Foodborne Illness: Recalls? What Recalls?

Merced, CASimon went out to dinner with his wife and friends. He ordered a Caesar salad and just a few hours later he was in the bathroom vomiting and suffering from severe diarrhea. He had never experienced food poisoning so it didn't occur to Simon that he should go to hospital. He also hadn't heard of the romaine lettuce recall announced just days after he was so sick.

"I threw up non-stop for the next 12 hours," says Simon. "My wife took me to the Kaiser facility and my doctor hooked up an IV because I was so dehydrated. My muscles were sore from throwing up and I felt sick for about a week—it sure ruined our vacation."

Simon says his doctor didn't take a stool sample, which would determine whether he was sickened from a foodborne illness. If Simon had become ill from Romaine lettuce, he had likely contracted salmonella bacteria. Salmonella poisoning is serious and has the potential to be fatal in young children, the elderly and people with compromised immune systems—fortunately, Simon is a healthy young man.

"Looking back, I think the lettuce was the cause," says Simon, "or maybe raw egg in the Caesar salad dressing, but I called the restaurant a few days later and they don't use raw eggs. They didn't know anything about the Romaine recall either."

In another case but around the same time (July, 2009) Brian had lunch at Hometown Buffet. " I had chicken, baked beans and several different green salads," he says. " A few hours later I felt really bloated like I ate way too much and as the evening progressed I felt nauseated. At 3 am the next morning I woke up with severe vomiting and diarrhea.

At the time I didn't know what was wrong, maybe it was the flu. I waited it out through the weekend but by Monday I decided to see the doctor because I was so weak and couldn't keep anything down. My doctor diagnosed it as a foodborne illness and prescribed lomitol [an oral anti-diarrheal drug] that slows down the gut: I was drinking water but couldn't retain anything, it was going right thru my GI tract and not getting absorbed. The more water I drank, the more diarrhea I had—I felt so lousy…

My blood pressure was also very low and my doctor told me to go home but said "I am one step from putting you in the hospital." Sure enough I landed up in hospital. I fainted and when I came to, I called 911. I was taken to ER by ambulance and had very low blood pressure. They ran tests and got me hydrated with an IV and sent me home with something for nausea. And they gave me an injection for nausea. And I filed a food poisoning information sheet and complaint.

A few days later the Hometown Buffet manager called—they didn't have any incidents of food poisoning. But considering the thousands of guess they serve, there is a potential. Then I was contacted by CRS—their risk management company. I continued to get better and my doctor rechecked my blood and I had a stool sample, but that was one week later and after I was given the lomital.

I've been reading about lawsuits and obviously at this point the bacteria will have been killed by the antibiotics. And I thought it must have been uncooked chicken, but after doing some research, I discovered that produce—such as lettuce—can also cause salmonella poisoning.

I understand that the antibiotic I was given could prove a problem in a lawsuit but my doctor was positive I had food poisoning. He said that sometimes it works to my benefit because you don't necessarily need to have high levels of bacteria present to suffer from toxins in food. So we'll see what happens—I got a negative stool sample but a lot of toxins showed up.

In retrospect I should have gotten a stool sample right away but I wasn't in any condition to argue with my doctor or discuss my course of treatment."