The Mushroom Chronicles: The Case of the Poisonous Omelet

On a summer afternoon in suburban Virginia, one BLS and two ALS ambulances are dispatched to an apartment complex for three people experiencing severe abdominal pain with nausea, vomiting and diarrhea onset three hours ago. Dispatch states that the patients picked, cooked and ate mushrooms from their neighborhood courtyard around 10:00 a.m. The family is from out of the country; mother and father are in their sixties and a son who is in his thirties. They said they picked the mushrooms and cooked them in an omelet, and that after breakfast, each of them became ill. Symptoms started with severe abdominal pain, followed by nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Upon EMS arrival, all three patients are lying on the kitchen room floor in the fetal position with copious amounts of vomitus around them. The mother and father are actively vomiting and the son is dry heaving. The mother is attended to first; she’s alert and oriented with airway, breathing and circulation (ABC) intact, and her skin is pale and diaphoretic. She’s tachycardic with a heart rate of 116 beats per minute, normotensive blood pressure and O2 saturation of 97% on room air. She explains that the pain came on after a few hours of eating, was sharp in nature, and radiated throughout all quadrants with a 10 out of 10 on the pain scale, followed by nausea and vomiting. As she resumes vomiting, IV access is established, and she’s given 4 mg of Zofran and a normal saline infusion. During transport, the patient remains s...
Source: JEMS Patient Care - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Exclusive Articles Patient Care Top Story Source Type: news