Hepatitis A, the incubation period can be longer than a month.
And many of those kinds of illness can be caused by environmental contamination as well, especially in developing countries.
That's not to say that the cooked meat falling into the raw plate would have been safe to eat. Quite the opposite, in fact. It may absolutely have increased the duration and severity of your illness. But it probably wasn't the cause of your initial symptoms.
Posts: 2069 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
For sure! That was a link to eMedicine Health, which is for lay articles. The straight eMedicine article for food poisoning is here, and there is some of the information you want.
I think (again, IIRC, it's kind of fuzzy) that most pathogens in food poisoning take a day or two to kick in, but there are only a few that make up most identified cases of food poisoning in the US: staphylococci (starts in 1-4 hrs), salmonella (6-48 hrs), bacillus cereus (vomiting in 1-6 hrs) ***, and listeria (? unclear). I remember that it was a shorter window than I had expected for most cases.
---
*** Of note, B cereus doesn't get much press, but it is the reason why you are more likely to have problems with rice on a picnic than with mayonnaise. Don't fear the egg salad first -- fear the side of rice! There is some association with meat, too.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by EmpSquared: Moral of the story: don't eat fast food, or if you absolutely must, never around 10 p.m. and after.
My theory is that if you order something special, like a fish sandwich plain (something I would order), they will have to make it up fresh.
It would depend on the restaurant. I would say that it would be possible that the person making your sandwich would use the fried fish patty if there already was one made.
If it's a grilled fish patty, then there's less of a chance that the employee will use an old one, but I'd still say the chance is there.
Posts: 368 | Registered: Aug 2007
| IP: Logged |
posted
At least here in Hawaii, people frequently want to blame the fish for their illnesses... It's almost never the fish, for the simple reason that when fish goes bad, it goes REALLY bad. Contaminated meat/potato salad/rice/beans can look and smell fine, so you're less likely to avoid them.
Unless you have scombroid or ciguatera poisoning (both associated with fish, but with very specific symptoms, not just gastrointestinal), it almost certainly wasn't the fish.
Posts: 2069 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
No you had it right, food poisonings have a shorter incubation** period than infections. It's just that a sudden onset of symptoms (BB described his
quote:The only reason I am pretty sure it was the meat, was that not only did I get violently ill, I went from feeling fine to early stages of delirium inside a 1 hour period. The symptoms just came on me so fast.
is consistent with infection as well as poisoning.
______________________________
** I know this isn't the right word, but it's escaping me at the moment. I'll look it up in a bit because this thread inspired me to write an article for the Maui News about the difference between FP & FI and I want it to be accurate.
Posts: 2069 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Hey thanks Noemon, Maui Babe, and CT, I never expected to find this stuff out but it's all very fascinating!
Unfortunately in the aftermath they never did figure out what was making me sick, my symptoms persisted unabated and I could not keep anything down. They eventually decided to look through my intestines with a camera. They told me on a Friday that they were going to do it Monday, and that day I got a blessing and prayed pretty fervently that my body would heal on it's own and that I would not have to go in for that sort of surgery. The crux of my argument was something like, "God look, this procedure is going to cost thousands of tithing payers dollars, it would be far cheaper for you to just heal me and spend the money elsewhere." I'm not sure if my point was taken but I healed up by Monday and all my symptoms suddenly disappeared. I ate a quarter pounder with cheese that day to celebrate.
The only thing they ruled out was parasites, e coli, and salmonella.
Also having a thumb probing around your anal cavity is far from pleasant, and doctors really should give you more warning then, "ok exhale and just relax..."
But I suppose it was handy to find out that I don't swing that way so to speak. Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
On the bright side, a serious case of food poisoning could get me out of the family Christmas party tomorrow.
Posts: 413 | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged |
My theory is that if you order something special, like a fish sandwich plain (something I would order), they will have to make it up fresh. [/QB][/QUOTE]
I ordered them without mustard for that exact reason. Posts: 813 | Registered: Nov 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Back in the days when I worked at McDonalds (I'll give you a clue, hamburgers were 35cents) we pulled the meat directly from the grill and put it on the buns, with the catsup, mustard and pickles. If someone ordered without catsup or mustard, we'd have to cook another burger (usually just waited until the next batch was ready though). We weren't supposed to do it, but sometimes if someone ordered it without pickles or onions, we'd just take one of the ready made burgers and scrape off the offending item (not me, but I had a manager who was really bad about this).
From what I can tell at the McDonalds around here, it appears that the meat is cooked ahead and kept hot until after it's ordered and then assembled. According to the FDA food code, as long as it's kept above 140F, they can serve it. I couldn't find a time limit on that. Of course, if you hold it too long at that temperature, it will not be very palatable, but it would still be *safe* to eat.
Based on what you've described about your symptoms and onset times, if it was the McDonalds food that made you ill, they're probably not keeping their meat hot enough. Or they're making burgers ahead and letting them sit for >4 hours (although I think you'd know if you got a burger that had been sitting out that long).
Posts: 2069 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote: On the bright side, a serious case of food poisoning could get me out of the family Christmas party tomorrow.
Ah! I did that once! I got really sick and I didn't have to go to the Family Christmas Talent Show. *shudder* I totally won, too, because that year they forced all the grandchildren from the youngest toddler to the oldest (my then 25-year-old husband) to wear Santa hats and sing "Go Tell It on the Mountain" in rounds. For no other reason than to (apparently) take a picture of them for future blackmail. I saw that picture, too, and no one looks happy. W00t for me!
Now I live in another state, so the question is moot. Life is grand!
Moral: Extended family talent shows (especially of your in-laws) are kinda dumb. Mandatory participation in aforementioned shows is cruel.
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
I'm still wondering about "keytones." It sounds like a one-hit wonder from 1962 or something.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
![[Dont Know]](graemlins/dontknow.gif)
![[No No]](graemlins/nono.gif)
![[Angst]](graemlins/angst.gif)
