After eating poisonous mushrooms, I saw a snake with a diameter of one meter

As the saying goes, "Man is iron and rice is steel", but people may accidentally eat poisonous food if they are not careful.

For example, some people accidentally ate poisonous mushrooms and saw stickmen dancing on the roof; some people ate seafood contaminated by microorganisms and turned into "Splatoon".

Summer is here, and this time of year is the peak season for food poisoning. Readers of Guokr Patients, Guokr Nature, and Foodie Research Institute have shared their experiences of food poisoning with you. Let's take a look.

Ate poisonous mushrooms.

I saw a python about one meter in diameter.

@unicornbeast:

I have accidentally eaten raw castor seeds .

One weekend when I was in the third grade of elementary school, I was playing with my cousin who was two years younger than me. He said that castor beans can be used to extract oil, and the oil extracted was very fragrant. Then he picked a ripe castor bean and asked me to taste it. In order to convince me, he ate it and said it was very fragrant. I tried to take a bite, and it was extremely bitter, so bitter that I vomited. I don’t know how he ate it. When I said it was too bitter and couldn’t eat it, he picked another green one and ate it while asking me to taste it. I tried it again, and the result was just as bitter. However, the young me was confused by the carefree behavior of my younger cousin, so I doubted my taste buds, so I ate the third one, and it was so bitter that I doubted my life . How bitter was it? It was probably as bitter as licorice tablets...

Castor oil plant｜Pixabay

I took castor beans in the evening when the sun was about to set. When it got dark, I went home and found that I had no appetite and began to vomit. I started vomiting at about 7 o'clock (just when the TV started to broadcast the news network), and I vomited until 10 o'clock in the evening. From vomiting a lot to vomiting a little to vomiting yellow water, I remember it very clearly. I vomited a total of nine times . When I vomited yellow water, I finally had no strength to fall asleep.

I didn't go to the hospital for treatment at that time. I found out when I met my cousin the next day that he also vomited, but after vomiting twice, his father took him to the clinic for infusion. It was then that I suspected that the castor bean was poisonous because no one else vomited except us.

More than 20 years have passed and everything is still good.

Castor beans can be used to extract oil, and during the heating process, ricin loses its toxicity. However, unprocessed castor beans are a "natural killer" that requires vigilance . Castor beans and seeds contain a large amount of ricin, a highly toxic protein that can dissolve red blood cells, and even damage the liver and kidneys and inhibit the respiratory center.

(Author: Round Square)

@Jiao:

During the summer vacation in the third grade of elementary school, I was poisoned by eating black boletus mushrooms .

The whole family ate it, but I was the only one who had symptoms. I remember eating some the night before, and the next day I had fried black porcini mushrooms mixed with noodles for breakfast. About 3 hours later, I started to feel dizzy and blurry . My parents came home and saw me sleeping, and they thought I was being lazy and not doing my homework .

Boletus in the restaurant: upper right: black boletus (Phlebopus portentosus); lower left: white boletus and Boletus edulis; lower right: onion mushroom and B. bicolor｜Jian Yi Ling

During the lunch break, I was originally sharing a bedroom with my grandmother, but I kept talking nonsense, so my parents carried me to their bedroom. I still remember today that my first symptom was that I saw a golden line on the wall. When I looked at my father's arm, the skin was transparent, and I could see the blood flowing inside and the beating nerves and muscles. I also saw many elves crawling into my father's ears. After entering, there was a big palace where the elves were dancing ballroom dance. On the way to the hospital, these elves flapped their wings and rode on wooden sticks to go to the hospital with me. In addition, I also saw large pieces of cotton wool on the table at home, growing softly on the table. Later, I heard from my parents that I kept wiping the table with a rag...

However, since that time, I still eat mushrooms every summer, and occasionally eat black boletus, but the "wonderful" experience only happened that year.

Boletus is the main force in the wild mushroom market in Yunnan, and is famous for its ability to cause hallucinations and poisoning reactions. There are many types of boletus, and there are as many as 100 edible boletus. The common ones include yellow boletus, black boletus, white boletus, and red boletus. Among them, red boletus is the most popular, and the famous hallucinogenic mushroom is it; when the red boletus is injured, it will quickly turn blue, so it is commonly known as the hand-seeing blue. The hand-seeing blue poisoning is often caused by undercooking, so in order to avoid poisoning, it must be fully heated!

(Author: Jian Yiling, Hedgehog)

It must be cooked thoroughly, otherwise it will be "mushroom first and then the little man"丨Weibo screenshot

@Hip-hop auntie:

I got poisoned after eating wild Yunnan mushrooms . I ate them fried in oil every day for four days, and I ate half a plate of them every time, so I was the only one in the family who got poisoned.

I didn't feel any other discomfort, but I saw a red and white diamond-patterned python about one meter in diameter crawling around my house . It was a strange feeling. I didn't see the snake's head, and I kept looking for it, but I didn't feel scared. I didn't go for treatment, and I recovered after a good night's sleep.

The editor of Guokr Nature said that it is really difficult to find a snake with a diameter of one meter for illustration｜Pixabay

@Wild mushroom hunter dream Xiaojin

Poisoning caused by poisonous mushrooms , picked in Weihai, Shandong. My mother and I followed our auntie friend who contracted a fruit forest on the mountain and picked them early in the morning. We only picked them, and the auntie was responsible for sorting them. When we got home, the nanny threw away some ugly ones aesthetically, washed them four or five times, blanched them in water, and fried them with shredded pork.

Five people had a meal, three of them went to the emergency room , and the remaining two were fine. I ate mushrooms for lunch, and I had stomach discomfort and diarrhea at dinner. As someone with a sensitive stomach, this was the beginning of food poisoning. I told people I could go to the hospital at any time, but no one took me seriously. I started vomiting at 7:30 in the evening, and my mother also felt uncomfortable in her stomach. After she had diarrhea twice and vomited once within 20 minutes, I quickly vomited the second wave and forced her to the emergency room. After entering the hospital, she had watery stools again, and she squatted in the toilet and couldn't stand up. After being taken to the emergency observation room, she began to convulse. I held the vomit bag and vomited while I saw her opisthotonos... Fortunately, she got better after a shot in the buttocks, and I vomited for the tenth time ...

An hour after we were both on IV drip, the nanny also joined the emergency room, cursing... When we walked out of the emergency room at dawn, the three of us looked at each other and decided to come back for injections at night! The others recovered after two days of IV drip, but I entered a stage where I was sore and weak all over and couldn't get out of bed. Fortunately, the test results were not too outrageous, with neither liver damage nor kidney failure. It's just that for three days, I don't know why my vision was a little dim. I had strange nightmares with the worry that "my eyes won't be damaged." Everything I saw in the dream had a colorful, fluorescent graffiti-like color . People said that the green curtain was good, but I saw pink... This designer was scared... Many years later, the video of eating mushrooms and catching villains went viral, and I... Oh, my villain is so angry!

In fact, I asked on Weibo whether I could eat the mushrooms. Even though I received a screen full of candles, it didn’t stop my mom from cooking the mushrooms … Later it became a medical record… People nicknamed me “Wild Mushroom Hunter Meng Xiaojin”…

At the time, I asked on Weibo if I could eat it. Even though the screen was full of candles, it didn’t stop my mom from putting the mushrooms in the pot… | Photo courtesy of the author

It is best not to pick or eat wild mushrooms!!!

@Xiao Fan 20 years ago:

I ate bitter gourd . It was probably when I was in high school. One time when my parents were not at home, my sister, grandma and I fried the gourd together. It was bitter. After pouring it out and washing the pot, we cooked noodles again. There was still a little bit of bitterness , but we didn't take it seriously and ate the noodles.

About an hour or two later, all three of us started to feel weak, vomiting and having diarrhea. Grandma ate less, so her symptoms were milder, but my sister and I were completely exhausted. When my mother heard about it, she went home and got some medicine from the clinic. We quickly got better after taking the medicine.

The gourd is a variant of the gourd, which is grown in many places in China. Different regions have different names such as gourd and honey melon. 丨The picture is from the article "My mother's bitter gourd fried eggs made us both start the toilet war" by Yu Sijie

Bitter gourds are poisonous, mainly due to the toxin "cucurbitacin". Under normal circumstances, the cucurbitacin content in gourds is very low, not bitter, and non-toxic. Under unfavorable growth conditions, gourds will produce more cucurbitacin as a "defense measure", which leads to bitterness and toxicity. This is not only the case with gourds, but also with other gourds.

There are many subtypes of cucurbitacin, among which cucurbitacin b is the most toxic. Symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, abdominal pain, and diarrhea will appear soon after consumption. In severe cases, it may cause organ damage, shock, and even life-threatening.

(Author: Yun Wuxin)

@Jinjila:

I ate unripe eggplant and had vomiting and diarrhea, suspected of being poisoned by solanine. I made the dish myself, and since I had never cooked eggplant before, I just scrambled it and served it right away. When I ate it, I actually noticed that the taste was not right, but I still ate it in the spirit of not wasting food...

I ate at around 10pm the night before, and the next morning I woke up feeling a little dizzy, weak, unsteady, and my stomach was rumbling. I started to have diarrhea at noon and felt nauseous. I vomited after defecating in the company bathroom, and vomited after defecating. I also vomited after drinking water.

On the way home in a taxi, I almost vomited all over the driver. The driver was forward-looking and handed me a bag. I bought rehydration salts and drank them slowly. At 8 o'clock the next night, I felt that I could eat something after drinking water without vomiting, so I ate steamed eggs and steamed buns.

Solanine , also known as solanine , is an alkaloid found in Solanaceae plants. Solanine is a cholinesterase inhibitor, and excessive intake by humans and animals may cause poisoning, with symptoms including dizziness, nausea, diarrhea, and in severe cases, tinnitus, dehydration, and breathing difficulties.

Unripe tomatoes and green potatoes both contain solanine in amounts that exceed safe levels, and the solanine content in unripe eggplants is also much higher than that in ripe eggplants.

There was no other food in the cafeteria at that time.

Only beans are left, very raw

@木广之:

I ate uncooked edamame soup . On the first day of the National Day when I went back to my grandmother's house, my second mother cooked the edamame she had just picked from the field and wanted to make soup. I drank the soup at noon, but I got sick in the middle of the night, vomited and had diarrhea, and stayed in bed for three days.

I didn't go to the hospital at that time, but went to see the village doctor. I told him that I had food poisoning. I was given two bottles of water and went home to rest. I lay in bed for three days and still felt weak.

Edamame/soybeans contain protease inhibitors, saponins and hemagglutinins. High temperatures for a long enough time can destroy these substances to a large extent. If they are not cooked and consumed in large quantities, some people may experience symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Usually, these symptoms can be relieved in a short time.

Soybeans must be cooked｜Pixabay

@sun:

I got poisoned by eating raw beans . There was no other food in the cafeteria at the time, only beans. I ate five or six beans and stopped eating because I thought they were too raw. About an hour later, I felt uncomfortable in my lower abdomen, and then I vomited and had diarrhea. I didn't go to the hospital, but bought electrolytes to drink with water, and I was better overnight.

Lentils and green beans contain hemagglutinin and saponin, and these two beans are the most common types of legume poisoning. If not cooked, the above foods will irritate the digestive tract mucosa, causing symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea.

Drinking fruit juice contaminated with bacteria,

I still remember the cramping feeling of not being able to hold my poop.

@Caramel custard:

I ordered a random takeaway for lunch, which was probably very unclean. I started vomiting about 10 minutes after eating it. The first time I vomited like a projectile . I vomited 3 times in 1 hour and had diarrhea 2 times.

I went to the emergency room of a tertiary hospital. The situation was not serious because I vomited almost all the contents within a short period of time after eating, so there was no chance for me to continue to wreak havoc. The doctor asked about the situation, and I answered truthfully that I had vomiting and diarrhea after eating the food. The doctor also asked if I vomited bile or vomited blood, and I answered truthfully that I did not. After that, the doctor palpated the abdomen and believed that it was acute gastroenteritis caused by bacterial infection . He prescribed levofloxacin, omeprazole, and montmorillonite powder.

There was no vomiting that day, but I still had mild diarrhea on the second day, and I was cured on the third day.

Doctors believe it is acute gastroenteritis caused by bacterial infection | Photo provided by the author

@Qingqiu:

My brother ate some street food at the snack street. It was a very common snack. Fried skewers? Hand-pulled pancakes? I don't remember because it was so long ago...

My brother ate with his classmates during the day, and when he got home in the evening, he started to have a fever, vomiting and diarrhea. He vomited like crazy and kept going to the toilet until he had diarrhea. My brother couldn't drink water, so he was dehydrated to the point that his lips were cracked and peeling, and the white skin on his lips could be torn off piece by piece. The stomachache lasted until the evening and then he was fine, but he had diarrhea for three days, and the doctor later said it was salmonella infection .

Salmonella is one of the most common foodborne pathogens, mainly transmitted through the fecal-oral route. Many foods may carry Salmonella due to improper production, transportation, sales, and preparation . Poultry and livestock meat are the most commonly affected, followed by eggs, milk, and dairy products. The incubation period of Salmonella infection is usually 6 to 24 hours. Patients generally have an acute onset of symptoms, such as fever, vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea.

@Ms. Liu:

Poisoning from eating bacon and pumpkin stewed rice . I went out for an outing and saw a beautiful red old pumpkin in a farmer's field. I bought some and fried them with the old bacon in the refrigerator. I made pumpkin and bacon stewed rice for dinner. My husband and children don't like bacon. They only tasted a little bit, but I ate a big bowl.

Delicious bacon turned out to be a source of poisoning | Tuchong Creative

I started having diarrhea at around 12:00 a.m., and the diarrhea lasted half an hour until I couldn’t get out of the bathroom. At around 3:00 a.m., I put on the diaper that my mother-in-law had used and woke up my husband: “Hurry, take me to the hospital.”

When we arrived at the hospital emergency building, I was already semi-conscious . My husband helped me get out of the car, but I couldn't stand up by myself, so the emergency nurse pushed the operating table and took me to the emergency room. The doctor talked to me and took my blood pressure. I heard him say " only 85/50 "... I woke up again, it was already past four in the afternoon, and I was lying in the hospital's inpatient ward.

Later I learned that the doctor said it was probably aflatoxin poisoning from the bacon . The hospital encounters several similar cases every year. He recovered well, but now he rarely eats bacon.

Aflatoxin is a kind of mold, and it needs certain conditions to produce toxins, such as suitable temperature, humid environment, sufficient nutrition, etc. Generally speaking, the favorite foods of Aflatoxin are rice, wheat, corn, peanuts, etc. Aflatoxin is a first-class carcinogen and a predisposing factor for liver cancer.

@Sodom's Clockwork Orange:

In order to control my drinking, my mother put a Tetra Pak of juice under the bed. After discovering the secret, I crawled under the bed and used a pencil to pierce the tin seal on the Tetra Pak. I drank a large box of juice quietly for a whole day . The next day, I started to have diarrhea, the kind that I couldn't stop. In the end, I didn't even have water. I went to the hospital for emergency treatment and I was still using my mother's sanitary napkin.

The test result was bacterial dysentery . In the early 1990s, there was no air conditioning at home. In the summer, juice spoiled faster. I was knocked out after drinking a box. More than 20 years have passed, but I still remember the cramping feeling of not being able to hold my poop. I was discharged from the hospital a week later, and I never dared to eat unclean food again. Now I regard this incident as a warning to my sons, and they must pay attention to the hygiene of the food they eat.

Bacillary dysentery is an intestinal infectious disease caused by Shigella dysenteriae . It is more common in summer and autumn, with the highest incidence in children. Its main clinical symptoms include fever, diarrhea (mucus, pus and blood in stool), abdominal pain, etc.

@The miserable foodie:

At noon on the last working day before the Spring Festival holiday, I ate a stewed dish that had been in the refrigerator for three days and had not been heated . After eating, I lay on the sofa for a nap. I felt a little nauseous and vomited as soon as I went to the toilet. I felt like vomiting again when I returned to the office. It was too late to go to the toilet, so I started vomiting while holding a trash can. I vomited so much that my throat hurt, so I decided to leave work early and go to the community hospital.

My means of transportation to work is a foldable human-powered scooter, which is still very heavy when folded, and I am afraid of vomiting in a taxi. After struggling, I decided to scooter to the community hospital (2.5km away) and prepared a few garbage bags for vomiting at any time. Then a beautiful girl on the scooter suddenly vomited into the bag on the road.

After going to the community hospital for a checkup, it was determined to be acute gastroenteritis caused by food poisoning . The doctor told me to take medicine first and pay attention to replenishing salt. If I vomited again, I would go for an IV the next day. After returning home, I took the medicine and vomited only once before I began to recover. However, I had a poor appetite throughout the Spring Festival, and I spent the Spring Festival without gaining three pounds .

School and travel collective food poisoning

Put down a nest

@Na~Eating melon:

The ribs in the school cafeteria, which were rare braised ribs, ended up causing a large-scale food poisoning outbreak in the entire school due to Salmonella infection .

At first, only a few students had vomiting and diarrhea at noon, and asked for leave to rest in the dormitory. By the evening, more and more students had abdominal pain and diarrhea. The school found something wrong and sent them to the hospital. At least half of the students in each class were hospitalized, and the most serious ones went into shock and needed emergency treatment . The remaining students who had no symptoms spontaneously went to the hospital to take care of the patients.

The canteen ribs knocked out all the students in the school｜TuChong Creative

On the first day, I had no symptoms. I stayed in the hospital to take care of my classmates all night, pouring water, helping them go to the toilet, and helping students with fever to cool down with alcohol, etc. I ran around several wards. Because there were too many students with food poisoning, one hospital couldn't accommodate them all, so I went to another hospital to see other students early the next morning. Later, I also developed symptoms, abdominal pain, dizziness, and low-grade fever. I was taken directly to get an IV drip and became the one being taken care of .

Everything will be fine afterwards, youth is the capital. If the canteen has braised spareribs, I will still grab them.

@卷卷:

I ate seafood when I was traveling. It was probably not fresh and was only steamed. About 3 hours later, I had severe stomach pain, then diarrhea to the point of my legs going limp. When I was taken to the hospital by ambulance, I was already dehydrated and had to have an IV drip for the first time in my life.

Because more than a dozen people in the group had food poisoning , the doctor didn't ask for stool tests when we got to the hospital, and we all had IV drips. Everyone in the hall knew each other, and every time I had diarrhea, I had to push the IV rod to the toilet with one hand, and I could tell how many people were in line by counting the rods. I lay there on the second day, and my legs were still weak on the third day. I took the ferry back home, and it felt like I was floating back home.

Unfresh seafood is also a hotbed of food poisoning｜Pixabay

@Mr. Jiang:

I was traveling in Xiamen with my mother's colleagues. We found a busy food stall near the hotel. During the trip, the tour guide brought us a kind of local marinated shellfish . Everyone took a chopstick to taste it. Afterwards, including the tour guide, it was probably the raw shellfish that caused everyone's stomach discomfort.

That night, many people in the group felt unwell, with stomachaches and diarrhea. I had the most serious symptoms, with a high fever, weakness in my limbs, and even difficulty breathing . My mother was very anxious, and immediately found a colleague who was in good health, took a taxi to take me to the hospital, so I was carried on a bed and pushed into the emergency room for the first time. However, the doctor judged that the overall situation was good, and I basically supported myself with oxygen and intravenous drips. During this period, I didn’t know whether it was because of drug allergies or the drip speed was too fast, I also had some allergy-like phenomena, and many red bags appeared on my body, but there were no further symptoms later, so no special treatment was given. Probably because I was young and my physical foundation was okay, I went back to the hotel to rest after the drip and oxygen inhalation.

Blood clams, pickled and delicious, but with great health risks | Tuchong Creative

The next day, the itinerary continued, and I followed the tour group to visit the attractions in high spirits. Others only had diarrhea, and overall they were all fine. Because my mother's colleagues were all quite old, the original itinerary was not very intense, and we only had one day to go home. Before we left, the travel agency arranged for a person in charge to visit us and reimbursed the medical expenses.

However, this illness affected my other plans for that summer vacation. I had originally made an appointment with my roommates to visit my classmate’s hometown in Shandong, and the tickets and hotel were already booked. But because of the incident in Xiamen, my parents and I felt uneasy about traveling abroad , so we had to tell my classmates that we couldn’t go and we had to rest at home for a while. At that time, there were still about 4 days before the departure train, so they had to find someone to take my place. They have been talking about this for more than ten years, and now they still complain about me when we have dinner together.

Due to limited space, we were unable to present all the submissions, and some pictures were cropped. Thank you for your submissions, and I wish you all a happy and safe meal.

Editors: Lai Siu-Kau, Mai Mai, Cici, Odette, Ying Wen

This submission was jointly initiated by Guokr Patients, Foodie Research Institute, and Guokr Nature

The copyright of text and images belongs to the contributor