Food poisoning: Caulifower--not just tomatoes

Margie, I am sorry to hear the spinach got you. Glenn was so violently ill and looked so horrible for days after that I don't think I even want to look at cauliflower ever again. Blake, that is interesting and a good thing to watch in any vegetable. It was a beautiful head and looked very fresh but whatever it was, was noxious.

Nancy, I am happy to have found this family doctor. Time and time again, this doctor and also the nurse practitioner really come through in ways others have not by mixing common sense with real knowledge. He is doing better and better each day. It was vert violent and he still looks horrible/is weak almost a week later.  I wish his boss would get it that illness is illness and would enforce things with those who shirk work day in day out rather than look askance at the hardworkers who get sick. He should not have tried to go back to work today. I suppose we should be thankful that his stomach lining acted fast to protect him from more serious harm. I won't gross people out but they told him some interesting things about stomach linings and how it acts to protect the body. One of the models on the cover of some of the medicals sort of looks like our family doctor if the model had a bit shorter more buzz cut hair.

Amanda, thanks. It really makes huge difference to see a good doctor.  All the fancy tests in the world are no substitute for practical knowledge sometimes and good listening skills.

I am not sure how useful I really am.  I felt very helpless just watching him.  When I was a kid, we always had medicine for vomiting and also to induce it and I remember my parents showing me the two and making a big deal about always checking which is which.  It wasn't for me, I have only gotten sick to my stomach 3-4 times in my entire life.  We had lots of things in the medicine cabinet as staples people don't seem to have nowadays. I even remember house calls and I am not that old and grew up in a city.  

We discovered this doctor somewhat by fluke.  He is actually in Lakewood, the town where we used to live but every time we think of trying to find a doctor closer to home, something happens to make me more and more convinced that I do not want to deal with anyone else.  Both the doctor and nurse practioner just seem to combine knowledge and common sense and listening skills to get it right.  Granted, the respiratory specialist did save my life when it wasn't clear what I had, but it was the family doctor who got the most suitable post hospitalization meds for me in lieu of the more advertised hip meds which were causing bad side effects.  I complained, it was switched, I was fine.

I am not sure I can explain this connection other than to say I read an Olivia Gates medical the other night (not blogged yet) and it made me think of her Desire and how the body is seen as a good thing and about some of the medical romances I have read where the doctors are competent and are more than just technicians...they seem to have a calling for medicine, for the body and for dealing with patients.   Some doctors just make a person feel bad being there but this doctor doesn't. Same with Olivia Gates' romances (both medicals and the Desire I read) and many of the medicals.  Probably philosophical approaches embedded somehowe but as patients (and readers), there is just a different approach to the body and medicine.

I wonder what it was.  I'll have to see if my mom remembers.  I think it was just one of those things people with kids kept arpound?  I ate an entire bottle of vitamin pills when I was a kid but I didn't need any help to induce vomiting then.  I have never had my gall bladder removed.  I just rarely have stomach things..once when I had mono as a kid, once when I had a bug in college and then when I tried to eat too fast after my hysterectomy.  In almost 48 years, that's it.  But, of course, so far I have not had food poisoning either.

The appendix experience sounds horrible.  One of my dh's co-workers just had her appendix out and then she got an infection from the surgery which was even worse and she was back in the hospital over a week  after that.  Everyone here has been really hypervigilant about pain in the addomen lately.  Whern I had my hysterectomy, my surgeon asked me if I wanted her to take out my appendix for free while she was there.  I am glad she did!

I am definitewly glad for modern medicine!  When I got this asthma/pneumonia-like virus last year, I would never have survived without modern medicine.  But...I do like medical people with listening skills and who know other things too.  I got this small skin infection and I really, really did not want to try a new antibiotic after having had a bad reaction to 2 with my spider bite last year.  The NP listened and suggested I try hot wet compresses for 2 days...it worked so she spared me that.  

ChrissieSue, that's the name of it!

Amanda, I don't get sick a lot but I don't have this super-healthy lifestyle.  People in my family have done everything they shouldn't and mostly all have lived into their 90s and over 100.  How horrible to have food poisoning during a person's wedding!  The day Glenn and I got married, it was sooo hot that we just had to wear shorts.

Glenn is better and his blood test showed that his white blood count is back to normal but his throat is sore and he is not back up to speed at all.

Katherine T, he is better but I just think the last bit of getting better is going to take some time.  I talked to a friend of mine last night---the nurse who got me reading romance.  She said that it can take time and the last bit of recuperating, the small things he is feeling now are typical and also what she experienced the one time she had food poisoning.  If it doesn't get better, i guess he will go back.  It took months for my throat to get better after being on a respirator (plus the asthma meds contributed).

It's really hard to tell if tyhere are more cases.  WHen we have mild upsets from food, we never report it.  This was so extreme, that we reported this to the grocery store (who did nothing), the CDC and the Colorado Health Department. It seems like some people really dance around the food poisoning issue and want to attribute it to anything else.  They even tried to mention food allergy...Glenn has eaten caulifloweer his whole life.  Our doctor is as certain as certain can be without testing the caulifower.  He was feeling great until 90 minutes after eating the cauliflower which is just the time it takes to get from the mouth to the stomach.  That is when the stomach cramps started.  Our doctor says that with a virus it tends to come on a bit more slowly...not this IMMEDIATE well/violent cramping so perfectly timed with food.  It's the only food not in common. Plus..no one at Glenn's job is sick and we don't have kids and is most recently have not been hanging out with people who have kids lately.  Our life has been very quiet and home-based lately.  It's very frustating to see how the authorities who deal with these issues really try to turn you away.  Anyhow, we did report it and the Colorado Health Department is going to report it to the FDA etc.  The problem is now it is 2 weeks past so it is too late because the food has changed.  ZThis whole experience of trying to report it makes me really wonder how many cases don't get reported.  It wasn't until I explained every last little detail to the Health Department that they started taking it more seriously...little things like how he worksd for a very small company where only one person was sick and it was appendicitis (Not contagious) and how we have spent the past couple of weeks very much at home working on websites and with nothing else than going to the grocery store in terms of public exposure.  They did not ask..I had to offer all that.