Interesting Times

[figmo]

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.

Comments

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

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!