A student decided to eat some of his friend’s leftovers from the night before, but it did not end well for the student, because he got really sick and ended up having to get some of his limbs amputated.
The New England Journal of Medicine reported on this case and it can be seen in a YouTube video also. The student ate the chicken and noodle dish and immediately started feeling ill.
According to officials, the patient had a severely high temperature, a pulse of 166 beats per minute and had to be sedated. He had no known allergies and had his childhood vaccinations, smoked two packs of cigarettes each week, smoked marijuana daily, and wasn’t a big drinker.
The patient was not doing well and was flown by helicopter to an ICU at another hospital for further treatment, officials said.
According to the report, the patient was “well until 20 hours before this admission, when diffuse abdominal pain and nausea developed after he ate rice, chicken, and lo mein leftovers.” It kept getting worse, as “five hours before this admission, purplish discoloration of the skin developed.”
Doctors seemed to think he was suffering from an aggressive bacterial infection, as his kidneys had failed and his blood started to clot, less than 24 hours after eating the leftovers. His bloodwork came back and it was determined that he had a bacteria in his blood called Neisseria meningitidis.
The patient’s blood pressure was dropping and he was not getting oxygen to his organs, doctors said. His “hands and feet became cold” because they were starved of oxygen. The tissue that is starved of blood starts to turn necrotic, which is called Purpura fulminans.
The patient did eventually stabilize, but the tissue on his fingers developed gangrene, as did his legs down to his feet. Because of that, he had to have parts of all 10 fingers amputated, as well as a bilateral below-knee amputation.
As far as the bacteria goes, it is known to spread through saliva. After initially eating the food, the patient’s roommate did throw up. The patient then ate the leftovers the next day, not knowing this information.
Researchers determined the patient did receive his first meningococcal vaccine before middle school, however he never got the booster shot that is recommended four years later at age 16.
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After 26 days, the patient became conscious and his condition started to improve, doctors said. His life is way different now, but he is still alive.
