We cooked dinner Christmas Eve. I nibbled some meat & veggies out of the pan Christmas morning.
An hour or two later I started feeling sick and shaky and weak, with shivers, and ended up on the couch sleeping on and off all day. Around 9PM I managed to get up and drink some water. 1/2 hour after that I was in the bathroom barfing it all up. Went to bed, had to barf again around 3:30.
Things are a little better today. I’ve held down a cup of coffee and some more water. I’ll try some broth later.
Might not be food poisoning - there’s a nasty stomach bug making the rounds (in my area, anyway), with symptoms you described. But either way, sick sucks, and sick on Christmas double sucks.
Ah, that’s rotten. Hope you’re feeling better soon. No fun to miss out on the delicious Christmas food. It shouldn’t turn around and do mean things to you!
Yes, it was. The kitchen is cool at night and it’s not normally a problem, but this was marinated in the fridge for a couple days prior to cooking, and I may have to re-think that.
Why is it that kids so often get sick on holidays? This happened to me and my sister a lot, too.
I had a Passover like this a few years ago. We went out for dinner the night before the seder, to an Indian buffet (full of foods you can’t eat during Passover). The next morning, I was so violently sick I couldn’t even keep water down. I had to miss the first seder. That Indian buffet has since closed.
Is it warmer than 40 Fahrenheit? The danger zone for bacteria in food is 40 to 140 F. If your kitchen’s not reliably colder than that, you don’t want to be eating out of pans that have been sitting out all night.
I’ve never completely respected that if the food was thoroughly cooked and it was just overnight, but yeah, I might have to start being more careful.
My SO ate the same thing and didn’t get sick, but she only ate it the night before when it was just cooked.
As for the “exactly 8 hours” thing, I don’t agree at all. When I was in the military, half of our unit began vomiting within just a couple hours of having eaten some bad spaghetti at the chow hall, and there seemed to be a pretty clear correlation between spaghetti=vomiting for 24 hours and “had the other entree”=not vomiting.
I just passed out on the couch again. My body’s not over this yet.
Stress. The excitement of Santa coming, and the anticipation of all the gifts under the tree, coupled with eating too much sweet stuff. I was a barfer, too.
Re: the food. Leaving food out overnight is something I can’t imagine doing. You’re just asking for trouble.
I sympathize. I had some takeout food last Saturday night and spent Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday struggling to keep any food down or in. I’ve been mostly better the last couple of days, but there’s still some nausea now and then.
See if someone can pick up some Gatorade or Powerade or something similar to keep you hydrated. In a pinch, mix some salt and sugar in a glass of water. Hope you feel better soon.
It’s not food poisoning (in my case; not saying about the OP). It lasts about a day or less* and feels almost like food poisoning with the barfing and stomach cramping and diarrhea.
I wracked my brains trying to figure out what I could have eaten that would have been bad, but I got it a week after my grandma, brother, mom, dad, cousin, uncle, aunt and other cousin got it. I got it the same day that my co-worker’s daughter got it (who got it from her baby cousin, who then spread it to her parents), who then gave it to her mom. My brother’s co-worker had it the same day I did, and then his boss’ sister in law got it the next day.
Seriously, it’s freaking weird and I was surprised there haven’t been reports of anything.
Not counting my 85 year old grandmother and my cousin who has had a kidney transplant. They had it for days.
Papa Tiger had a similar nasty bug last weekend, was suffering at both ends simultaneously, which is obviously not fun. We went through everything he’d eaten in the previous 48 hours, and there was absolutely nothing I hadn’t eaten, too, but I never got sick. So we concluded it had to be a virus, not food poisoning. He only had it for about 12 hours, but that was a rough 12 hours.
Huh, this stomach bug may be something, as my dad had the same symptoms develop while in Texas, my cousin in Michigan had it, and one of the two gave my sister and me it. I feel your pain stomach bug or food poisoning, it sucks, I didn’t make the traditional christmas cookies this year for it.
Probably a bug. However, you can both eat the same dish and have one person become violently ill and the other experience nothing, especially with microwaved food that doesn’t heat evenly.
I bought a salad at work and ate half for lunch. At dinner, I was very, very busy and ‘wolfed’ the second half down. The second half just sat at the bottom of my esophagus, taunting me for a few hours.
For the drive home, I took a large cup because I Will Not Barf On My New Car, but was not sure how to handle a sudden barfing episode while driving.
Anyway, I made it all the way home before that stupid salad reappeared.
Is it ever in Maryland! I work in a hospital, and we’re seeing a lot of people come through the emergency room with “stomach flu” symptoms lately. There have been a couple of articles in little local papers about the “stomach bug epidemic” in the area. A few friends and coworkers have succumbed to it over the past couple of weeks, but it usually only lasts a day or two and is over quickly. I started getting dizzier and dizzier at work, looking through the microscope, and I had chills and was feeling very weak and lightheaded, so I went home early. Overnight, my fever hit almost 101F and I was wrapped under blankets because of the shivers and had an ice pack on my head for the fever. Spent the next day sleeping, except for trips to the bathroom. Miserable. But by the next morning, I was much better - didn’t eat much for fear of repercussions, but I was able to get to work.
In response to the food poisoning timing questions upthread - it does indeed depend on which bug you’ve eaten. IANAD but as a medical technologist in a hospital lab, I work with a lot of bacteria! And guess who gets to play with your poop to see if you’ve got Salmonella?
Some bugs, like Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus cereus, grow in food and release toxic substances as they do their thing. So when you eat the bad food, it’s not the bacteria growing in your gut that are making you sick, it’s the toxins they’ve already dumped into your potato salad. On the other hand, bugs like Salmonella or* Shigella* species are usually just present in the food you eat, and they start happily growing in your gut, crowding out the good bacteria and irritating your intestinal lining, making for many unpleasant toilet trips.
In general, when it’s a toxin-related poisoning, symptoms can set in as quickly as 2-4 hours after eating the food, depending on how much toxin was present. When it’s a colonization in your gut that’s making you sick, it can take a day or two to get started, and will also depend on the age and health of the person affected - a little kid will usually get sick faster.
My boyfriend has no concept of time/temperature abuse of foods. He will be eating something and set it down and walk by it again 14 hours later and say, “Hey, food!” and start eating again. He has started to be more careful about this habit after developing a bad stomach flu a couple of months though. Hopefully you feel better soon!