Teen Left With Amputated Legs And Fingers After He Ate Leftovers
A case published in the New England Journal of Medicine involved a 19-year-old college student rushed to Massachusetts General Hospital with multiple organ failure and seemingly no clear cause other than food poisoning.
However, only 20 hours before, he had begun developing symptoms, which included a rash and signs of shock.
He was admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit and treated, but his symptoms only worsened, and his purplish rash began to spread across his body.
The patient’s earliest symptoms included the body’s typical food-poisoning responses, such as nausea, stomach pain, and vomiting.
He and a friend had eaten leftovers consisting of chicken, rice, and lo mein noodles. Still, while he developed chills, weakness, shortness of breath, and a plethora of other symptoms, his friend only experienced vomiting.
Five hours after entering the hospital, the patient was still coherent enough to answer personal questions.
But his condition soon worsened, and doctors ran dozens of tests looking for answers to his severe reaction.
The patient had not traveled anywhere he could have contracted a viral illness, and he had no pre-pre-existing health conditions.
However, he smoked cigarettes, drank, and partook in recreational drugs. In addition, he had no known allergies to medications and had been fully vaccinated against common illnesses as a child.
ahirao – stock.adobe.com
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But eventually, doctors realized that a few missing vaccinations and boosters had left the patient vulnerable to infection.
The official diagnosis was Neisseria meningitidis, a bacterial infection that caused the patient’s blood clots and signs of liver failure.
A second diagnosis, Meningococcal septicemia, caused severe infection and necrosis, or tissue death.
This unfortunate confluence of factors resulted in the college student having parts of every finger amputated and his legs from the knee down.
Though the tainted leftovers were only the catalyst for this patient’s condition, it is still crucial to keep food as protected as possible from bacterial growth and always be safe rather than sorry when considering a potentially risky meal.
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