Ask Lemmy

I'm not sure if this counts, but dysenteri from drinking contaminated water.

2008 rendered me and my family homeless for 6 or so years. I was a teenager back then.

We were on vacation in Morocco. We were never a rich family, this vacation was something we planned several years in advance. But as we were in Morocco the whole economy collapsed and we were left stranded.

We made it into Spain by selling a bunch of our stuff. Then we were left stranded in Spain. Still realing from the shock of having lost everything, we were living in some plastic tents next to a river. We weren't allowed to drink the much cleaner water used by the local irrigation, so we took river water and boiled it.

Boiling it apparently wasn't enough. For a whole week I had snot-like slime with blood clots coming out of both ends. Nothing I ate stayed in or could be digested. Some locals who decided to help us said I looked like a skeleton, like someone from a concentration camp. I felt weaker and weaker, more tired, slept longer until I was basically asleep the entire day. I was told I was dying.

What saved me may have been activated charcoal. My mom had a whole pot of it and was feeding it to me with yogurt.

A few years ago, I went to a cafe for breakfast, quite regularly. One morning I decided to try their cooked breakfast, quite similar to a Full English. I'm not a fan of sausages, especially cheap ones, so I didn't think anything of it when I didn't like the taste.

Over the rest of the day and the next morning, I ate a few different meals, but nothing unusual for me. By about lunch time I was feeling very rough. I was hot and sweaty, and needed the bathroom more often than usual. Now, I have a chronic illness, and between that and the meds, I get upset stomachs fairly often, to the point where I know if it's serious or not just from experience.

I was starting to feel weak and dizzy, so I knew that it wasn't normal, and then liquid fire started coming out of both ends. Luckily, my wife was home, and realised that I wasn't joking about this time being worse, and called my doctor. I ended up in hospital for several days with severe food poisoning, and had to have IV fluids.

Environmental Health were called and quizzed me about everything I'd eaten in the last week, and agreed that it was probably the sausage on my breakfast. They investigated the café, but found no serious problems. Luckily, it looked like whatever was wrong with the sausage only affected me because of my health issues, and didn't seriously affect anyone else.

I haven't been back to that café though, just in case.

I've eaten at Popeyes Chicken restaurants three times in my life, each time at a different location, and all three of those meals gave me food poisoning.

I won't be going back to Popeyes a fourth time, because I can take a hint.

Woke up with my stomach in knots, figured I ate something bad the previous day. Texted my work group chat and let them know that I would be useless if I showed up, and explained that I think I ate something bad for dinner. They said something along the lines of "no worries, but you're still gonna have to come in to at least grab the paperwork for staying home for a day." Annoyed, I got a ride to work and went to go do the formalities and explained that my boss had already given me the go ahead to stay home, I just needed the paperwork. First guy I talked to had no issue just writing it up and sending me on my way, but when he stepped away for a second I got asked some questions by one of his coworkers who told me "we have to give you a check up first to determine if you actually have to stay home." She checked my stomach for pain and listened to it make some noises, then decided I was just constipated and gave me something to drink to help. First guy still wrote the paperwork up for me, and I got to go home, stomach in even worse situation and I spent nearly 2 hours on the toilet before I felt safe enough to go lay down and slept the rest of the day away.

(And yes I'm well aware that it's atypical to get a checkup by your workplace, this was a weird and terrible place to work. Glad I got outta there.)

Working at a studio sound stage we had catered lunches from a 3rd party ( not the meal truck that follows the main unit) one day we had ravioli. It went down without an issues but that evening and all night it was coming out both ends. About 30+ other people all got it bad. Needless to say we switched caterers. The local health authority did an investigation it was so bad.

Thanksgiving 2019, went to meet the family at a "fancy" sort of pub out in the sticks for Thanksgiving dinner because all of us were too busy to deal with a traditional get together. Naturally, everybody had their fill until regret as it goes and everybody went back their separate ways.

It wasn't until a couple hours later I started feeling queasy and figured I just needed to sleep off the copious amounts of food I'd eaten, so I went to bed. Until 11pm. I had to rush to the bathroom and rotate between facing the toilet, and sitting on it, for about 20 minutes expelling everything my body could muster. After I got back to bed, it came back every hour like clockwork for about 7 hours, except I'd already been empty after the first episode. I finally got to sleep and spent the next 36 hours trying to remain asleep so as not to feel the pain, and ultimately didn't eat anything for the next four or five days, except small amounts of chicken broth, water, and ginger ale.

1999 - Taco Bell nachos did me in, never ate there or at any Taco Bell ever again.

2004 - Some sushi joint outside of Tacoma, WA, I had the shrimp tempura. Nothing tasted off, but that was my first experience with it coming out of both ends at the same time.

2005 - I was an idiot that thought, for God knows what reason, that the floor of the trailer I called home at the time while stationed in Iraq would remain cold enough to keep a can of Fritos dip cool after I opened it (we did not have a fridge). I was very very wrong and paid the price later the following evening after finishing the dip that day, and that was my second experience with it coming out both ends at the same time. I know it was my own fault, but I still can't eat those dips to this day.

Fast forward to 2020 - 2023, something is making me randomly ill on a monthly, sometimes weekly basis. I eat a regular meal, 30 minutes later I'm in the bathroom with horrible cramps and shits. It took me nearly 3 years to figure out that I'd become lactose intolerant due to age (this is apparently a common occurrence as you get older). Haven't had any issues now that I know to avoid most dairy, but I can immediately tell if I've unknowingly ingested some, because it feels like I've been poisoned 15 minutes into consuming it. Then comes the frantic race to swallow as much Lactaid and lactase pills as I can to calm the storm before it can reach my intestines.

Parents were really into hot wings. They kept ordering them hotter and hotter. It got to the point where my eyes would water being in the same room as them, and I have a high tolerance for spicy food. However, I don’t enjoy the texture of wings and usually got something else, and I remember commenting that this time they smelled “off.” My nose is sharp and something smelled unmistakably rotten. They brushed it aside saying it was probably just the new nuclear fission burn the hair off your tits tropical fuck storm flavor or whatever goofy name they were newly trying out. I was feeling nauseous from the odor so I took my food to my room while they plowed through the pile occasionally pausing to exclaim I was missing out.

I woke up to one of them crashing their way through the house to the bathroom in a blind panic. The door slammed shut, the fan whirred to life and I could hear muttering, gasping and cursing and then the lovely sound of their body forcibly ejecting chicken from both ends. “Goddammit what the hell.” And then a request for a bucket. Stepdad staggered out looking pale as a sheet. “I think I need to go to the ER. Feels like I have knives in my stomach.” My Mom hadn’t succumbed yet, it hit her while she was in the waiting room after she drove him there. They were sick for about a week from salmonella and I was freed from their trufflepig chicken snarfing noises for about a year.

Not embarrassing or thrilling, but way back when I still ate meat, I'm pretty sure Waffle House tried to kill me with a bad batch of Bert's chili. At least, that was the featured odor/flavor in all my bodily effluvium (which was copious!) in the several succeeding days. I didn't die but I do remember wishing I was dead. The experience turned me into a Waffle House skeptic and shortly thereafter, a vegetarian.

My mother made rice in the morning and forgot to put it in the fridge, it was a hot summer day.

When my brother came back from school he decided to eat the rice, not knowing how long it was out. A few bites in he notes the odd taste, nothing major but noticeable, his solution? Add more sauce to drown the weird taste!

Fast forward about an hour, now my brother is puking and shitting it and everything else that was inside of him. So far this is pretty normal right? It can happen to anyone at least once and it wasn't anything crazy since after one puking/shitting session he felt better and was mostly over it.

About 2 hours later my father comes home, this man does not throw away food as long as it isn't covered in mold (this means that small amounts of mould are okay to cut out and eat the rest, thia is the level we are talking about) and just to clarify, we had no food shortage or money issues, he is just unwilling to throw away food.

For some reason nobody threw away the rice yet and it was still on the kitchen counter. My father sees the rice and we all immediately warn him that my brother got food poisoning from it and he should not eat it, of course my father, the genius, decides that my brother just has a weak stomach. He takes a bite, notices the weird taste and you guessed it... Drowns it in sauce!

As expected about an hour later he had a similar puking/shitting session, and learned absolutely nothing.

Kebab joint in the very centre of our million person town.

Ate it on the day before Xmas, was walking and talking again by mid Boxing Day.

Bleaugh, lie down sweats and toilet yoyo.

The place shut down 5yrs after.

This was 20yrs ago, no kebab related issues since then, all tasty. Sour cream and garlic sauce, add a single felafel too.

I got food poisoning from the fish they served in the students cafeteria. Can't stand fish or seafood anymore, and if the fish van is set up on the local supermarkets parking lot once a week, I go around it as far away as possible.

Years ago. Was visiting a client on-site. Meeting ran late and had to race home. Popped into a 'natural' food store to get something. Grabbed a package of pre-made 'fresh' shrimp spring rolls out of one of those open coolers. Ate in the car.

A 1.5 hour drive turned into a four hour nightmare with all the unplanned stops.

Never again.

It was the last day of my first year at the university. I had few hours before my ride arrived. And because I was a poor student I was doing everything to eat as cheap as possible. On the day of the move I had no breakfast as I assumed I can hold off until I get home. I was wrong. Luckily for me the place I lived in (it was some sort of a dorm) had a place to leave food that's no longer needed. It wasn't spoiled or expired, so everyone could grab something. Unfortunately one of the breads develop mold. I found about it after I was done with couple slices. Long story short, few hour drive home took half a day because I had to hit the bushes every 10 minutes.

Unbelievably sick after some seafood at a well-rated place near me.

Dizzy, cramps, shitting.

Stood up after, nauseated. Went to vomit and blacked out, woke up with chipped teeth, bleeding nose, mangled lip, and what would become a black eye whilst lying in a puddle of blood.

Best I can gather is I face planted hard directly onto the edge of the toilet and then the floor. But I honestly don't know.

Ended up having to go to the ER and getting stitches. Recovery for non drinkable foods was some 1-2 weeks.

Have scars from it.

We have high standards for American Chinese food. There was this place where we used to live in the food was great. Not everything they made came out of a bag, and even the things that did come out of a bag had absolutely superior sauces. I don't know exactly what they did but whatever it was it was better heads and tails than anything else around here.

We ordered our regular dishes one day. A few hours later we were exploding out of both ends. Was it them? was lunch? Who knows? We went about our regular business and two weeks later ordered the same regiment. A few hours later we again were exploding out of both ends.

The puking wasn't all that bad but the raw acid diarrhea and the massive cramps were just insane.

This was a pretty bad scenario because of the time we lived in a house with one bathroom.

We never ordered from there again. They had this really great iced tea It took me ages to figure out how to replicate it. It ended up being like 14 to 1 regular sweetened black tea to Earl Gray, plus a splash of lemon.

Sister and dad love Oysters, Muscles, shellfish in general. So when I got some muscles I boiled them up then made macaroni in the juice left behind. They ate it, they loved it. But I ate about a half cup of the pasta. Just the pasta.

Sickest I've ever been in my life. Closest I've got to shellfish since is Shrimp. They don't bother me.

Went to a nearby island with my wife when we visited my hometown. It’s not exactly a tourist destination so there was like one hotel and we were the only guests. We just stayed overnight so we ordered breakfast at the hotel. I don’t even remember what it was anymore but I started feeling weird on the way back. I thought I was just seasick from the boat ride. Shortly after we arrived back on the mainland, I was alternating puking and pooping for over 2 hours.

I was on business trip in Atlanta and had nachos at a dive bar. My supplier had put me up in a corner suite overlooking the runway and I spent the night bowl hugging with liquid coming out of both ends. Met my boss at the airport the next morning where he said I looked green.. and he upgraded us to FirstClass. It was my first time in FirstClass and I spent it in the lavatory. Got off the plane, had a meeting at the plant, went to the hotel and passed out for 12 hours.

Our family was on a road trip, and I made tuna salad sandwiches in the morning. We ended up never stopping for lunch, and in the evening I went to throw away the sandwiches. “They can’t be that bad,” said my husband, “you only made them this morning.” I gave him a “really?” look and continued to throw the sandwiches away.

Apparently this made my usually intelligent and science-minded husband eager to play the tuna roulette. He grabbed a sandwich and took a small bite “see, they are fine!” I called him crazy and threw the rest away. “You’re going to regret that,” I said.

The next morning, we are getting ready to drive to Bandolier National Monument, about a 45-min drive from our hotel. Everything is fine, my husband is driving. All of a sudden, he says “Shit.”

“What is it, baby?” “I need to go. Like, right now.”

He ends up crouching behind a lone scraggly tree next to the road while pooping pure shit water. The rest of his family pass us by in their other two cars. One of them stops as he wildly gestures for them to keep going. They finally get the hint and leave.

Yeah, we never made it to Bandolier that day. But he only had to shit one more time by the road on the way back to the hotel, so that was a win.

He has since agreed that my food safety knowledge is superior and developed a healthy respect for mayonnaise’s ability to ruin a fun day.

It was either the shrimp or the bean sprouts in the food court Pad Thai. I was visiting my S.O. in Canada and wound up in a 3-day war with food poisoning. I could not stop puking and shitting. I shit so much acidic death juice that my asshole was in absolute agony and never cooled down. It was like someone had fileted and cauterized my rectum. I couldn't even sit on the couch properly. Fortunately, her sectional was old and had collapsed in on itself in the very corner. I sat in this corner, right on top of the collapsed portion. It was perfect for supporting my body without making contact with the seat of my pants. I sat in this corner for three days watching weird YouTube videos about Centralia and other phenomena, while intermittently hopping up to puke and shit and fart. I was so fucking sick. I felt like I was going to die.

I ate a burger at a restaurant. There was nothing concerning about the burger or restaurant. A couple of hours later, my friend asked me if I wanted to catch up to watch a movie. We planned to have dinner after the movie.

As I sat in the cinema, I started to feel sick, fast. I felt the urge to run to the bathroom. So, I got out of my seat and ran to the bathroom. But, as I opened the bathroom door, I projectile vomited all over the floor. A cinema staff member walked into the bathroom, and all I could do was apologise. I still feel terrible thinking about the person who had to clean it up.

I left the cinema with my friend without watching the movie. But, when I reached my home without any further incident, I basically kept throwing up all night. I lost 8kg that night. So, I went to hospital the following day, and spent 8 hours on a drip.

That was my first and hopefully only food poisoning incident.

I started a new job at a nice-ish office, next to a pretty fancy mall. On my 3rd day, my colleagues invited me to lunch at the food court of the mall. A couple hours later, I started getting nauseous and sweaty. Had to rush to the bathroom a couple times, which looking back I was lucky it was coming out of one end instead of two. After the 2nd time, I thought I'd chance it and rush home rather than having to go through another ~2 hours of this at the office. Luckily I lived close to the office back then so I was able to make it home. But in my rush I forgot to tell my manager, just told a coworker sitting near my desk I wasn't feeling well and left. I emailed my manager that night, telling him that I also wouldn't be able to make it in the next day. So my very first week at this job, I was only there for 2.5 days before getting sick for 1.5 days. Not the best first impression.

I didn't know until much later, but my manager told me that he thought I hated the job and was about to quit after a couple days.

We had just moved from Portland to Denver, and were trying new restaurants. One Sunday we ordered delivery from a local Chinese place that had good reviews. Food came, we ate and all was good for a couple of hours.

Then my wife said "I think I'm gonna puke* and dashed for the bathroom. Being the good husband, I followed her to hold her hair while she worshipped the porcelain god.

She had barely got done emptying the content of her stomach, when I literally had to shove her out of the way to emoty mine.

We were both miserable for about 36 hours.