Gastroenteritis and Tartrazine – A serious warning about this article. The subject matter may be considered uncomfortable for those of a weak disposition. This article contains a graphic description of a bout of food poisoning and I strongly suggest that you think carefully before fully opening and reading this piece.
It is not intended to be sensational and is written with thought and honestly but for reasons of descriptive accuracy does explain the processes and results of the illness.
Blogs are about real life experiences and not all are akin to fluffy bunnies ambling on a hillside in the sunshine. So proceed only if you are ready for some realism. No offence will be taken if you do not read this one of my articles. I would think carefully myself if you were to post something similar yourself.
It started on a Thursday. My wife, Lynda and I eat out a lot and usually choose a pub offering a good meal deal. This particular one has been a recent favourite and we have had many reasonable meals there.
We understand that post Christmas January eating out is the rarest time of the year. It is why establishments make offers during the busy December month to entice punters back into the practice of eating out in the new year. However, we regulars need no such enticement as the process of eating out is a common habit.
In fact in the December run up to Christmas we share the same thoughts that alcoholics do about seasonal drinkers invading their space at festive times. With our annoyance focussed on some food based pubs taking away their usual offers in the run up.
All of which is just an explanation of why we had no concerns about visiting this unusually quiet pub on this evening for our main meal of the day.
We ordered a fairly normal menu choice, me the gammon with egg, Lynda with the chicken. We did comment to each other that it was delivered surprisingly quickly but we had said it was quiet that evening.
The food was as unremarkable as ever and expected for the price but I did note that the Jacket Potatoes were cold to the touch. Well perhaps not technically cold but certainly far from steaming hot. But it didn’t ring bells and we ate up and left as usual.
Later that evening I needed to use the toilet. Again, not normally remarkable but the beginning of a story this time. It was a standard episode but had to be repeated about an hour later. It was then that mild stomach cramps became evident.
The third visit in as many half hours included some diarrhoea and increasing tummy tightening. By the fourth time I was only jettisoning fluid and feeling a good throw up might bring things to a conclusion.
It was now well into the night, I was feeling increasingly weak and weary, freezing cold out of the bed and unable to lie comfortably in it, my torso demanding all my attention.
I announced to Lynda that this was serious and I had to abandon thoughts of working on the Friday. She wasn’t really convinced until I actually vomited. The drama of this act enough to convince the most skeptical wife that her husband wasn’t angling for a free pass. She agreed to make the necessary arrangements leaving me free to wallow in my misery.
Being violently sick is a strange phenomenon. For most of us a rare occurrence, frightening as a thought during build up but often strangely a sudden and fantastic release when over.
In this case thankfully it wasn’t accompanied by the often body shaking, full-on fast, sweaty, disablement that sees one writhing on the floor, virtually unable to lift oneself to a place of hygienic projection whilst feeling genuine thoughts of considered demise as a pathetic release from the perceived torture.
In my case I just suffered the intense torso trauma necessary for the body to do what it needed, which is to eject the foreign body as efficiently and fast as possible.
The reason for my coldness and feelings of weakness is explained by the total denial of any unnecessary energy allowed to the limbs and head. All blood circulation and glucose available being required for the central body area.
Then a fantastic and impressive contortion occurs. My stomach seized suddenly to a fraction of its normal size and caused a quickly repeating wave form heading up to the chest. Such was the intensity I felt my skin tighten over the hips and ribs.
This was accompanied by the enlargement and straitening of my whole mouth and throat all the way down to my stomach. It was as if you could put a whole arm down into my stomach without touching the sides.
My face contorted to maximise the final opening with my lips pulled back over the teeth as if I was reenacting the classic scene from An American Werewolf In London.
All of which pathetically resulted in just a tiny few specks of semi-digested food.
A second episode and this time all the drama with sadly none of the result. The earlier diarrhoea having stolen all the moisture from my system.
But finally a third and more intense session and I ejected partial evidence of the suspected interloping poison.
It is only when this finally occurs that the inbuilt detective in oneself can finally hone in on the suspect. I’ll save you from the more salacious details [surprisingly considering my attempts at detailing up to now] but I blame the gammon and suspect it had been stupidly reheated.
My misery didn’t finish there. The body cramps hadn’t finished, the diarrhoea continued the next couple of days and I was pretty well bed bound for 36 hours in a state of uncomfortableness.
A further trio of vomiting occurred the next day, Friday, and my unexpected dieting continued as I had no desire to add anything into the cauldron of gloop festering in my innards.
All I wanted was to sleep but this was distracted by my tummy pains and frequent visits to discharge the small remaining vestiges of fluid in my system. And flushing through an overheating anus is not ideal.
In fact it was the Saturday before I was persuaded by Lynda to allow anything other than water to pass my lips and I chose first to take on a sugary liquid.
She had kindly purchased a couple of litres of one of my favourite juices, Cranberry and Raspberry. I considered this quite innocuous so ventured a sip or three.
I attempted to properly rehydrate whilst giving me a sugary boost to aid the feelings of extreme tiredness. And I guess it worked.
During the day I felt better, less exhausted and only had the remaining tummy cramps to dispel, which I knew wouldn’t go until my body had satisfied itself that all badness was gone and once again offered feelings of hunger to replenish itself.
But it was an 18 hour period of living with just an empty shell filled only with a sticky juice. And a strange phenomenon started to occur.
It started when I closed my eyes to attempt rest. Normally on first closing eyes I see temporary visions of the intense light sources I had been seeing. Such as dark patches where lights had been on or more recently dark square patches where I had been looking at my phone. These recede over a short time to be replaced by the swirling out of focus cells and miniature hairs naturally floating across the eyeball. Distinct and highly contrasting, particularly evident when the room light source is lit or daylight as it was during this time.
However, now I was experiencing something new. Fuzzy grey, indistinct large patches with highly jagged and darker detailed edges.
These sights, through closed eyes, were the first different thing but soon my mind’s thoughts, unusually quiet during my previous sickness, had now turned quite crazy. Crazy in the sense of all over the place.
Song snippets, earworms, raced repeatedly around. Thoughts jumped from one subject to another at an unbelievable and frightening speed, perhaps six to ten a second and when I did finally ‘sleep’ for a few minutes vivid dreams featuring regressive situations coupled with modern characters in my life filled my imagination.
I concluded I was suffering the alleged fate of small children with underdeveloped minds reacting to what I understand as an excess of Tartrazine in their diet. In their case often accompanied by random, uncontrollable, disruptive actions.
Thankfully as I proceeded to rid myself of the sickness and tentatively returned to normal eating the effects wore off, the only permanent result being this scripted article penned in lieu of a good nights sleep.
I hope I haven’t laboured too much on the murky details in my story, having only included what I felt needed to get to the interesting aspects of violent sickness and my personal thoughts on ‘Tartrazine’. I am aware that the subject matter has been intense and appreciate any reader who has come this far with me.
I include this as blogging stories are nearly always about the good and positive in life and the more realistic aspects are usually less well documented.
Maybe someone someday might be interested in how food sometimes affected us in the early twenty first century.
In stating this I assume it is the year 2743 or something. By which time I shall have fully recovered.
A few final thoughts.
Firstly, I have no intention of naming or shaming the establishment which I believe caused my distress. I have eaten there on perhaps dozens of occasions and believe there was no ill intent or lack of hygiene practice to cause this problem on this occasion. It is part and parcel of regular eating out. If they made a mistake on this day then this is unfortunate.
I do not plan to ostracise the establishment and whilst won’t immediately rush back will probably be tempted back eventually by the enticing offers which lead us there in the first place.
I do not seek compensation as I have lost nothing really except an unscheduled holiday date.
The cost to me was temporary the pain a fading memory save for this piece but we all got a blog from it, so some positive.
The anxiety and additional work imposed on Lynda was accepted unequivocally as one does for a lifetime partner. And she did get a virtually uninterrupted day of Netflix out of it.
I have not studied the phenomenon of Tartrazine, have no proof of this chemical in my drink and do not in any way cite myself as an expert in this field with only general circumstantial and hearsay stories leading me to the conclusions above. Further, I have no particular interest in pursuing knowledge in this field and do have access to Wikipedia should I change my thoughts on this.
I particularly have no interest in children with ‘behavioural difficulties’ and again my thoughts above are as far as I personally wish to explore such matters.
I know there are blogs out there that deal with much more severe trauma, sickness and even death. Probably with greater humanity, thought and compassion but please don’t assume I need a list of such places to view. I can use search myself if I wish to go down this route.
Any comments are welcome but if you wish to espouse views on diarrhoea, vomit or children please try to maintain an understanding that not everyone wants to know every tiny detail, particularly about the two most icky subjects. Obviously one being children.
Author: Vince Poynter
From the Blog section of the vinceunlimited.co.uk website dated 13 Feb 2019
Originally written but not published on 15 Jan 2018
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