A student was forced to undergo limb amputations after consuming leftover food from a friend.
Although it may sound like an urban myth designed to deter you from eating leftovers, this unfortunate event happened to a 19-year-old student known only as JC. After consuming his friend’s leftover chicken noodles, disaster struck.
The New England Journal of Medicine reports that JC ate his friend’s noodle dish, which had been stored in the refrigerator overnight after being purchased from a restaurant the previous evening.
Immediately after eating the noodles, JC began to feel extremely unwell.
The journal details that JC suffered from a dangerously high fever, a pulse rate of 166 beats per minute, and required sedation. His condition was so severe that he was transferred by helicopter to the intensive care unit of another hospital for further medical care.
JC had no known allergies and was up-to-date on his childhood vaccinations. Although he wasn’t a heavy drinker, he did smoke two packs of cigarettes each week and used marijuana daily.
The report states: “The patient had been well until 20 hours before this admission, when diffuse abdominal pain and nausea developed after he ate rice, chicken, and lo mein leftovers from a restaurant meal.
“Five hours before this admission, purplish discoloration [sic] of the skin developed, and a friend took the patient to the emergency department of another hospital for evaluation.”
Dr. Bernard elaborated on JC’s condition in a YouTube video, suggesting that JC likely contracted a severe bacterial infection from the food.
Within 24 hours of consuming the leftovers, JC’s kidneys failed and blood clots began to form.
Blood tests at the first hospital revealed that JC had a bacterium in his blood called Neisseria meningitidis, which can cause Meningococcal disease and lead to abnormal blood clotting within vessels.
“It’s kind of like getting a cut on your skin – the bleeding stops eventually because of blood clot, then the area around the cut becomes swollen and warm,” Dr. Bernard explained in the video.
“It is swollen because the blood vessels dilate so that more blood can get to the area and the swelling is partly due to the fact that there is increase fluid and the warmth is the inflammation.
“But, when bacteria is present in the blood, the entire body’s blood vessels dilate, dropping then blood pressure, preventing oxygen from getting into the organs.”
“Little clots [start to] form everywhere, as they get lodged into small blood vessels blocking blood flow,” he continued. “As his hands and feet become cold, they are starved of oxygen.”
The lack of oxygen in the tissues can result in necrosis due to a thrombotic condition called Purpura fulminans, which rapidly leads to tissue death.
Though JC eventually stabilized, the tissues on his fingers and lower legs developed gangrene. Consequently, surgeons had to amputate parts of all his fingers and perform bilateral below-knee amputations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqHpnoV00j4
26 days after the incident, JC regained consciousness, and his condition began to improve.
Dr. Bernard noted that while the food was evidently contaminated, the exact method by which JC contracted the infection remains unclear because the bacteria usually spread through saliva.
The incident was described as a ‘freak accident,’ and the origin of the bacteria in the food may never be determined.
Interestingly, JC had received his first meningococcal vaccine before middle school but had not received the booster shot recommended four years later.