Man Has Legs And Finger Amputated After Eating Leftover Food, Worst Decision of His Life

This 19 year old decided to dine on his roommate’s leftover chicken lo mein, and it was the worst possible decision of his entire life.

Now, call me “extra,” I can’t do leftovers. Not that I can afford to make fresh food everyday, but I just have an aversion to eating anything that has been sitting — even in the fridge — for days. And, this story is precisely why.

This young man had been staying with a friend, and made the unfortunate decision to eat said friend’s leftover restaurant Chinese food.

He, almost immediately, started to feel bad, and for about 20 hours after he had eaten the food, he had multiple episodes of retching up the meal.

The abdominal pain and vomiting were followed by the development of chills, generalized weakness, progressively worsening diffuse myalgias [muscle aches], chest pain, shortness of breath, headache, neck stiffness, and blurry vision.

The New England Journal Of Medicine

There was no doubt about it — the dude had gotten food poisoning.

But, his symptoms started to get worse.

After about 20 hours of suffering through what felt like hell, he asked his roommate to the hospital.

As a side note: this friend had also gotten sick on the same food, but had not thrown it away. He hadn’t experienced the extreme symptoms that this guy was going through, but he had thrown up.

When they got to the hospital, the teen was pale, had a fast heart rate, a somewhat elevated blood pressure, but his temperature was relatively normal.

That’s when things got real.

About 30 minutes later, his heart rate went up, he started having trouble breathing, and they noticed his extremities were starting to turn a bluish color.

Fast forward another 40 minutes, and his blood pressure was now super sluggish. His temp had skyrocketed, and his heart rate was that of someone who was vigorously working out. Doctors and nurses also had a hard time finding a pulse in his hands and feet (blood was having a hard time getting to his extremities).

From there, his kidneys and other organs started to fail, and his legs and fingers continued to darken in color.

The necrosis of his arms and legs and the development of gangrene led to amputations of parts of all 10 of [his] fingers and amputations of his legs below the knees.

NewsWeek

So, why did this poor guy develop such severe reactions to the food poisoning, but his friend had only barfed once?

It was just the perfect storm of unfortunate incidents.

Doctors discovered that [this guy] had only received one of three doses of meningococcal conjugate vaccine without a booster, and had also only had one dose of the serogroup B meningococcal vaccine out of two or three doses recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

NewsWeek

Now, don’t worry, this guy is making a good recovery — as good as he can.

Take this as a lesson. Be very careful with your leftovers. Don’t wait until they smell weird to toss them out. NEVER eat cold leftovers. Make sure you reheat them to an internal temp of 165º.

To protect against food poisoning, toss out food after 3 to 4 days in the fridge or move it to the freezer.

WebMD

And you can BET that I’ll be doing exactly that after hearing this unfortunately scary story!

For a more detailed reenactment of the events, you can go to the Chubbyemu YouTube page.