A few years ago, I went to a cafe for breakfast, quite regularly. One morning I decided to try their cooked breakfast, quite similar to a Full English. I’m not a fan of sausages, especially cheap ones, so I didn’t think anything of it when I didn’t like the taste.

Over the rest of the day and the next morning, I ate a few different meals, but nothing unusual for me. By about lunch time I was feeling very rough. I was hot and sweaty, and needed the bathroom more often than usual. Now, I have a chronic illness, and between that and the meds, I get upset stomachs fairly often, to the point where I know if it’s serious or not just from experience.

I was starting to feel weak and dizzy, so I knew that it wasn’t normal, and then liquid fire started coming out of both ends. Luckily, my wife was home, and realised that I wasn’t joking about this time being worse, and called my doctor. I ended up in hospital for several days with severe food poisoning, and had to have IV fluids.

Environmental Health were called and quizzed me about everything I’d eaten in the last week, and agreed that it was probably the sausage on my breakfast. They investigated the café, but found no serious problems. Luckily, it looked like whatever was wrong with the sausage only affected me because of my health issues, and didn’t seriously affect anyone else.

I haven’t been back to that café though, just in case.

Working at a studio sound stage we had catered lunches from a 3rd party ( not the meal truck that follows the main unit) one day we had ravioli. It went down without an issues but that evening and all night it was coming out both ends. About 30+ other people all got it bad. Needless to say we switched caterers. The local health authority did an investigation it was so bad.

Thanksgiving 2019, went to meet the family at a “fancy” sort of pub out in the sticks for Thanksgiving dinner because all of us were too busy to deal with a traditional get together. Naturally, everybody had their fill until regret as it goes and everybody went back their separate ways.

It wasn’t until a couple hours later I started feeling queasy and figured I just needed to sleep off the copious amounts of food I’d eaten, so I went to bed. Until 11pm. I had to rush to the bathroom and rotate between facing the toilet, and sitting on it, for about 20 minutes expelling everything my body could muster. After I got back to bed, it came back every hour like clockwork for about 7 hours, except I’d already been empty after the first episode. I finally got to sleep and spent the next 36 hours trying to remain asleep so as not to feel the pain, and ultimately didn’t eat anything for the next four or five days, except small amounts of chicken broth, water, and ginger ale.

Unbelievably sick after some seafood at a well-rated place near me.

Dizzy, cramps, shitting.

Stood up after, nauseated. Went to vomit and blacked out, woke up with chipped teeth, bleeding nose, mangled lip, and what would become a black eye whilst lying in a puddle of blood.

Best I can gather is I face planted hard directly onto the edge of the toilet and then the floor. But I honestly don’t know.

Ended up having to go to the ER and getting stitches. Recovery for non drinkable foods was some 1-2 weeks.

Have scars from it.

Not embarrassing or thrilling, but way back when I still ate meat, I’m pretty sure Waffle House tried to kill me with a bad batch of Bert’s chili. At least, that was the featured odor/flavor in all my bodily effluvium (which was copious!) in the several succeeding days. I didn’t die but I do remember wishing I was dead. The experience turned me into a Waffle House skeptic and shortly thereafter, a vegetarian.

Kebab joint in the very centre of our million person town.

Ate it on the day before Xmas, was walking and talking again by mid Boxing Day.

Bleaugh, lie down sweats and toilet yoyo.

The place shut down 5yrs after.

This was 20yrs ago, no kebab related issues since then, all tasty. Sour cream and garlic sauce, add a single felafel too.

Years ago. Was visiting a client on-site. Meeting ran late and had to race home. Popped into a ‘natural’ food store to get something. Grabbed a package of pre-made ‘fresh’ shrimp spring rolls out of one of those open coolers. Ate in the car.

A 1.5 hour drive turned into a four hour nightmare with all the unplanned stops.

Never again.

Kicking us off. My worst story was on the day of my wedding. The night before I was drunk with friends in town, and they had never had real seafood before. So I ordered a huge platter of everything. Including, you guessed it, oysters. Now oysters are delicious, and they are usually fine if prepared well. Unfortuately we had just been through a large heatwave, and most of the oysters had spoiled, but no one knew yet. So I slurped a good 4 or 5 of them. Next day was the wedding. I really began to notice right before the ceremony. My (now wife) sent in the best man thinking I had cold feet. He came in, we chatted, he asked if I was alright. I… explained everything and he did what any good best man would do, and laughed. I was able to rally and attend my own wedding, but didn’t enjoy too much of the food the day after.

Turns out - it was Vibrio. I spent the next few days within 30 feet of a toilet at any given time. We weren’t on our honeymoon yet thankfully, but our first few days of marriage were definitely interesting.

Went to a nearby island with my wife when we visited my hometown. It’s not exactly a tourist destination so there was like one hotel and we were the only guests. We just stayed overnight so we ordered breakfast at the hotel. I don’t even remember what it was anymore but I started feeling weird on the way back. I thought I was just seasick from the boat ride. Shortly after we arrived back on the mainland, I was alternating puking and pooping for over 2 hours.

While camping my dad and I found a watermelon. Not a wild one, or anything like that. One that someone had left. We ate it. We regretted it. It was not even that great tasting of a watermelon. Plus since we were camping we brought a limited amount of toilet paper, there was a lot of dipping our bottoms in the stream.

I got food poisoning from the fish they served in the students cafeteria. Can’t stand fish or seafood anymore, and if the fish van is set up on the local supermarkets parking lot once a week, I go around it as far away as possible.

I was on business trip in Atlanta and had nachos at a dive bar. My supplier had put me up in a corner suite overlooking the runway and I spent the night bowl hugging with liquid coming out of both ends. Met my boss at the airport the next morning where he said I looked green… and he upgraded us to FirstClass. It was my first time in FirstClass and I spent it in the lavatory. Got off the plane, had a meeting at the plant, went to the hotel and passed out for 12 hours.

I was on the final day of an overseas trip. I’d been there for several weeks, and my wife flew over and joined me for the last week to see the sights.

I’d eaten the hotel breakfast buffet almost every day of my stay with no issues. So, I grabbed my usual items, including some buffet line shakshuka (an eggs, feta, and tomato stew). It may have been sitting out a while…. Thankfully my wife opted for something else. Yum yum, check out, drop stuff off at my company’s HQ, off the airport, drop the rental, etc.

We were sitting in the airport inside the security check when it started - nausea, sweats, and bad cramps. Not the best look when in a foreign country with serious (and slow) airport security. Got through, beelined to the bathroom, and I thought I got it out from both ends. I boarded the plane feeling a bit better, but it ramped up again once we were onboard and continued for the entirety of the 13 hour flight home. I have seen immense torment inside the tiny bathroom of a 747 airliner, and I think I spent more time in there than my seat. When I did make it out, I sat shivering and sweaty in my seat for a few minutes before I had to go again.

I was thankful my wife was there to keep me hydrated and that the plane was empty enough that I could grab a seat row near the back for myself to lie down, instead of climbing over some poor bastard every time.

Surprisingly, I still like shakshuka.

On a backpacking trip, the better part of a day away from the trailhead. It came on so quick I didn’t have time to run behind a tree, just dropped pants and let it out in full view of my travel buddies. As embarrassing as it was, it was the right choice. I didn’t have any other pants to change in to and the distance we had to hike out would have led to far more serious health issues had I hiked in dirty pants.

I’m not sure what caused it. I was the only one who got sick. Probably a simple hygiene slip at some point. Someone didn’t clear their hands well enough before cooking, or something made it past the water filters. I’m just glad someone had immodium and everyone gave me their spare fluids and electrolytes. I can see how a person could get really dehydrated really quickly and wind up in trouble.

I’ve gone to the ER twice due to a stomach virus caused by a bad deli sandwich, about 100 miles apart. I only wish that on my enemies.