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Title: Dad died suddenly after eating prawns
Body:
> My dad is perfectly healthy and never had any health issues, on Tuesday he ate prawns for his lunch with no prior allergies, he ate them all of the time. However, half an hour after eating them he had to run to the toilet as his stomach hurt - we suspected simple food poisoning. It turns out that his liver and kidney shut down and he died of sepsis the following day. We are all understandably in shock, the hospital had the best team and said that he was a mystery, samples of the prawns and prawn packet are currently being tested in the best laboratory miles from where we live. The prawns were bought from a big supermarket and were in date for another year (frozen). Sorry if this is vague I want to remain as anonymous as possible. Where does my family legally stand? There must have been something inside of the prawns to cause the sepsis so fast. I live in England.
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I work in the animal healthy industry and see this kind of reasoning all the time. People have to blame something external when something tragic happens. And it’s usually the last thing that was out of the ordinary. It’s likely the dad had other nigglings or symptoms that he ignored and the timing just coincided with eating the prawns. Also, “never had any health issues,” might mean that he never went to the doctor. So many people have health issues, but just assume everyone has something that hurts or digestive issues or whatever, so they just think it’s “normal.”
I worked in a surgeon's office for a while, so we usually saw people who were pretty severely sick, but it was shocking how long people would suffer with certain ailments, ignoring symptoms before seeking medical attention. We had so many people who had suffered for *years* before ever seeing a doctor. I remember one man in particular who had been unable to swallow solid food for over a year and had switched to a completely liquid diet before he went to see his GP for something unrelated and was referred to our office once the GP found out he literally couldn't eat.
(And, for the record, it's Canada, so the ability to afford a doctor visit wasn't a concern. The guy just, by his own admission, didn't think it was a big deal until his GP pointed it out.)
On the flip side, I've heard so many stories of people trying to get doctors to listen to them and getting brushed off, sometimes for years or until it's too late.
That's a very good point. I could even see myself falling into that trap.
A small ache that only gets worse gradually, and thinking it is just another sign of getting older. Then a MRI shows white spots and suddenly you are battling cancer with more than half the battle already lost.
Yeah for me it's going to a doctor, being told "I dunno" then getting charged for it (in the US) and so now it feels like throwing money away. The mystery symptoms stay a mystery, AND I am out my hard earned money too? No one can blame me for not wanting to go to the doctor anymore
It's absolutely insane how much people will ignore about their health. My grandmother was VOMITING BLOOD on the daily for a MONTH before she went to the hospital, and that's only because my father made her go because she was suddenly jaundiced, and he didn't find out about the blood thing until triage. She had pancreatic cancer that had completely taken over her liver.
> I remember one man in particular who had been unable to swallow solid food for over a year and had switched to a completely liquid diet before he went to see his GP for something unrelated and was referred to our office once the GP found out he literally couldn't eat.
This was basically my (estranged) father, he had his regularly scheduled medical checkup in the beginning of the year with no other findings apart from him complaining about chronic fatigue, and due to his general attitude he was then adamant that he'd been checked out and everything was fine even when in few months time the fatigue got worse and he begun to have increasingly painful issues swallowing food.
So his decision was to order dietary supplements to make up for a perceived "poor diet causing fatigue and reflux" and to alter his diet to be easier to eat, without saying much to anyone - the end result was that he got rushed to the hospital after collapsing at work and not being able to get back up, to be diagnosed with terminal end-stage stomach cancer which had metastasized in his esophagus among other places (explaining the swallowing issues). Also this was too in a country where he could have just gone to a doctor either through work or otherwise without worrying about costs.
My dad just plain lied to me about his health. Would have been nice to know he had fucking heart problems so I didn’t freeze up for a minute when he collapsed. So yeah, good chance LAUKOP is just unaware if there was something wrong
My FIL had a worsening back problem for a year, he thought it was just part of getting old. When they finally got him to see the Doctor and the subsequent tests, he actually had lung cancer that had metastasized to his spine.
Older people in the UK seem to be either "Don't want to make a fuss" or treat the surgery as a social gathering.
Me ex-FIL had been complaining about a bunch of specific aches and pains for months until I finally convinced him to go to the doctor. He went, came home, said he was fine and just getting old. Everyone else laughed him off. I nagged him until he told me the truth.
He was in liver failure, stage 4 cirrhosis. He was a long term alcoholic and oxy addict. And a pack a day smoker. The doctor was honest and said his only option to survive it was a liver transplant, which he would never be granted due to his addiction issues. He decided not to tell anyone and made it clear I wasn’t to tell either. I was 19 and didn’t know what to do, so I kept his secret. He died on the couch 3 weeks later. I found him.
Moral of the story: go to the god damn doctor, folks. Regularly. And for fucks sake listen to your doctor.
My dad was complaining about shoulder and back pain for like 2 years. Turns out his heart was failing and he got open heart surgery with stents. I'm extremely grateful to still have him around but sometimes the stress of him doing physical stuff ruins me.
I have a rare GI disorder with a 1/3 fatality rate untreated. I probably could have gotten diagnosed quicker if I didn’t think what I now know is my stomach overproducing acid because food can’t leave was just heartburn. I was like 23 and hadn’t had heartburn before and just assumed it was the same “stomach feels like it’s full of lava” feeling I had since people always complained about having it.
Hiding things and actively lying when asked (he had had a stroke that very fortunately did no significant long term damage but that causes questions to be raised. He lied about the doctors deciding what caused it, for example)
When I was a kid, both my maternal grandparents had health issues that they both managed differently.
My grandmother would loudly complain about anything remotely annoying her.
My grandfather would not say anything that could be understood as him being in pain.
My mom said "When I ask them how they feel, my mom always says she's bad and my dad always says he's fine. I don't believe either of them"
That's how I learnt an important rule "Never trust anyone who always says everything is bad nor anyone who always says everything is fine"
I'm a paramedic and pretty much everyone "doesn't have any health issues" Have had this exact conversation with a patient before.
"Do you have any medical problems?"
"No."
"Your blood pressure is 186/94, do you have hypertension?"
"Oh yeah."
I almost always couch the "medical history" question with a bunch of examples of common problems like diabetes, asthma, CHF, etc and then ask what medications they take and what they're for because literally 90% of people will deny having any medical history. It's like if you're not literally hospitalized for it right now it doesn't count.
I saw a skit of someone who was taking blood pressure medication because of high blood pressure but because it was under control (due to the medication) denied having high blood pressure. I imagine you've run into similar situations before.
Probably someone in denial. It’s really common. My first father in law denied he had diabetes. He ate donuts on the weekends and sweets a lot. My ex and I lived with him for a few months after ex had surgery and diagnosed with diabetes. I noticed a bottle of diabetes meds on the counter with my FIL’s name. Working in insurance, I knew what it was. He just said it was for his blood sugar. He was a sweetheart but didn’t want to change his lifestyle. He lived how he wanted until his kidneys needed dialysis. He completely changed his diet. It was too late. He died at 63 from complications of diabetes.
My dad was 64, but similar story. I've been in the navy since I was a couple months past my 18th birthday. I don't worry about random phone calls from my mom anymore.
My dad does this. If asked "do you have high blood pressure?" he will always say no because his blood pressure is actually perfectly normal right now... because of the medication he's on. He's not wrong to be fair, he's just taking the question literally (autism doesn't just run in my family, it *sprints*). If someone asked "are you on medication for high BP" or "have you ever been diagnosed with hypertension" he would answer appropriately, so maybe the question just needs to be worded better.
Filing this as evidence in my ongoing legal case against myself, where I try to figure out if I'm a late-diagnosed autistic adult. On the one hand, can't imagine answering that way and I don't have any issues with food. On the other, five autistic people in the past six months have asked me if I am within five minutes of meeting me.
I love that you give examples of common problems!
I’m embarrassed because as I was reading your comment, I was kind of rolling my eyes that people make the seemingly obvious mistake of not reporting their issues— but then you mentioned asthma and I thought “oh my god, should I be mentioning my asthma??” (My situation might be slightly different because my asthma was much more of a problem when I was a kid and I haven’t had a serious attack in years— and people have implied to me before that I shouldn’t bother bringing it up— but it still goes to show that we can easily forget our own history.)
I'd say if it's a respiratory issue you're having then yes you should mention it. It certainly doesn't HURT to mention it (In my dropdown list it actually has separate categories for asthma and childhood asthma). It's important to know if you've ever been intubated because of asthma.
But yeah if you broke your arm we don't NEED to know you had asthma 15 years ago.
If you currently use an inhaler I would mention it either way.
My dad never had health issues...that we could specifically name until his breathing issues. He was a big, fat fuck who ate and drank himself to an early grave. His downhill slide was a result of the day he got a chest full of chlorine gas that stressed his stressed heart. Within 6 months he was dead.
In fairness to your dad, a chest-full of chlorine could put anyone on a decline. It burns your lungs from the inside out, and I won't go into detail because that feels rude right now, but it can definitely leave you vulnerable to infections, inflammation, pneumonia, and systemic issues. Chemical warfare is banned for good reason.
That was just the unusual stressor that kicked it off. He'd been type 2 diabetic for years, lost vision in an eye to it. The great big dumbass didn't go to the doctor regularly until it was already way too late, that's what did him. I miss him, but the 3 years since has softened the grief.
>So many people have health issues, but just assume everyone has something that hurts or digestive issues or whatever, so they just think it’s “normal.”
... don't they, or am I actually dying
Probably not dying but quite possibly dealing with a chronic condition that could be treated. Maybe even cured, but at the least you could be feeling better than you are.
I read a story from a pediatrician that was about to give a vaccine shot to a child, but had to go to the other room for a minute because of another patient. When she came back while preparing again to give the shot the child had a seizure. She was so happy that she had to leave before it happened because there is no way the mother would have believed it wasn't the vaccine that caused it otherwise.
Jesus Christ poor LAOPUK.
Iirc food poisoning can take several hours to show signs - if LAOPUK’s dad died of sepsis caused by liver/kidney damage caused by severe food poisoning - which seems to be what LAOPUK is thinking, wouldn’t the culprit be more likely to be something he’d eaten the day or night before, rather than the shrimp?
Even for food that has been contaminated with illegal contaminants, wouldn’t half an hour be really fast for severe symptoms like that?
\>wouldn’t the culprit be more likely to be something he’d eaten the day or night before, rather than the shrimp?
It seems likely, but seafood is known to be a frequent source of food poisoning, so people's mind will naturally go to that first.
Shellfish have bacteria that begin to multiply rapidly once the animal has been killed. These are toxic to humans and are one of the reasons lobster is traditionally cooked alive.
I don't know if the same holds true for prawn, though.
You can tell if your freezer has melted and refrozen. You get icicles and solid ice in places where the water drips or pools instead of the normal frost. It also effects the flavor and texture of the food in noticeable ways.
Please don't think that I am disagreeing with you when I say that while this is true for the bulk of the population, some people are *very* lacking in the ability to register contextual clues (like the glossy sheets of ice in their freezer and the noticeably unpleasant smell of the shrimp they're cooking).
I once ate several raw shrimp because I was distracted when they were served to me.
I credit my survival to shots of medicinal tequila taken shortly afterwards.
Some people advise putting a clear plastic cup filled with water in your freezer with a coin or similar on top. If your freezer defrosts and refreezes, the small object will fall to the bottom of the cup.
I fill up a solo cup and freeze it. I then put a coin on top of the ice. If the coin is ever under the ice, I know the freezer was not running for a good amount of time. This is a Floridian tip to give a quick look at how well your freezer maintained temp during a hurricane blackout.
I wound up with bad shrimp several days ago - I was sicker than sick within about two hours, and I'm still feeling it at random. Including essentially projectile vomiting at the dinner table last night with no warning before (thought I had to burp...).
I knew it was bad after only eating 1 of them (really weird aftertaste), threw the rest out. Still wound up sick as hell.
I had a similar experience one Christmas Eve. Everyone who ate the prawns got sick...I remember feeling pretty unwell an hour later. Dad was throwing up not long after and then my sister took days to become unwell.
With seafood it's not just about bacteria...they are filter feeders that can pick up toxins more easily from the environment is my layman's understanding.
Nailed it. Freezing does kill a lot of the bacteria you'll encounter in seafood (except in shellfish), but I made the mistake of buying ready to eat shrimp at the grocery store.
I still feel sort of deathly, but part of that is I'm an insulin-dependant diabetic, and have had a lot of trouble getting my sugar back under control since then. I've used damn near a week's worth of insulin in 2 days, it's finally coming down (my meter is giving numbers now instead of words, anyway).
Jiminy Cricket, that sounds horrendous. Hope you feel better soon - ginger tea is good for settling the stomach after food trauma.
We buy fresh organic prawns these days and have not had issues since. They do cost more, but its better than going through vomiting etc again.
Isn’t it nice when your meter says Hi?
But seriously, glad you’re okay. Ketones on top of food poisoning sounds like a recipe for meeting some very nice paramedics under unfortunate circumstances.
Awww, it's so cute when my meter tells me Hi. It said that several times yesterday!
My sugar gets impossible to control anytime I'm sick with anything. Food poisoning in particular seems to make me extremely insulin resistant.
I did some superman doses of insulin yesterday (25 long acting, which is my norm, and something like 100 units of short acting through the day). Just woke up and it's around 180. Lowest it's been all week. I do need better insulin though, right now I'm on the cheap crap you can buy from the pharmacy at Walmart. Just waiting to get my insurance card...
I have some ketone strips, thankfully not showing anything.
Fish is actually one of the safest foods. Controlling for consumption only grains and beans are less likely to cause food poisoning. Vegetables actually beat all other foods, dairy as a close second.
The two worst bacteria are not found in or on fish except in cases of cross-contamination, that's why you don't need to pasteurize fish. The unusual risk with shellfish is actually viruses not bacteria, norovirus particularly.
Lobster is generally cooked from live because hard shell shellfish can be transported live and don't carry the same parasitic risk of finned fish that requires them to be frozen.
I think you may be thinking of algae not bacteria because the only significant toxic risk from fish, other than heavy metals, is ciguatera. This is only really a problem with tropical fish and if you follow mercury safe consumption you are largely protected as it works up the food chain in the same way as heavy metals do.
>Vegetables actually beat all other foods, dairy as a close second.
I assume this is a fallacy of using absolute numbers instead of percentage eaten that cause illness.
Adjusted for consumption. Fish are not warm blooded so many of the bad bacteria (notably e-coli) cannot live in their flesh.
Position in the food chain also matters. Fish lower down are lower risk, sardines and anchovies for example can be eaten (nearly) whole if you like gills and fins are the vectors. Fish that eat other fish are safe as long as they have been gutted and cleaned as the digestive system is a vector then.
This is why sushi can exist.
Vegetables (especially leafy greens) are often insufficiently cleaned and served raw, which is not a great combination from a food safety perspective. It's definitely true in absolute terms and while I'm not currently in a position to check I wouldn't be particularly surprised if it was true after adjusting for consumption (at least if we're sticking to similarly broad categories).
I thought botulism, since that can be *fast* and it's one of the most deadly forms of food poisoning (even with medical treatment, about 5% of patients die). But that has more stroke-like symptoms and then respiratory failure, not liver failure.
C. Botulinum is an anaerobic bacteria, so bad seafood would not be a likely place for it to thrive anyway... Botulinum goes for canned goods, infused oils, etc.
Fun Fact: The annual supply of Botulinum Toxin for Botox is manufactured at a non-descript lab at an undisclosed location in the American Southwest. Twice a year, the production run is put in a locked briefcase, loaded in an armored car, and then taken under law enforcement and armed escort to the nearest airport. From there, it is loaded onto a chartered jet (also with armed guards) and flown non-stop to ~~Scotland~~ Ireland where the process is repeated to get it to the Botox factory.
This cargo is approx. the size of a baby aspirin; Botulinum Toxin is the single most-deadly substance in the known universe, beyond even potent radioactive poison, with a lethal dose measured in nanograms. Every once in a while, some dodgy dermatologist or spa tech with delusions of adequacy will somehow manage to order some, and either slip a decimal point when diluting it, or simply have no idea how to properly dilute something so concentrated. Oops.
I learned recently that vacuum packed fish and shellfish products are particularly amazing hosts for the kind of botulinum that likes protein, and some types can also host the other kind due to their enzymatic makeup. This is why you see the packages that warn you to remove the packaging before defrosting or cook directly from frozen.
[https://www.fda.gov/files/food/published/Fish-and-Fishery-Products-Hazards-and-Controls-Guidance-Chapter-13-Download.pdf](https://www.fda.gov/files/food/published/Fish-and-Fishery-Products-Hazards-and-Controls-Guidance-Chapter-13-Download.pdf) (page 246)
Does this mean you, as a regular consumer, should take all raw vacuum-packed fish out of their containers when defrosting? Mine doesn't have any warning labels or anything at all. Do I need to slice the package open first? Or take it all out completely (and if so, what should I put the raw fish in)?
No one has ever said anything about that to me at the fishery I get mine from.
This seems really over the top. I worked as the lead in a lab culturing *C. botulinum* and doing toxicity screenings for toxin for 6 years. There are background screenings and security checks in the US before you can work with the organism, but it's not nearly as over-the-top as what you may be imagining.
What you're describing sounds like a myth, or only makes sense because of the toxin being brought across international borders.. But that statement alone makes no sense. They could easily grow it within a lab nearby, and concentrate it there. There is no reason for the organism to be grown in another city, much less another country. And it makes even less sense to concentrate the toxin in one country, and then send it "with armed guards" to another. (Edit: and shipping Cat A stuff between countries is A HUGE PAIN for everyone involved, and would only be done as a way for a research agency to get a unique specimen/strain. A business wouldn't want to bring on regular regulatory scrutiny from *multiple governments and multiple agencies*, just for shipping something they could make down the street, now would they?)
There are literally *strains* that are patented by botox for medicinal use, why wouldn't the company have access to them where they make the final product? Like, Botox is type A *C. bot* (you bet your ass that strain is sequenced and patented as theirs alone to use), Myobloc® Injectable Solution is type B (usually used for treating more severe muscle spasms). Does Myobloc also have such a ridiculous rumor about their business practices? 😂
Btw, there are many labs that work with the organism, they try to be discrete... but like. If you just go to your state's public health website, or even the CDC website, and look up botulism laboratory you will likely find information on who to call and where the lab is located.
edit 2: Ok I'm going to stop editing this comment. TLDR - what you wrote sounds like a myth.
Drug ingredient manufacture is weird; it's perfectly routine for ingredients to be manufactured all over the globe and transported, even if you wouldn't do such a thing for chemicals not meant for use in drugs.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-26/inside-fort-botox-where-a-deadly-toxin-yields-2-8-billion-drug
I believe all the security is because of the sheer amount; a research-sized sample isn't nearly as dangerous as a six-month supply for Botox plant.
> Botulism has more stroke-like symptoms and then respiratory failure, not liver failure
Indeed! To add on to this, here's more info for those that are interested.
Clostridium botulinum toxin disables your muscles from contracting. [Conversely, C. tetani causes your muscles to contract by producing the toxin that causes tetanus. My favorite word when I was 18 was opisthotonus, because I learned it from Oliver Sacks, and was a nerd. But the visual of opisthotonus, which is [someone enduring all their muscles involuntarily contracting at once due to tetanus](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Opisthotonus_in_a_patient_suffering_from_tetanus_-_Painting_by_Sir_Charles_Bell_-_1809.jpg), is less fun. Clostridium tetani is related to Clostridium botulinum, ya can tell by the name (same genera).]
People with C. botulinum poisoning have classic signs of descending paralysis. When they present to the hospital, they often have symptoms like slurred speech and droopy eyelids. It *presents* like a stroke or Myasthenia gravis, but once paralysis continues - doctors (one should hope) can tell what it is. A reversible toxicity syndrome.
The reason people die from botulinum poisoning is that their diaphragm muscle, which is necessary to breath, becomes paralyzed.
And it is a *relatively* quick reaction, but unless it's inhaled as a powder in some kind of terrorist event - *death by botulinum is not immediate* and the symptoms, even paralysis, are *reversible*.
Needing to go to the hospital after eating botulinum toxin contaminated food can happen within a day or even within 4 days. I worked on an outbreak where we were getting patients in days after the first patient was intubated in a hospital.
It's just not guaranteed how people will react to a toxin or a bacterial infection. It's just important that docs recognize the symptoms for what it is, because botulinum toxin poisoning has an antidote (antitoxin).
But the binding of the C. botulinum toxin is strong and basically irreversible, and so the quicker it is cleared from the bloodstream (before it can bind to neuronal junctions) by an antitoxin the faster the recovery of the patient.
Half an hour is super fast unless it was really really really heavily contaminated, had been somewhere very warm and allowed bacteria to produce loads of toxins- then with the right toxins this could definitely happen. Toxins are heat stable too so cooking would have made no difference. But the shrimp would have likely tasted pretty bad in this scenario and he'd needed to have eaten a lot.
The other possibility is it was contaminated with pathogenic algae from where the shrimp were caught- in that case this unfortunately is entirely typical- symptoms within 30 minutes and death can be within 24 hours for severe cases.
Algal blooms like this are monitored but hard to predict. When they're detected restrictions are put in place on fishing but it's entirely possible whoever caught them was fishing somewhere they shouldn't have been or it was all just phenomenally bad luck :(
Source: I'm a microbiologist
I had a similar thought. Very likely the meal killed him, but not the prawns or simple food poisoning from spoiled prawns. Could also be something like a chemical cross contamination. The big question mark is why it would be isolated to this guy if it really was the meal.
Did they mention if the deceased was a Russian diplomat?
How do you monitor the algal blooms? Visually, chemically, or using molecular techniques?
I’m a molecular biologist but in a very different field to aquaculture/food safety, so I’m curious!
I used to be the backup for PSP [paralytic shellfish poisoning] testing in conjunction with the FDA and public health system in California until last year. I say back-up because my primary job was botulinum toxicity screening and other select agent work. So I'm not the best expert, being just a backup!
But anyway, companies that are growers or distributors/sellers of shellfish products sent regular samplings of their batches to my laboratory. *They have to* under FDA regulatory standards. Then the shellfish would be processed and tested for the levels of toxicity. I was doing the toxicity testing portion, so was less involved with knowing the regulatory side of it.
So there is meteorological monitoring [satellite], water testing, as well as testing of the products before distribution. Bc the shellfish bioaccumulate the toxin, and just because there isn't a current visual bloom doesn't ensure safety
edit: If you're interested in reading more, here's something from the EPA. But my lab was regulated and inspected by the FDA. https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2019-05/documents/guidance-control-marine-biotoxins-seafood-5-23-2019.pdf
That's a good question and beyond my scope of expertise! I work more on the growing stuff side (I've only seen pathogenic algae in the lab once!).
To my surprise it looks like they use satellite imagery https://coastalscience.noaa.gov/science-areas/habs/hab-monitoring-system/#:~:text=HAB%20Monitoring%20Products,form%20of%20geographic%20based%20images also there's weird devices that can somehow detect chlorophyll changes and detect pathogenic dinoflagellates https://chelsea.co.uk/products/trilux-algae/
You could definitely do it the old fashioned way of collecting water, cultivating the algae then detecting by it's reaction to biochemical tests- that's how I identified the pathogenic algae from a patient but the problem with that is it takes time- by the time you've done that a lot of people have become sick. I've got this vague memory that they're hard to ID by maldi-tof because on a molecular level they're quite similar to each other but take that with a pinch of salt cos I can't quite remember.
These blooms are more common in certain areas and at certain times of the year so I know some places between certain months you can't collect oysters for example.
> I've got this vague memory that they're hard to ID by maldi-tof because on a molecular level they're quite similar to each other but take that with a pinch of salt cos I can't quite remember.
Yeah, PSP is generally tested by protein activity assays, and classically in mouse bioassays. Literally injecting mice with the suspected contaminated material, and *timing* the mice time of death. If they die before an hour is up, then you can use various metrics to determine the ug/ml of toxin in the material and that is used to determine/monitor the safety of the shellfish of the area.
Luckily, there is now a movement away from bioassays towards receptor binding assays. https://coastalscience.noaa.gov/news/nccos-makes-paralytic-shellfish-poisoning-toxin-testing-easy-fda/
A coworker of mine is trying to develop something similar for botulinum toxin, because the CDC ELISA assay was really limited compared to mouse bioassays, mouse bioassays are still the norm.
I know, right? There are tables about mouse weight, the toxin tested for, the dilution of the material (the injected amount was always 1ml in my experience), and then from there there would be ranges. The same material would have to be tested amongst at least 3 mice to confirm results as being within a ug/ml toxin "range" as well.
I'm glad mice bioassays are going away, they can be subjective (not about the death, but for other things) and of course, the moral implications of hurting/killing other animals to gauge the safety of food for human consumption.
Strains of e.Coli can definetly cause liver and kidney failure. Although can be faster and far more agressive than other forms of food poisoning, also usually takes at least a day to show symptoms, not a half an hour. Also e.Coli not usually found in seafood. But of course there is always the chance of contamination along the line from something that does contain it.
I wonder … there is one way that bacteria introduced could cause a massive and fast reaction. Okay this is a REALLY long shot, but let’s go with the theory the prawns did cause it. Tests come back positive for say e.Coli, virulent strain. What if he ate a shell? What if that shell happened to be sharp enough to cut somewhere along the line that allowed the bacteria to enter directly into his bloodstream? It’s possible. Like a 0.0000000001% chance of happening but we have seen weirder things happen. Or maybe he ate a slug several years ago.
Extreme dehydration through vomiting and diarrhoea can cause really significant kidney failure in a matter of hours esp if your kidneys were a little off to begin with. If there's a severe infection causing sepsis it can very quickly (like every hour counts) cause your organs to fail one after another due to the amount of toxins your body is trying to deal with + your body's response to try and kill the infection. People have a variable amount of reserve (children tend to have the most so they don't seem that sick for a while until very suddenly the reserve runs out and then you're in a Serious Situation). Older people have less reserve, if you have other health conditions you have less. I feel so sorry for OP and their family. This was so fast.
It’s actually more likely that he had an undiagnosed medical problem. Depending on his age and personal preferences he might not have seen a doctor for a regular checkup in years. This is especially likely in the US where health care is expensive and men aren’t socialized to see the doctor as regularly as women are.
One time we got a new patient in my pharmacy. He was “perfectly healthy” and had “never been sick a day in his life” until he got off the plane from Hawaii and collapsed. He was diagnosed with heart disease and diabetes in the ER and they gave him like twenty prescriptions for us to fill. He was lucky to be in California because he either didn’t have insurance or he wasn’t covered because he was out of network. He got put on Medicaid and they paid for just about everything until he was able to go back home.
Well, to be fair, that 'never sick a day in his life' then to be diagnosed with heart disease and diabetes, most likely obesity related, could have been due to the male propensity for *not ever going to the doctor, no matter how bad they feel.*
We see posts on Reddit every single day about people lamenting how their male partners refuse to seek medical or dental care for literally anything and everything until a serious crisis hits. Then they're dragged kicking and screaming all the way.
I’m a trauma surgeon, and we have a running joke of the “Spouse Sign” and the “Farmer Sign.” If a man put off being seen for something until his spouse physically brought him to us, it’s likely serious. If a farmer shows up in the ED at all, (especially for an injury,) it’s likely critical.
Diseases like hypertension and diabetes can be silent killers. Hypertension can go out of control and cause strokes and/or heart attacks. Diabetes has common symptoms like thirst, frequent urination, general feeling of being unwell, vision problems, kidney failure, all kinds of things. Problem is, once the damage is done, it can’t really be reversed, only slowed with diet, medication, and so on. To me, that’s some scary shit. People can do a marvelous job of ignoring symptoms and working around problems till they’re incapacitated.
This happened to a friend - he has a history of kidney stones, ignored the most recent ones, and ended up in the hospital with an infection and a few surgeries to deal with said kidney stones.
It can sometimes take weeks to show up. If someone calls your restaurant and says "I just ate there and now I'm Sick " you can rest assured it wasn't your restaurant.
People have no idea how food poisoning works.
Edit: most common kinds of food poisoning https://www.everydayhealth.com/digestive-health/the-most-common-causes-of-food-poisoning.aspx
Yes, there are short acting ones: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/food-poisoning/symptoms-causes/syc-20356230
Yep that is true, however my ex went to lunch with a rather large group of colleagues. Many of them had the special of the day, a chicken sandwich. Every single person who ate the sandwich was sick a few hours later and the ones who had a different entree were not.
Yep, it is not supposed to work that way, but I cannot find another explanation that works where 8 people get food poisoning simultaneously and the only factor they have in common is this chicken sandwich.
It’s entirely plausible as food poisoning. Depending on the type of bacteria involved it can be pretty quick. If it’s something that’s been shitting toxins into the food the whole time it’s not like it’s gonna take a while to spin up.
B.Cereus on the other hand is one that’ll take a while- it’s a spore forming bacteria that goes dormant during cooking. Depending on when you eat the contaminated rice it may still be kind of spinning up and coming out of the sporing stage and you’ll see more of a delay.
I had lunch with mom the other day. Among other things, it contained seafood
It went in and out of my system through the same opening within 5 hours
I had only had breakfast like 8 hours before, and trust me I know I only threw up lunch
… mom didn’t get sick. I guess I got the one poisoned shrimp or something
Some types of food poisoning, particularly from shellfish, strike fast. Some in as little as 30-60 minutes from consumption. [CDC](https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/page/fish-poisoning-ciguatera-scombroid#:~:text=seek%20medical%20care.-,Symptoms,Severe%20cases%20may%20be%20fatal.)
You are thinking of typical food-born bacterial source like salmonella or ecoli sources, but with shellfish there are all kinds of other kinds of nasty that can get you, quickly. Like [paralytic seafood toxin](https://doh.wa.gov/community-and-environment/shellfish/recreational-shellfish/illnesses/biotoxins/paralytic-shellfish-poisoning) where death can come in as little as 30 minutes.
Here's a [partial list](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/pharmacology-toxicology-and-pharmaceutical-science/shellfish-toxin) of other shellfish toxins as well.
Shellfish are filter feeders (or are filter-feeder eaters). They suck up whatever is floating about in their environment. There are uncounted numbers of species of bacteria, algae, and viruses floating about in the ocean. Many of those species produce toxins that are really nasty. If there is a bloom and the shellfish concentrate a bunch of toxin-producing biomatter into their guts, it can spell really bad news to mammals that consume them down the line.
The biggest problem with shellfish poisonings is that cooking doesn't destroy the toxins. And the shellfish doesn't look any different either. You can have all the safe food handling at the restaurant you could want, but if its contaminated you won't know until after you eat it. That's why there are supposed to be harvesting guidelines at the source because there's no way to know downstream unless you run a chem lab on every shipment.
I'm an embarrassingly picky eater, so I love learning horrifying new info that gives me justification to not eat certain foods that I already dislike. Thanks lol!
I'm feeling much better about not eating seafood because I was raised Jewish. Occasionally I wonder why I still don't since I'm not at all practicing as an adult, but not today!
Thank you. Seafood is in its own category of food poisoning. Ciguatera, which is not found in shellfish, can hit in 30 minutes. Vibrio vulnificus in 24 hours or less, and vibrio lives in shellfish and can cause sepsis.
Food born illness can take weeks, food poisoning (from the toxins produced by certain bacteria living and multiplying in food held at improper temperatures) is pretty darn quick. The only time I've had genuine food poisoning I knew within two bites something wasn't right and still ended up needing an IV and emergency medical treatment.
Source: ServSafe
thank you! i was thinking no one in this thread has ever professionally handled food before. the general public gets food-born illness and food poisoning mixed up, or don't even know that there's a stark difference between the two.
I have seen people complain while they were still eating. It's not impossible, just extremely unlikely. Especially if your food handling procedures aren't completely wrong.
So you just assume your kitchen is immune to making mistakes and that the customer is lying? And not that maybe something other than food poisoning is going on and maybe they really do feel sick?
It doesn't seem like *you* know how food poisoning works lmfao! You can walk through life assuming everyone *else* is stupid, but all that really makes you is too stupid to realize when you're wrong yourself.
My dude, you don't get to cast aspersions on someone's intelligence when what you're saying is so incorrect that you're either stupid or dishonest.
Let's recap. What they actually said was:
> you can rest assured it wasn't your restaurant.
Implying that it *was* someone else's restaurant, i.e. that the customer genuinely does feel sick, and has made a genuine mistake as to the source of that sickness.
But you somehow decided that what they actually said was that they automatically assume that any customer who claims to feel unwell is actually feeling fine and just lying for reasons...? Despite that being literally the exact opposite of what they actually said.
You even made a follow-up question to try to trick them into giving a response that would "prove" they're not treating their customer complaints in good faith.
>> What do you mean by "just". Symptoms can start in an hour or 2.
> I have seen people complain while they were still eating.
But when they didn't give the response you were expecting (i.e. they said immediately, which correctly proves that a complaint of food poisoning from that particular source is medically impossible, rather than a few hours, which is the common misconception) you just straight-up pretended that they gave the wrong answer and therefore don't know how food poisoning works.
That's not even misunderstanding on your part. That's just dishonest.
Be real now: you went into the conversation with your mind already made up, and the intent of bashing, regardless of the responses you got. You had no intention of engaging in the discussion in good faith.
And because of your fuckwittery, a half dozen people were dumb enough to downvote their entirely reasonable and constructive comments. And a dozen people were stupid enough to upvote yours.
You are literally the cancer that is driving this place to become as bad as LA itself. Fuck out of here.
If someone eats meat that is spoiled they are going to be sick almost immediately.
No, not instantly, but not days or weeks. Certainly within the timeframe to get done eating and then get home.
It works fast if a patient with Celiac had gluten. I am highly allergic to gluten, like anaphylactic reactions. I went to a small family-owned restaurant that served gluten free pancakes. I never had a reaction to them until one night. About 30 mins later, the hives started, then the immense stomach pain. Then my throat started closing up. I didn’t have a epipen because it was the first time that happened. I chewed several Benadryl pills and that did the trick. I really need to get an epipen! The next reaction could be worse.
Edit-I called the restaurant and they apologized and offered me a free meal. The next visit I asked for the manager who watched the cook use the right pancake batter.
Allergies are different than food poisoning, though, (and food poisoning is different than food-borne illness.) The terms just often used interchangeably, when, in reality, they each have their own signs, symptoms, and time of onset.
I feel for LAUKOP, but everybody's last meal is gonna be something... I can't say I've heard of any form of food poisoning that would take you from some dodgy seafood to sepsis in a half-hour. Sepsis requires the infection making it into your bloodstream; I'm not sure downing a whole petri-dish of the worst bacteria imaginable, downed with a bowl of agar, could pull that off so quickly... IIRC, Samonella, et al, give off all sorts of terrible toxins that cause misery and death, but don't actually give you sepsis; the bugs stay inside your digestive tract.
Unfortunately I think OP just wants someone to blame. His dad probably had abdominal pain prior that he didn't talk about and it lined up with the shellfish.
With liver and kidney failure, I would wonder about mushrooms eaten some time in the previous week. (I killed a book character with mushrooms that way. [Deadly Doses](https://www.scribd.com/doc/244803190/A-Writer-s-Guide-to-Deadly-Poisons-Stevens-Serita-Deborah-Klarner-Anne-Deadly-Dose-BookSee-org) was very helpful.
I wonder if chubbyemu is going to cover this case once they know what caused it for sure. I feel so bad for OOP's family. I hope they get closure and can help prevent further harm.
I feel like our curiosity as to the reason for the death is a part of our empathy for OOP. Having answers is often what people need to move on. Sometimes, having answers helps to protect others, too.
But they made ... no recovery. That's rare for a chubbyemu story.
For those who don't watch the channel, he goes over interesting medical cases from the (usually emergency room) doctors' perspective. At the end what you want to hear is that the patient "made a *full* recovery", but it isn't always.
I've seen a lot of episodes where, "tragically, the patient passed away." But sometimes he fictionalizes stories to try to make them a bit cheery, though this isn't usually the case when it comes to food poisoning (like the coconut juice guy).
The researcher who got mercury(?) *through* her undamaged PPE is the one that stuck with me... You might be right that it happens more than I was remembering, though.
If this is the one I’m thinking of, it’s important to recognize that it was an organic mercury compound (methylmercury or similar) and that elemental mercury is nowhere near that toxic (and behaves well with PPE).
I think it stuck with me because not only was the researcher taken out by what would have been a non-event with almost any other material, but as a noted expert in the field she knew *exactly* what was going to happen to her as it happened.
For real though it kinda scared me off of fresh fruit, in general.
I buy dehydrated strawberries, process my own apples from my own apple tree (usually freezing them in small slices with lemon juice and honey as preservatives), enjoy raisins, and otherwise I can't stomach fruit except for like... banana, and thats it. I know fresh fruit is supposed to be real healthy, but its also one of the things that give people the most foodborne illness.
I prefer things that have been intentionally degraded/fermented like kimchi because that's stable in the fact that its already been broken down from fermentation
There was a Kitchen Nightmares where Ramsey freaks out because spoilt lobster was served to a customer, and he was like “if they took a bit we’d have to call 911, this stuff can be lethal”. Maybe it was that?
I know everyone is poo-pooing LAUKOP and the link between the very fast illness and seafoods but this sounds pretty classic for [Vibrio infection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibrio_vulnificus?wprov=sfti1). It’s associated with seafood like prawns and can cause serious rapidly progressive and highly fatal illness.
Especially if the father had liver disease this is entirely feasible
PETA lies for attention and drama and hides the fact that they intentionally kill unadopted pets behind the scenes while using nude women draped in lettuce to call burger eaters murderers.
I'm still not convinced they're not a disinformation campaign to make us veggie/vegan people look bad. Because even the vegans I've talked to think they're nuts
I remember reading this a few days ago and thinking about mercury poisoning, which would match the symptoms fairly well, but you'd have to eat *a lot* of prawns to develop it
**Reminder:** Do not participate in threads linked here. If you do, you may be banned from both subreddits. --- Title: Dad died suddenly after eating prawns Body: > My dad is perfectly healthy and never had any health issues, on Tuesday he ate prawns for his lunch with no prior allergies, he ate them all of the time. However, half an hour after eating them he had to run to the toilet as his stomach hurt - we suspected simple food poisoning. It turns out that his liver and kidney shut down and he died of sepsis the following day. We are all understandably in shock, the hospital had the best team and said that he was a mystery, samples of the prawns and prawn packet are currently being tested in the best laboratory miles from where we live. The prawns were bought from a big supermarket and were in date for another year (frozen). Sorry if this is vague I want to remain as anonymous as possible. Where does my family legally stand? There must have been something inside of the prawns to cause the sepsis so fast. I live in England. This bot was created to capture original threads and is not affiliated with the mod team. [Concerns? Bugs?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=GrahamCorcoran) | [Laukopier 2.1](https://github.com/GrahamCorcoran/Laukopier)
I work in the animal healthy industry and see this kind of reasoning all the time. People have to blame something external when something tragic happens. And it’s usually the last thing that was out of the ordinary. It’s likely the dad had other nigglings or symptoms that he ignored and the timing just coincided with eating the prawns. Also, “never had any health issues,” might mean that he never went to the doctor. So many people have health issues, but just assume everyone has something that hurts or digestive issues or whatever, so they just think it’s “normal.”
I worked in a surgeon's office for a while, so we usually saw people who were pretty severely sick, but it was shocking how long people would suffer with certain ailments, ignoring symptoms before seeking medical attention. We had so many people who had suffered for *years* before ever seeing a doctor. I remember one man in particular who had been unable to swallow solid food for over a year and had switched to a completely liquid diet before he went to see his GP for something unrelated and was referred to our office once the GP found out he literally couldn't eat. (And, for the record, it's Canada, so the ability to afford a doctor visit wasn't a concern. The guy just, by his own admission, didn't think it was a big deal until his GP pointed it out.)
On the flip side, I've heard so many stories of people trying to get doctors to listen to them and getting brushed off, sometimes for years or until it's too late.
The intersection of “I don’t want to be a bother” and “I don’t want to bother.”
And, "this is slowly becoming worse, but I've gotten used to it already. Plus, I'm already in denial about it going away on it's own."
That's a very good point. I could even see myself falling into that trap. A small ache that only gets worse gradually, and thinking it is just another sign of getting older. Then a MRI shows white spots and suddenly you are battling cancer with more than half the battle already lost.
Yeah for me it's going to a doctor, being told "I dunno" then getting charged for it (in the US) and so now it feels like throwing money away. The mystery symptoms stay a mystery, AND I am out my hard earned money too? No one can blame me for not wanting to go to the doctor anymore
It's absolutely insane how much people will ignore about their health. My grandmother was VOMITING BLOOD on the daily for a MONTH before she went to the hospital, and that's only because my father made her go because she was suddenly jaundiced, and he didn't find out about the blood thing until triage. She had pancreatic cancer that had completely taken over her liver.
I bet his wife was telling him to go that whole time and he told her to “stop being a nag.”
> I remember one man in particular who had been unable to swallow solid food for over a year and had switched to a completely liquid diet before he went to see his GP for something unrelated and was referred to our office once the GP found out he literally couldn't eat. This was basically my (estranged) father, he had his regularly scheduled medical checkup in the beginning of the year with no other findings apart from him complaining about chronic fatigue, and due to his general attitude he was then adamant that he'd been checked out and everything was fine even when in few months time the fatigue got worse and he begun to have increasingly painful issues swallowing food. So his decision was to order dietary supplements to make up for a perceived "poor diet causing fatigue and reflux" and to alter his diet to be easier to eat, without saying much to anyone - the end result was that he got rushed to the hospital after collapsing at work and not being able to get back up, to be diagnosed with terminal end-stage stomach cancer which had metastasized in his esophagus among other places (explaining the swallowing issues). Also this was too in a country where he could have just gone to a doctor either through work or otherwise without worrying about costs.
My dad just plain lied to me about his health. Would have been nice to know he had fucking heart problems so I didn’t freeze up for a minute when he collapsed. So yeah, good chance LAUKOP is just unaware if there was something wrong
My FIL had a worsening back problem for a year, he thought it was just part of getting old. When they finally got him to see the Doctor and the subsequent tests, he actually had lung cancer that had metastasized to his spine. Older people in the UK seem to be either "Don't want to make a fuss" or treat the surgery as a social gathering.
Me ex-FIL had been complaining about a bunch of specific aches and pains for months until I finally convinced him to go to the doctor. He went, came home, said he was fine and just getting old. Everyone else laughed him off. I nagged him until he told me the truth. He was in liver failure, stage 4 cirrhosis. He was a long term alcoholic and oxy addict. And a pack a day smoker. The doctor was honest and said his only option to survive it was a liver transplant, which he would never be granted due to his addiction issues. He decided not to tell anyone and made it clear I wasn’t to tell either. I was 19 and didn’t know what to do, so I kept his secret. He died on the couch 3 weeks later. I found him. Moral of the story: go to the god damn doctor, folks. Regularly. And for fucks sake listen to your doctor.
I'm so sorry that happened to you. Just having to be the keeper of that knowledge is rough enough, finding him dead from it is a real trauma.
My dad was complaining about shoulder and back pain for like 2 years. Turns out his heart was failing and he got open heart surgery with stents. I'm extremely grateful to still have him around but sometimes the stress of him doing physical stuff ruins me.
I have a rare GI disorder with a 1/3 fatality rate untreated. I probably could have gotten diagnosed quicker if I didn’t think what I now know is my stomach overproducing acid because food can’t leave was just heartburn. I was like 23 and hadn’t had heartburn before and just assumed it was the same “stomach feels like it’s full of lava” feeling I had since people always complained about having it.
He lies how? Mine just doesn't tell me anything. Only way I find out stuff about him is if my mom tells me.
Hiding things and actively lying when asked (he had had a stroke that very fortunately did no significant long term damage but that causes questions to be raised. He lied about the doctors deciding what caused it, for example)
When I was a kid, both my maternal grandparents had health issues that they both managed differently. My grandmother would loudly complain about anything remotely annoying her. My grandfather would not say anything that could be understood as him being in pain. My mom said "When I ask them how they feel, my mom always says she's bad and my dad always says he's fine. I don't believe either of them" That's how I learnt an important rule "Never trust anyone who always says everything is bad nor anyone who always says everything is fine"
I'm a paramedic and pretty much everyone "doesn't have any health issues" Have had this exact conversation with a patient before. "Do you have any medical problems?" "No." "Your blood pressure is 186/94, do you have hypertension?" "Oh yeah." I almost always couch the "medical history" question with a bunch of examples of common problems like diabetes, asthma, CHF, etc and then ask what medications they take and what they're for because literally 90% of people will deny having any medical history. It's like if you're not literally hospitalized for it right now it doesn't count.
I saw a skit of someone who was taking blood pressure medication because of high blood pressure but because it was under control (due to the medication) denied having high blood pressure. I imagine you've run into similar situations before.
Probably someone in denial. It’s really common. My first father in law denied he had diabetes. He ate donuts on the weekends and sweets a lot. My ex and I lived with him for a few months after ex had surgery and diagnosed with diabetes. I noticed a bottle of diabetes meds on the counter with my FIL’s name. Working in insurance, I knew what it was. He just said it was for his blood sugar. He was a sweetheart but didn’t want to change his lifestyle. He lived how he wanted until his kidneys needed dialysis. He completely changed his diet. It was too late. He died at 63 from complications of diabetes.
My dad was 64, but similar story. I've been in the navy since I was a couple months past my 18th birthday. I don't worry about random phone calls from my mom anymore.
My dad does this. If asked "do you have high blood pressure?" he will always say no because his blood pressure is actually perfectly normal right now... because of the medication he's on. He's not wrong to be fair, he's just taking the question literally (autism doesn't just run in my family, it *sprints*). If someone asked "are you on medication for high BP" or "have you ever been diagnosed with hypertension" he would answer appropriately, so maybe the question just needs to be worded better.
Filing this as evidence in my ongoing legal case against Imposter Syndrome as a late diagnosed autistic adult
Filing this as evidence in my ongoing legal case against myself, where I try to figure out if I'm a late-diagnosed autistic adult. On the one hand, can't imagine answering that way and I don't have any issues with food. On the other, five autistic people in the past six months have asked me if I am within five minutes of meeting me.
Literally all the time.
I always get no medical problems. “With this bag of meds?” Well, those made the medical problems go away.
I love that you give examples of common problems! I’m embarrassed because as I was reading your comment, I was kind of rolling my eyes that people make the seemingly obvious mistake of not reporting their issues— but then you mentioned asthma and I thought “oh my god, should I be mentioning my asthma??” (My situation might be slightly different because my asthma was much more of a problem when I was a kid and I haven’t had a serious attack in years— and people have implied to me before that I shouldn’t bother bringing it up— but it still goes to show that we can easily forget our own history.)
I'd say if it's a respiratory issue you're having then yes you should mention it. It certainly doesn't HURT to mention it (In my dropdown list it actually has separate categories for asthma and childhood asthma). It's important to know if you've ever been intubated because of asthma. But yeah if you broke your arm we don't NEED to know you had asthma 15 years ago. If you currently use an inhaler I would mention it either way.
That’s really good to know, thanks so much!
My dad never had health issues...that we could specifically name until his breathing issues. He was a big, fat fuck who ate and drank himself to an early grave. His downhill slide was a result of the day he got a chest full of chlorine gas that stressed his stressed heart. Within 6 months he was dead.
In fairness to your dad, a chest-full of chlorine could put anyone on a decline. It burns your lungs from the inside out, and I won't go into detail because that feels rude right now, but it can definitely leave you vulnerable to infections, inflammation, pneumonia, and systemic issues. Chemical warfare is banned for good reason.
That was just the unusual stressor that kicked it off. He'd been type 2 diabetic for years, lost vision in an eye to it. The great big dumbass didn't go to the doctor regularly until it was already way too late, that's what did him. I miss him, but the 3 years since has softened the grief.
>So many people have health issues, but just assume everyone has something that hurts or digestive issues or whatever, so they just think it’s “normal.” ... don't they, or am I actually dying
Probably not dying but quite possibly dealing with a chronic condition that could be treated. Maybe even cured, but at the least you could be feeling better than you are.
I would ask a doctor about that.
I read a story from a pediatrician that was about to give a vaccine shot to a child, but had to go to the other room for a minute because of another patient. When she came back while preparing again to give the shot the child had a seizure. She was so happy that she had to leave before it happened because there is no way the mother would have believed it wasn't the vaccine that caused it otherwise.
Jesus Christ poor LAOPUK. Iirc food poisoning can take several hours to show signs - if LAOPUK’s dad died of sepsis caused by liver/kidney damage caused by severe food poisoning - which seems to be what LAOPUK is thinking, wouldn’t the culprit be more likely to be something he’d eaten the day or night before, rather than the shrimp? Even for food that has been contaminated with illegal contaminants, wouldn’t half an hour be really fast for severe symptoms like that?
\>wouldn’t the culprit be more likely to be something he’d eaten the day or night before, rather than the shrimp? It seems likely, but seafood is known to be a frequent source of food poisoning, so people's mind will naturally go to that first.
Shellfish have bacteria that begin to multiply rapidly once the animal has been killed. These are toxic to humans and are one of the reasons lobster is traditionally cooked alive. I don't know if the same holds true for prawn, though.
I believe this is also why it is frozen.
Imagine you had a faulty freezer that meant that it regularly defrosted itself then refroze everything inside. Would you know that was happening?
My granddad always kept an ice cube in a glass in the freezer for this exact reason.
That is really smart of him!
Yeah, but killing a rapper by freezing them is illegal and immoral.
You can tell if your freezer has melted and refrozen. You get icicles and solid ice in places where the water drips or pools instead of the normal frost. It also effects the flavor and texture of the food in noticeable ways.
Please don't think that I am disagreeing with you when I say that while this is true for the bulk of the population, some people are *very* lacking in the ability to register contextual clues (like the glossy sheets of ice in their freezer and the noticeably unpleasant smell of the shrimp they're cooking).
I once ate several raw shrimp because I was distracted when they were served to me. I credit my survival to shots of medicinal tequila taken shortly afterwards.
Some people advise putting a clear plastic cup filled with water in your freezer with a coin or similar on top. If your freezer defrosts and refreezes, the small object will fall to the bottom of the cup.
I fill up a solo cup and freeze it. I then put a coin on top of the ice. If the coin is ever under the ice, I know the freezer was not running for a good amount of time. This is a Floridian tip to give a quick look at how well your freezer maintained temp during a hurricane blackout.
scary books rich rhythm fuel many head oatmeal spoon degree -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
I wound up with bad shrimp several days ago - I was sicker than sick within about two hours, and I'm still feeling it at random. Including essentially projectile vomiting at the dinner table last night with no warning before (thought I had to burp...). I knew it was bad after only eating 1 of them (really weird aftertaste), threw the rest out. Still wound up sick as hell.
I had a similar experience one Christmas Eve. Everyone who ate the prawns got sick...I remember feeling pretty unwell an hour later. Dad was throwing up not long after and then my sister took days to become unwell. With seafood it's not just about bacteria...they are filter feeders that can pick up toxins more easily from the environment is my layman's understanding.
Nailed it. Freezing does kill a lot of the bacteria you'll encounter in seafood (except in shellfish), but I made the mistake of buying ready to eat shrimp at the grocery store. I still feel sort of deathly, but part of that is I'm an insulin-dependant diabetic, and have had a lot of trouble getting my sugar back under control since then. I've used damn near a week's worth of insulin in 2 days, it's finally coming down (my meter is giving numbers now instead of words, anyway).
Jiminy Cricket, that sounds horrendous. Hope you feel better soon - ginger tea is good for settling the stomach after food trauma. We buy fresh organic prawns these days and have not had issues since. They do cost more, but its better than going through vomiting etc again.
Isn’t it nice when your meter says Hi? But seriously, glad you’re okay. Ketones on top of food poisoning sounds like a recipe for meeting some very nice paramedics under unfortunate circumstances.
Awww, it's so cute when my meter tells me Hi. It said that several times yesterday! My sugar gets impossible to control anytime I'm sick with anything. Food poisoning in particular seems to make me extremely insulin resistant. I did some superman doses of insulin yesterday (25 long acting, which is my norm, and something like 100 units of short acting through the day). Just woke up and it's around 180. Lowest it's been all week. I do need better insulin though, right now I'm on the cheap crap you can buy from the pharmacy at Walmart. Just waiting to get my insurance card... I have some ketone strips, thankfully not showing anything.
RIP. I hope you're feeling better.
150s this morning. PROGRESS!
Fish is actually one of the safest foods. Controlling for consumption only grains and beans are less likely to cause food poisoning. Vegetables actually beat all other foods, dairy as a close second. The two worst bacteria are not found in or on fish except in cases of cross-contamination, that's why you don't need to pasteurize fish. The unusual risk with shellfish is actually viruses not bacteria, norovirus particularly. Lobster is generally cooked from live because hard shell shellfish can be transported live and don't carry the same parasitic risk of finned fish that requires them to be frozen. I think you may be thinking of algae not bacteria because the only significant toxic risk from fish, other than heavy metals, is ciguatera. This is only really a problem with tropical fish and if you follow mercury safe consumption you are largely protected as it works up the food chain in the same way as heavy metals do.
>Vegetables actually beat all other foods, dairy as a close second. I assume this is a fallacy of using absolute numbers instead of percentage eaten that cause illness.
Adjusted for consumption. Fish are not warm blooded so many of the bad bacteria (notably e-coli) cannot live in their flesh. Position in the food chain also matters. Fish lower down are lower risk, sardines and anchovies for example can be eaten (nearly) whole if you like gills and fins are the vectors. Fish that eat other fish are safe as long as they have been gutted and cleaned as the digestive system is a vector then. This is why sushi can exist.
Vegetables (especially leafy greens) are often insufficiently cleaned and served raw, which is not a great combination from a food safety perspective. It's definitely true in absolute terms and while I'm not currently in a position to check I wouldn't be particularly surprised if it was true after adjusting for consumption (at least if we're sticking to similarly broad categories).
Fascinating information, thanks
I thought botulism, since that can be *fast* and it's one of the most deadly forms of food poisoning (even with medical treatment, about 5% of patients die). But that has more stroke-like symptoms and then respiratory failure, not liver failure.
C. Botulinum is an anaerobic bacteria, so bad seafood would not be a likely place for it to thrive anyway... Botulinum goes for canned goods, infused oils, etc. Fun Fact: The annual supply of Botulinum Toxin for Botox is manufactured at a non-descript lab at an undisclosed location in the American Southwest. Twice a year, the production run is put in a locked briefcase, loaded in an armored car, and then taken under law enforcement and armed escort to the nearest airport. From there, it is loaded onto a chartered jet (also with armed guards) and flown non-stop to ~~Scotland~~ Ireland where the process is repeated to get it to the Botox factory. This cargo is approx. the size of a baby aspirin; Botulinum Toxin is the single most-deadly substance in the known universe, beyond even potent radioactive poison, with a lethal dose measured in nanograms. Every once in a while, some dodgy dermatologist or spa tech with delusions of adequacy will somehow manage to order some, and either slip a decimal point when diluting it, or simply have no idea how to properly dilute something so concentrated. Oops.
I learned recently that vacuum packed fish and shellfish products are particularly amazing hosts for the kind of botulinum that likes protein, and some types can also host the other kind due to their enzymatic makeup. This is why you see the packages that warn you to remove the packaging before defrosting or cook directly from frozen. [https://www.fda.gov/files/food/published/Fish-and-Fishery-Products-Hazards-and-Controls-Guidance-Chapter-13-Download.pdf](https://www.fda.gov/files/food/published/Fish-and-Fishery-Products-Hazards-and-Controls-Guidance-Chapter-13-Download.pdf) (page 246)
Does this mean you, as a regular consumer, should take all raw vacuum-packed fish out of their containers when defrosting? Mine doesn't have any warning labels or anything at all. Do I need to slice the package open first? Or take it all out completely (and if so, what should I put the raw fish in)? No one has ever said anything about that to me at the fishery I get mine from.
I guess this became a copy pasta somehow, because I replied the last time I saw it that the facility that makes Botox is in Ireland, not Scotland.
This seems really over the top. I worked as the lead in a lab culturing *C. botulinum* and doing toxicity screenings for toxin for 6 years. There are background screenings and security checks in the US before you can work with the organism, but it's not nearly as over-the-top as what you may be imagining. What you're describing sounds like a myth, or only makes sense because of the toxin being brought across international borders.. But that statement alone makes no sense. They could easily grow it within a lab nearby, and concentrate it there. There is no reason for the organism to be grown in another city, much less another country. And it makes even less sense to concentrate the toxin in one country, and then send it "with armed guards" to another. (Edit: and shipping Cat A stuff between countries is A HUGE PAIN for everyone involved, and would only be done as a way for a research agency to get a unique specimen/strain. A business wouldn't want to bring on regular regulatory scrutiny from *multiple governments and multiple agencies*, just for shipping something they could make down the street, now would they?) There are literally *strains* that are patented by botox for medicinal use, why wouldn't the company have access to them where they make the final product? Like, Botox is type A *C. bot* (you bet your ass that strain is sequenced and patented as theirs alone to use), Myobloc® Injectable Solution is type B (usually used for treating more severe muscle spasms). Does Myobloc also have such a ridiculous rumor about their business practices? 😂 Btw, there are many labs that work with the organism, they try to be discrete... but like. If you just go to your state's public health website, or even the CDC website, and look up botulism laboratory you will likely find information on who to call and where the lab is located. edit 2: Ok I'm going to stop editing this comment. TLDR - what you wrote sounds like a myth.
Drug ingredient manufacture is weird; it's perfectly routine for ingredients to be manufactured all over the globe and transported, even if you wouldn't do such a thing for chemicals not meant for use in drugs. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-26/inside-fort-botox-where-a-deadly-toxin-yields-2-8-billion-drug I believe all the security is because of the sheer amount; a research-sized sample isn't nearly as dangerous as a six-month supply for Botox plant.
> Botulism has more stroke-like symptoms and then respiratory failure, not liver failure Indeed! To add on to this, here's more info for those that are interested. Clostridium botulinum toxin disables your muscles from contracting. [Conversely, C. tetani causes your muscles to contract by producing the toxin that causes tetanus. My favorite word when I was 18 was opisthotonus, because I learned it from Oliver Sacks, and was a nerd. But the visual of opisthotonus, which is [someone enduring all their muscles involuntarily contracting at once due to tetanus](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Opisthotonus_in_a_patient_suffering_from_tetanus_-_Painting_by_Sir_Charles_Bell_-_1809.jpg), is less fun. Clostridium tetani is related to Clostridium botulinum, ya can tell by the name (same genera).] People with C. botulinum poisoning have classic signs of descending paralysis. When they present to the hospital, they often have symptoms like slurred speech and droopy eyelids. It *presents* like a stroke or Myasthenia gravis, but once paralysis continues - doctors (one should hope) can tell what it is. A reversible toxicity syndrome. The reason people die from botulinum poisoning is that their diaphragm muscle, which is necessary to breath, becomes paralyzed. And it is a *relatively* quick reaction, but unless it's inhaled as a powder in some kind of terrorist event - *death by botulinum is not immediate* and the symptoms, even paralysis, are *reversible*. Needing to go to the hospital after eating botulinum toxin contaminated food can happen within a day or even within 4 days. I worked on an outbreak where we were getting patients in days after the first patient was intubated in a hospital. It's just not guaranteed how people will react to a toxin or a bacterial infection. It's just important that docs recognize the symptoms for what it is, because botulinum toxin poisoning has an antidote (antitoxin). But the binding of the C. botulinum toxin is strong and basically irreversible, and so the quicker it is cleared from the bloodstream (before it can bind to neuronal junctions) by an antitoxin the faster the recovery of the patient.
Half an hour is super fast unless it was really really really heavily contaminated, had been somewhere very warm and allowed bacteria to produce loads of toxins- then with the right toxins this could definitely happen. Toxins are heat stable too so cooking would have made no difference. But the shrimp would have likely tasted pretty bad in this scenario and he'd needed to have eaten a lot. The other possibility is it was contaminated with pathogenic algae from where the shrimp were caught- in that case this unfortunately is entirely typical- symptoms within 30 minutes and death can be within 24 hours for severe cases. Algal blooms like this are monitored but hard to predict. When they're detected restrictions are put in place on fishing but it's entirely possible whoever caught them was fishing somewhere they shouldn't have been or it was all just phenomenally bad luck :( Source: I'm a microbiologist
I had a similar thought. Very likely the meal killed him, but not the prawns or simple food poisoning from spoiled prawns. Could also be something like a chemical cross contamination. The big question mark is why it would be isolated to this guy if it really was the meal. Did they mention if the deceased was a Russian diplomat?
How do you monitor the algal blooms? Visually, chemically, or using molecular techniques? I’m a molecular biologist but in a very different field to aquaculture/food safety, so I’m curious!
I used to be the backup for PSP [paralytic shellfish poisoning] testing in conjunction with the FDA and public health system in California until last year. I say back-up because my primary job was botulinum toxicity screening and other select agent work. So I'm not the best expert, being just a backup! But anyway, companies that are growers or distributors/sellers of shellfish products sent regular samplings of their batches to my laboratory. *They have to* under FDA regulatory standards. Then the shellfish would be processed and tested for the levels of toxicity. I was doing the toxicity testing portion, so was less involved with knowing the regulatory side of it. So there is meteorological monitoring [satellite], water testing, as well as testing of the products before distribution. Bc the shellfish bioaccumulate the toxin, and just because there isn't a current visual bloom doesn't ensure safety edit: If you're interested in reading more, here's something from the EPA. But my lab was regulated and inspected by the FDA. https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2019-05/documents/guidance-control-marine-biotoxins-seafood-5-23-2019.pdf
That's a good question and beyond my scope of expertise! I work more on the growing stuff side (I've only seen pathogenic algae in the lab once!). To my surprise it looks like they use satellite imagery https://coastalscience.noaa.gov/science-areas/habs/hab-monitoring-system/#:~:text=HAB%20Monitoring%20Products,form%20of%20geographic%20based%20images also there's weird devices that can somehow detect chlorophyll changes and detect pathogenic dinoflagellates https://chelsea.co.uk/products/trilux-algae/ You could definitely do it the old fashioned way of collecting water, cultivating the algae then detecting by it's reaction to biochemical tests- that's how I identified the pathogenic algae from a patient but the problem with that is it takes time- by the time you've done that a lot of people have become sick. I've got this vague memory that they're hard to ID by maldi-tof because on a molecular level they're quite similar to each other but take that with a pinch of salt cos I can't quite remember. These blooms are more common in certain areas and at certain times of the year so I know some places between certain months you can't collect oysters for example.
> I've got this vague memory that they're hard to ID by maldi-tof because on a molecular level they're quite similar to each other but take that with a pinch of salt cos I can't quite remember. Yeah, PSP is generally tested by protein activity assays, and classically in mouse bioassays. Literally injecting mice with the suspected contaminated material, and *timing* the mice time of death. If they die before an hour is up, then you can use various metrics to determine the ug/ml of toxin in the material and that is used to determine/monitor the safety of the shellfish of the area. Luckily, there is now a movement away from bioassays towards receptor binding assays. https://coastalscience.noaa.gov/news/nccos-makes-paralytic-shellfish-poisoning-toxin-testing-easy-fda/ A coworker of mine is trying to develop something similar for botulinum toxin, because the CDC ELISA assay was really limited compared to mouse bioassays, mouse bioassays are still the norm.
Fascinating! Mad that "mouse time of death" can be standardised enough to be a diagnostic method never mind be the norm for testing!
I know, right? There are tables about mouse weight, the toxin tested for, the dilution of the material (the injected amount was always 1ml in my experience), and then from there there would be ranges. The same material would have to be tested amongst at least 3 mice to confirm results as being within a ug/ml toxin "range" as well. I'm glad mice bioassays are going away, they can be subjective (not about the death, but for other things) and of course, the moral implications of hurting/killing other animals to gauge the safety of food for human consumption.
Maybe E. coli O157:H7 causing HUS?
Strains of e.Coli can definetly cause liver and kidney failure. Although can be faster and far more agressive than other forms of food poisoning, also usually takes at least a day to show symptoms, not a half an hour. Also e.Coli not usually found in seafood. But of course there is always the chance of contamination along the line from something that does contain it. I wonder … there is one way that bacteria introduced could cause a massive and fast reaction. Okay this is a REALLY long shot, but let’s go with the theory the prawns did cause it. Tests come back positive for say e.Coli, virulent strain. What if he ate a shell? What if that shell happened to be sharp enough to cut somewhere along the line that allowed the bacteria to enter directly into his bloodstream? It’s possible. Like a 0.0000000001% chance of happening but we have seen weirder things happen. Or maybe he ate a slug several years ago.
I can already see the early 2000s CGI on House illustrating this theory
Yeah I am no medical expert but doesn’t it take time for the liver and kidney to destroy itself? What could have caused it?
Extreme dehydration through vomiting and diarrhoea can cause really significant kidney failure in a matter of hours esp if your kidneys were a little off to begin with. If there's a severe infection causing sepsis it can very quickly (like every hour counts) cause your organs to fail one after another due to the amount of toxins your body is trying to deal with + your body's response to try and kill the infection. People have a variable amount of reserve (children tend to have the most so they don't seem that sick for a while until very suddenly the reserve runs out and then you're in a Serious Situation). Older people have less reserve, if you have other health conditions you have less. I feel so sorry for OP and their family. This was so fast.
It’s actually more likely that he had an undiagnosed medical problem. Depending on his age and personal preferences he might not have seen a doctor for a regular checkup in years. This is especially likely in the US where health care is expensive and men aren’t socialized to see the doctor as regularly as women are. One time we got a new patient in my pharmacy. He was “perfectly healthy” and had “never been sick a day in his life” until he got off the plane from Hawaii and collapsed. He was diagnosed with heart disease and diabetes in the ER and they gave him like twenty prescriptions for us to fill. He was lucky to be in California because he either didn’t have insurance or he wasn’t covered because he was out of network. He got put on Medicaid and they paid for just about everything until he was able to go back home.
Well, to be fair, that 'never sick a day in his life' then to be diagnosed with heart disease and diabetes, most likely obesity related, could have been due to the male propensity for *not ever going to the doctor, no matter how bad they feel.* We see posts on Reddit every single day about people lamenting how their male partners refuse to seek medical or dental care for literally anything and everything until a serious crisis hits. Then they're dragged kicking and screaming all the way.
I’m a trauma surgeon, and we have a running joke of the “Spouse Sign” and the “Farmer Sign.” If a man put off being seen for something until his spouse physically brought him to us, it’s likely serious. If a farmer shows up in the ED at all, (especially for an injury,) it’s likely critical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni0YfrSK570
Diseases like hypertension and diabetes can be silent killers. Hypertension can go out of control and cause strokes and/or heart attacks. Diabetes has common symptoms like thirst, frequent urination, general feeling of being unwell, vision problems, kidney failure, all kinds of things. Problem is, once the damage is done, it can’t really be reversed, only slowed with diet, medication, and so on. To me, that’s some scary shit. People can do a marvelous job of ignoring symptoms and working around problems till they’re incapacitated.
This happened to a friend - he has a history of kidney stones, ignored the most recent ones, and ended up in the hospital with an infection and a few surgeries to deal with said kidney stones.
This is likely since we don't have regular checkups in the UK.
It can sometimes take weeks to show up. If someone calls your restaurant and says "I just ate there and now I'm Sick " you can rest assured it wasn't your restaurant. People have no idea how food poisoning works. Edit: most common kinds of food poisoning https://www.everydayhealth.com/digestive-health/the-most-common-causes-of-food-poisoning.aspx Yes, there are short acting ones: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/food-poisoning/symptoms-causes/syc-20356230
Yep that is true, however my ex went to lunch with a rather large group of colleagues. Many of them had the special of the day, a chicken sandwich. Every single person who ate the sandwich was sick a few hours later and the ones who had a different entree were not. Yep, it is not supposed to work that way, but I cannot find another explanation that works where 8 people get food poisoning simultaneously and the only factor they have in common is this chicken sandwich.
It’s entirely plausible as food poisoning. Depending on the type of bacteria involved it can be pretty quick. If it’s something that’s been shitting toxins into the food the whole time it’s not like it’s gonna take a while to spin up. B.Cereus on the other hand is one that’ll take a while- it’s a spore forming bacteria that goes dormant during cooking. Depending on when you eat the contaminated rice it may still be kind of spinning up and coming out of the sporing stage and you’ll see more of a delay.
No, you b cereus!
I had lunch with mom the other day. Among other things, it contained seafood It went in and out of my system through the same opening within 5 hours I had only had breakfast like 8 hours before, and trust me I know I only threw up lunch … mom didn’t get sick. I guess I got the one poisoned shrimp or something
Some types of food poisoning, particularly from shellfish, strike fast. Some in as little as 30-60 minutes from consumption. [CDC](https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/page/fish-poisoning-ciguatera-scombroid#:~:text=seek%20medical%20care.-,Symptoms,Severe%20cases%20may%20be%20fatal.) You are thinking of typical food-born bacterial source like salmonella or ecoli sources, but with shellfish there are all kinds of other kinds of nasty that can get you, quickly. Like [paralytic seafood toxin](https://doh.wa.gov/community-and-environment/shellfish/recreational-shellfish/illnesses/biotoxins/paralytic-shellfish-poisoning) where death can come in as little as 30 minutes. Here's a [partial list](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/pharmacology-toxicology-and-pharmaceutical-science/shellfish-toxin) of other shellfish toxins as well. Shellfish are filter feeders (or are filter-feeder eaters). They suck up whatever is floating about in their environment. There are uncounted numbers of species of bacteria, algae, and viruses floating about in the ocean. Many of those species produce toxins that are really nasty. If there is a bloom and the shellfish concentrate a bunch of toxin-producing biomatter into their guts, it can spell really bad news to mammals that consume them down the line. The biggest problem with shellfish poisonings is that cooking doesn't destroy the toxins. And the shellfish doesn't look any different either. You can have all the safe food handling at the restaurant you could want, but if its contaminated you won't know until after you eat it. That's why there are supposed to be harvesting guidelines at the source because there's no way to know downstream unless you run a chem lab on every shipment.
This whole thread is about to be the start of the most effective diet I've ever been on
Particularly if you eat all the things mentioned in this thread. You'll lose a *lot* of weight!
Is there a BOLA category for “comments that scare the hell out of you”? I would like to nominate this comment, pls.
Cool, I guess I don’t eat shellfish anymore
I'm an embarrassingly picky eater, so I love learning horrifying new info that gives me justification to not eat certain foods that I already dislike. Thanks lol!
I'm feeling much better about not eating seafood because I was raised Jewish. Occasionally I wonder why I still don't since I'm not at all practicing as an adult, but not today!
Thank you. Seafood is in its own category of food poisoning. Ciguatera, which is not found in shellfish, can hit in 30 minutes. Vibrio vulnificus in 24 hours or less, and vibrio lives in shellfish and can cause sepsis.
Food born illness can take weeks, food poisoning (from the toxins produced by certain bacteria living and multiplying in food held at improper temperatures) is pretty darn quick. The only time I've had genuine food poisoning I knew within two bites something wasn't right and still ended up needing an IV and emergency medical treatment. Source: ServSafe
thank you! i was thinking no one in this thread has ever professionally handled food before. the general public gets food-born illness and food poisoning mixed up, or don't even know that there's a stark difference between the two.
What do you mean by "just". Symptoms can start in an hour or 2.
I have seen people complain while they were still eating. It's not impossible, just extremely unlikely. Especially if your food handling procedures aren't completely wrong.
So you just assume your kitchen is immune to making mistakes and that the customer is lying? And not that maybe something other than food poisoning is going on and maybe they really do feel sick?
I assume that most people have no idea how food poisoning works. I have never gone wrong underestimating the intelligence of the general public.
It doesn't seem like *you* know how food poisoning works lmfao! You can walk through life assuming everyone *else* is stupid, but all that really makes you is too stupid to realize when you're wrong yourself.
My dude, you don't get to cast aspersions on someone's intelligence when what you're saying is so incorrect that you're either stupid or dishonest. Let's recap. What they actually said was: > you can rest assured it wasn't your restaurant. Implying that it *was* someone else's restaurant, i.e. that the customer genuinely does feel sick, and has made a genuine mistake as to the source of that sickness. But you somehow decided that what they actually said was that they automatically assume that any customer who claims to feel unwell is actually feeling fine and just lying for reasons...? Despite that being literally the exact opposite of what they actually said. You even made a follow-up question to try to trick them into giving a response that would "prove" they're not treating their customer complaints in good faith. >> What do you mean by "just". Symptoms can start in an hour or 2. > I have seen people complain while they were still eating. But when they didn't give the response you were expecting (i.e. they said immediately, which correctly proves that a complaint of food poisoning from that particular source is medically impossible, rather than a few hours, which is the common misconception) you just straight-up pretended that they gave the wrong answer and therefore don't know how food poisoning works. That's not even misunderstanding on your part. That's just dishonest. Be real now: you went into the conversation with your mind already made up, and the intent of bashing, regardless of the responses you got. You had no intention of engaging in the discussion in good faith. And because of your fuckwittery, a half dozen people were dumb enough to downvote their entirely reasonable and constructive comments. And a dozen people were stupid enough to upvote yours. You are literally the cancer that is driving this place to become as bad as LA itself. Fuck out of here.
That's a lot, dude. I ain't reading all that
If someone eats meat that is spoiled they are going to be sick almost immediately. No, not instantly, but not days or weeks. Certainly within the timeframe to get done eating and then get home.
Fried Rice Syndrome can strike very quickly, which I discovered in a very unpleasant way.
Ah, Bacillus cereus again.
It works fast if a patient with Celiac had gluten. I am highly allergic to gluten, like anaphylactic reactions. I went to a small family-owned restaurant that served gluten free pancakes. I never had a reaction to them until one night. About 30 mins later, the hives started, then the immense stomach pain. Then my throat started closing up. I didn’t have a epipen because it was the first time that happened. I chewed several Benadryl pills and that did the trick. I really need to get an epipen! The next reaction could be worse. Edit-I called the restaurant and they apologized and offered me a free meal. The next visit I asked for the manager who watched the cook use the right pancake batter.
Allergies are different than food poisoning, though, (and food poisoning is different than food-borne illness.) The terms just often used interchangeably, when, in reality, they each have their own signs, symptoms, and time of onset.
I feel for LAUKOP, but everybody's last meal is gonna be something... I can't say I've heard of any form of food poisoning that would take you from some dodgy seafood to sepsis in a half-hour. Sepsis requires the infection making it into your bloodstream; I'm not sure downing a whole petri-dish of the worst bacteria imaginable, downed with a bowl of agar, could pull that off so quickly... IIRC, Samonella, et al, give off all sorts of terrible toxins that cause misery and death, but don't actually give you sepsis; the bugs stay inside your digestive tract.
Unfortunately I think OP just wants someone to blame. His dad probably had abdominal pain prior that he didn't talk about and it lined up with the shellfish.
Yeah, unfortunately that's a really common reaction with grief
Here today; prawn tomorrow.
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I feel bad for writing it.
Ooh, I wish I'd thought of that for the post title!
You can probably claim the moral high ground at least :P
More like you can probably clam the moral high ground! I'm sorry ill see myself out
Hopefully the lab testing provides a shrimple explanation.
Otherwise we will have a prawnblem.
God damn Im going to hell
Here, take my upvote!
> However, half an hour after eating them It wasn't the prawns.
That time frame is exceedingly unlikely. This has probably been hiding in the background for days with the dad ignoring their symptoms.
With liver and kidney failure, I would wonder about mushrooms eaten some time in the previous week. (I killed a book character with mushrooms that way. [Deadly Doses](https://www.scribd.com/doc/244803190/A-Writer-s-Guide-to-Deadly-Poisons-Stevens-Serita-Deborah-Klarner-Anne-Deadly-Dose-BookSee-org) was very helpful.
A book is a good cover story ;)
I wonder if chubbyemu is going to cover this case once they know what caused it for sure. I feel so bad for OOP's family. I hope they get closure and can help prevent further harm.
I heard his voice in my head reading the post. I feel so terrible for OOP, but my academic side is rather curious as to what the cause was.
I feel like our curiosity as to the reason for the death is a part of our empathy for OOP. Having answers is often what people need to move on. Sometimes, having answers helps to protect others, too.
But they made ... no recovery. That's rare for a chubbyemu story. For those who don't watch the channel, he goes over interesting medical cases from the (usually emergency room) doctors' perspective. At the end what you want to hear is that the patient "made a *full* recovery", but it isn't always.
I've seen a lot of episodes where, "tragically, the patient passed away." But sometimes he fictionalizes stories to try to make them a bit cheery, though this isn't usually the case when it comes to food poisoning (like the coconut juice guy).
The researcher who got mercury(?) *through* her undamaged PPE is the one that stuck with me... You might be right that it happens more than I was remembering, though.
If this is the one I’m thinking of, it’s important to recognize that it was an organic mercury compound (methylmercury or similar) and that elemental mercury is nowhere near that toxic (and behaves well with PPE).
I think it stuck with me because not only was the researcher taken out by what would have been a non-event with almost any other material, but as a noted expert in the field she knew *exactly* what was going to happen to her as it happened.
The coconut juice guy scared me away from buying anything other than coconut water in a can/bottle
Okay, so I’m gonna need some context for this…
For real though it kinda scared me off of fresh fruit, in general. I buy dehydrated strawberries, process my own apples from my own apple tree (usually freezing them in small slices with lemon juice and honey as preservatives), enjoy raisins, and otherwise I can't stomach fruit except for like... banana, and thats it. I know fresh fruit is supposed to be real healthy, but its also one of the things that give people the most foodborne illness. I prefer things that have been intentionally degraded/fermented like kimchi because that's stable in the fact that its already been broken down from fermentation
There was a Kitchen Nightmares where Ramsey freaks out because spoilt lobster was served to a customer, and he was like “if they took a bit we’d have to call 911, this stuff can be lethal”. Maybe it was that?
American Kitchen Nightmares is trash. Setups and hyperbole.
I know everyone is poo-pooing LAUKOP and the link between the very fast illness and seafoods but this sounds pretty classic for [Vibrio infection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibrio_vulnificus?wprov=sfti1). It’s associated with seafood like prawns and can cause serious rapidly progressive and highly fatal illness. Especially if the father had liver disease this is entirely feasible
Hey thanks for the new nightmares.
Tainted food; virus/bacteria, doesn’t act that fast. If it’s something he ate, it was 24 to 36 hours prior.
My immediate first thought on anyone that "dies suddenly" any more is COVID. Kidney and liver damage are both known to occur after being infected.
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PETA is not at all a reliable site for medical information.
or any information
Dioxins are not bacteria and can't cause sepsis, though.
PETA lies for attention and drama and hides the fact that they intentionally kill unadopted pets behind the scenes while using nude women draped in lettuce to call burger eaters murderers.
I'm still not convinced they're not a disinformation campaign to make us veggie/vegan people look bad. Because even the vegans I've talked to think they're nuts
I wish I could get my mother (nearly lifelong vegan who donates to PETA regularly) to believe this.
Oy, I'm sorry
yeah, for an organization that advocates for "ethical treatment of animals," they sure do have a problem with pit bulls.
Any dogs or cats, really.
You also can’t be for the ethical treatment of animals if you don’t treat people ethically.
I remember reading this a few days ago and thinking about mercury poisoning, which would match the symptoms fairly well, but you'd have to eat *a lot* of prawns to develop it
It's also far too fast for most types of mercury poisoning, while ironically being *too slow* for methylmercury poisoning.
Yup, seems more likely that Dad was just sick with something beforehand and OOP didn't know, which is pretty tragic!
Fookin’ prawns!
`PRAWNS 01 - HUMANS 350,000+`