figmo | Interesting Times

For those of you who hadn't heard, despite my best efforts, I suffered mushroom poisoning last Sunday night at dinner. Folks who were at the Consonance Sunday dinner run two years ago are correctly thinking "Deja vu all over again."

We kept telling the restaurant "no mushrooms." The waiter and even the manager kept insisting there were "no mushrooms" in the egg roll I'd just eaten -- even after we showed them the huge shiitake cap from it. They kept insisting the shiitake was a tree ear (ha!).

Brett Glass gave me two Benadryl capsules to pop, and Mary Creasey whisked me to PAMC's Urgent Care (faster, better, and cheaper than a hospital emergency room, and it was early enough I could go there). I was released only after being injected with solumedrol, benadryl, and three needles of epinephrine -- and strict orders to immediately fill the prescriptions I'd been given. This doctor gave no reassurances I'd be okay.

The worst of the prescriptions is prednisone. That stuff is nasty. We're talking PMS in a pill. I've been extra niggly about monitoring my diet because prednisone tends to cause really nasty mood swings, and right now I can't afford that. It also trashes your sleep patterns. I've already got a con and contracts doing that to me...plus what's about to happen to Warren.

Tomorrow I haul Warren to San Francisco so he can get 29 electrodes attached for a 24-hour EEG. He will have a button to push when one of his seizures is starting so they can compare data to what goes on in his system. He has told me I'll likely have to stay up and monitor him. So much for sleep....

Sunday, of course, is my radio shift. I take him back to SF Saturday to get the electrodes removed. I then get a little time to maybe sleep. Then I have to be minty-fresh from noon to 6pm for the time I'm on air.

Somewhere in the midst of all this I have contracts to wrap up.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I think the restaurant owes you for damages, certainly the cost of the clinic visit and meds. Based on your description the manager was negligent at best, and possibly grossly negligent -- it's one thing to say "I dunno" it's another to assure someone "yes, I know for sure, there's no mushrooms in it" and then be wrong. Food allergies are a big deal.

You or your lawyer should write the restaurant owner a nice stiff letter of complaint. Attach copies of your medical bills and receipts. Attach a list of witnesses and contact information. Say that you will take it to the County Health Department and their landlord if necessary but ask them what they consider a reasonable settlement.

If they don't offer to settle, _do it_ -- and notify the restaurant's and landlord's insurance carrier. _They_ will settle, immediately and promptly, once made aware of the facts.

Cheers. I know it's more paperwork, but better to follow up now than later.

I totally intend to do this. I don't yet have the bill for the ER stay.

As for witnesses and contact information, boy do I have witnesses and contact information!

I believe chinese culture distinguishes between mushrooms and fungi, shiitake being the latter. This may be an honest difference of definitions/misunderstanding rather than negligence.

I'd recommend not to eat at chinese restaurants, in general.

Still - I was sorry to hear about the incident & am glad you're over it more or less ok. *hugs*

Shiitakes are mushrooms. Tree ears are fungi.

Sigh.

From someone whose spouse has non-fatal but really nasty effects from ingesting her particular poison (gluten), I definitely understand your frustration and furiosity (if there is such a word). Two suggestions:

Make up a "restaurant information card" like celiacs often carry around, so you can ask the waiter to give to the chef. Something like the following would be similar to the restaurant card I've seen in the wonderful book Against the Grain (and reword as you wish): "Hi! You need to know that I am allergic to all mushrooms and fungi. If I eat mushrooms, I then (list the symptoms explicitly) and will need emergency medical care. Please make sure that all of my dishes are prepared fresh, and please check the list of any canned ingredients to make sure that they have none of the following: mushrooms, fungi, (list all synonyms here). I look forward to eating in your restaurant and telling everyone I know how carefully you look after diners with food allergies."
Have a chat with the owner of the Offending Restaurant, after you've lined up all the paperwork you need, trying at least one go-round with a "customer service and business networking" angle: "Hi. I'm on the steering committee of a hobbyist association that meets in the San Jose area annually and usually has n attendees. This year, I was the chair of the association, and I was really looking forward to coming to your restaurant at the end of the meeting for an informal dinner with a select group of attendees. You may not know that I had mushroom poisoning that night, which everyone at the table witnessed. I had to have emergency medical care, and it was an extremely unfortunate way to end our annual meeting. Everyone on the steering committee was very worried about me and concerned about the manager's not understanding the seriousness of the situation. Here are copies of my medical bills. I'd like to tell next year's chair exactly what happened here as follow-up, because we need to decide whether to come back to this restaurant in the future." Then, if there's no response, of course go after the business.

Your mileage may vary. Sympathies!

I like the r.m.f. suggestion.

A card with big bold words that says:

"DEATHLY ALLERGIC TO MUSHROOMS AND FUNGI"

in English and Chinese.

I think I need it in a few more languages.

I can say it fluently in Spanish.

The worst of the prescriptions is prednisone. That stuff is nasty. We're talking PMS in a pill.

You got that right, sistah. D'you get the manic energy bursts, too? (I fully intend to spend a large chunk of this weekend hiding at

dafydd's condo, lest

gridlore successfully fit me into one of the moving boxes we got last weekend....)

Tomorrow I haul Warren to San Francisco so he can get 29 electrodes attached for a 24-hour EEG. He will have a button to push when one of his seizures is starting so they can compare data to what goes on in his system. He has told me I'll likely have to stay up and monitor him.

Um, yeah.... I don't know about Warren (and I do understand that the triggers are wildly different in the two cases), but I think Doug has had advance warning once in the eight years he's been having seizures. I'm more than a little boggled that a medical organization allegedly experienced in dealing with neurological dysfunction would put any sort of faith in a system like that.

Good luck....

No manic energy bursts. I'm drained from the epinephrine and the con. I haven't had a decent night's sleep because of my contracts.

Warren's seizures are of the "partial complex" variety. He is fully conscious when they occur, and he can feel them coming on.

OTOH, Doug's seizures, IIRC, have a very different cause than Warren's. We know what's causing Warren's. The sickening part is the fix is relatively easy, but the damned doctors keep making excuses to not fix him.

If my memory serves me correctly.....shiitake = tree ear = mushroom (which is a member of) fungi => Danger Will ~~Riker~~ Robinson!

I like the suggestion of carrying a wallet-sized card which details what you can't eat. (Almost like a MedicAlert(tm) card. Perhaps it should be done in pictures instead of words, and the ones you're allergic too (like mushrooms and fungi) would have a red circle and slash through them.

And then there's always Bruce Williams' suggestion to many TalkNet callers: Get Youself An Attorney!

Prednisone....My wife's been on that, and it just makes her ravenously hungry.

As for Warren's test, it looks like there is FINALLY some progress! Yay

Shiitake = mushroom.

Tree ear = fungus.

Shiitake != Tree ear.

Yeah, you're right. Shiitake != tree ear, just like apple != orange. But they're both different types of mushrooms, right? Or is one a mushroom and one a fungus?

I pulled out one of my Chinese cookbooks -- The 15 Minute Chinese Gourmet by Elizabeth Chiu King, and three of the 12 staple ingredients she cites are shiitake mushrooms, straw mushrooms, and "crunchy mushrooms (also called won yee or cloud ears)".

Regardless of what it's called, or its species or genus, we know they're very bad for you. Now if we can only tell the restaurants what not to include. And the only truffles you'll be eating are the ones made by Godiva. :)

I seem to be able to handle tree ears, but not the other kind. Go figure.

Shiitakes are regular ol' mushrooms with a stem and cap, not tree ears. Phooey on them.

Sorry to hear of your trouble, a distressing number of friends seem to have allergies such that they are constantly 'on guard' when eating out...

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