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Sheesh. I seem to be cursed as of late with a series of completely lame, yet thankfully transitory, health problems. My apologies if this blog is starting to read like a geriatric litany of physical woe!
But in sharing, one hopes that others will learn to proceed with caution. I suppose all one learns from my sepsis-flu experience is to wear biohazard gear when weekending with toddlers, and not to run 6 miles if you suspect that perhaps you are coming down with something.
But we all must eat,right?
Friday past, all the supervisors at clinic treated our colleague "W" to a nice (organic, not Chinatown) lunch for her 60th birthday. Within 20 minutes she felt unwell. By the time she walked the 3 blocks back to work she felt faint to the point that an ambulance was called. Obviously, we were all stunned, and very concerned. Strangely, no one else felt the slightest bit ill - not even the woman who split the meal with W and therefore consumed the exact same beet salad, fries, coffee, and chicken sandwhich. By 4:30 I was growing alarmed that no one had heard if W was hospitalized or what. I notified her family of what happened and our subsequent ignorance of status. Later W called and said she was better, "I still don’t know what happened", and that Kaiser was insensitive enough to discharge her at 1:30 in the morning.
"At 1:30 they unplugged my IV all of a sudden and said ‘take a cab”, is how W described her disorienting and rude hospital discharge.
Making ill people go home alone in the middle of the night falls under my definition of poor patient care.
The next day is Saturday, I am thrilled to bits at attending a 6 hour writing workshop. Afterwards, P and I have a reservation at Plouf. The meal was lovely, featuring mussels in white wine and garlic, chatty diners at the next table conversing about my Beijing 2008 Olympics backpack and travels to Argentina (our past trip and his planned one). Creme Brulee to die for and profiteroles in caramel and chocolate sauce. P teased the waiter about his suspiciously transient french accent, which he then obligingly emphasized or did away with on cue.
Perfecto.
I dozed off in the car on our voyage back to the suburbs. Woke up feeling funny. Within the hour realized I was in for some serious hurtin’, dimly familiar sensations from years past when my stress levels had rendered stomach pains a regular occurence.
Yet again I’ll spare the gory details. Suffice to say that I am 100% sure I could never be bulimic because I find the entire food purging experience to be so…revolting. (Ok, so what if its redundant.) Saturday night I awoke almost every hour for the ‘ol heave ho.
In an abstract way I pondered how much fluid one could lose, like how much blood loss one can sustain before it becomes life threatening? How does one know when it’s time to visit the hospital and get fluids? Normally I ponder such electrolyte and fluid equations in relation to long distance atheletic events and endurance levels, but here that knowledge base seemed relevant.
Come Sunday, I quickly ascertained that the tummy was still ticked off as all hell, and not accepting contributions.
Presently it’s Monday and I have survived the weekend on about 1 mug of peppermint tea and a glass of watered down "high endurance formula" gatorade. The gatorade seems to be from another life! One in which I vaguely recall feeling quite strong & even a tad bit smug. Not at all like this little aching ball curled up with a book (BTW Bohjalian really is worth reading, fantastic.)
My relationship to shellfish & french food is now permanently tarnished by trauma. sacre Bleu, indeed.
Near midnight my Dad called to chat about life, the whereabouts of my 3 uncles, and his Bipolar cat Yuanyuan, whom I love. I explained to him my little Plouf drama.
"Ah, seafood", he said, "there’s so much we don’t know about what goes on in the seas, it’s really a mystery sometimes how maybe just one bad mussel can kill a person."
Tell me about it, I think.
"Do you remember Master Liu?"
Of course I do, he was my father’s teacher, and someone quite respected.
So Dad managed to completely distract me from my own travails by sharing Master Liu’s food woe legend. Following a fairly typical Chinese banquet with friends, Master Liu felt ill and went to bed. They had enjoyed all sorts of seafood- fish, shrimp, shellfish and he didn’t quite know what was bad. Yet none of the other banquet companions got sick.
Here’s where the story becomes qualifiable as a bizarre medical case study. He’s lying on the pillow and begins oozing liquid from his head. It’s clear, but it’s not sweat. It’s thick, but it’s not pus. As he is pondering what on earth is going on, his pillow has become all wet and he decides to get up.
(I must interject, at this point, with mystery ooze on my head, I would have run screaming to the hospital, dignity be damned)
He spends the night sleeping downstairs in an upright position on the couch. Armed with a box of tissues and a wastebasket. Periodically he has to wipe off the stuff before it drips onto his face, and toss it in the wastebasket. After some hours, and a full wastebasket, it finally stops.
Then, his hair begins to FALL OUT.
Oy vey, now this tale of food poisoning is starting to sound like radiation poisoning.
I ask my Dad, "are you SERIOUS!?"
"Oh yeah, first a little bit, then almost all of it, especially on top. That’s why for awhile he was wearing a hat everywhere he went."
I laugh involunarily at the utter bizarrness of it. If men knew that seafood poisoning could cause hair loss, that would probably be the salvation of sea fauna across the oceans worldwide. Seafood sales would plummet. Environmentalists take note!
"Well, after a long time his hair did come back. All white at first. Then…kind of yellow, like a foreigner! Finally some black. But he was old anyways so it’s OK if it’s not all black."
So. I will re-evaluating my long love affair with hamachi sashimi and raw oysters.
But I was distracted and relieved to learn that my food poisoning was far from the worst case scenario. And the functions of the human body impress and amaze me all the more as it works to expel invaders.
Eat with care and appreciate the wonders of your bod!
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HI - thanks for sending me link. This is the first time I have ever used this. I just thought to add my two cents or three and just to say “hi!”
That is a strange story about your father’s friend. I heard of a similar incident many, many years ago with similar symptoms and the same result of the hair falling out and finally growing back except for a tiny spot at the top of the head. His body swelled to double, stuff oozing out, his hair fell out after a while. When he was taken to the emergency ward, he was immediately diagnosed with severe MSG poisoning. He had been eating instant ramen, three times a day for months. He was recommended to lay off the ramen and he quickly healed except for a bald spot on his head. . . .
One of my students had a very severe case of food poisoning which after several months is still causing problems and he is still being tested for. He had a salad a some restaurant made from “black market” lettuce which had been contaminated with cow feces. If the lettuce is not washed thoroughly, the result is obvious. Now how many pennies can a restaurant save by buying lettuce in the legitimate way and buying it under the counter? Quite shameful.
Anyways, I would like to caution people about salads in restaurants. “Black market” lettuce seems to be quite prevalent in restaurants, even the finer ones, these days. Not only was it deadly, but the confession of getting sick by the consumption of cow crap is also quite humiliating and embarrassing. . . . .
My best always, Sensei
Kensho 01.30.07 @ 2:31 pm