Could I have listeriosis poisoning?

Question

Could I have listeriosis poisoning?

I've not been feeling very well over the weekend. I have very bad nausea, diarhea, feel warm to the touch and feel weak. I live in Ontario, Canada. I have a doctor's appointment on wednesday. Will she be able to see it with just a blood test? I don't want to go to the hospital and wait all day for nothing. Could it be just some sort of flu? I read about the maple leaf meat poisoning last week. Am I just being paranoid? Does anyone else feel like I do? I'm really starting to be afraid of dying!

1 hour ago - 1 week left to answer.

Answer 1

Being so specific makes you a hypochondriac. You are not being paranoid. You're being hypochondriacal.

Answer 2

I'd bet a million dollars you do NOT have listeriosis.

I do Listeria research, and this is not something that most people need to fear. Listeria is harmless to most folks. It is only a serious danger to the elderly, immunocompromised, pregnant or infants.

Listeria is an ubiquitous bacteria. If you swabbed 10 random home refrigerators, you'd find Listeria in about 3 or 4 of them. It is not a superbug, and it's easy for most folks to kill. Cooking food thoroughly is the simplest way to kill it. Pasteurization is important for keeping it out of our milk and cheese (raw milk and raw milk cheeses are often infected with Listeria!). Common soap and water can kill it. A good household cleaner can kill it.

So please don't panic. Just toss out the stuff that has been recalled, and cook your sandwich meats if you want to avoid a problem. If you are otherwise healthy and haven't gotten sick yet, then you're probably not going to get sick with this.

And just so you know, this is a typical profile of a listeriosis patient: They are usually an older person (age 50+, usually 65+) with renal failure secondary to diabetes, have some kind of autoimmune condition, or have cancer. Many of them are proverbially circling the drain with many other conditions before Listeria gets to them.

Listeria can cause a few different kinds of infections. Usually it causes sepsis, which is marked by HIGH fever, fatigue, and aches. The people who get this are usually already very ill (as I have already mentioned). Sometimes it can infect the cerebrospinal fluid, resulting in meningitis. This could cause high fevers, confusion, delirium and possibly a coma. Once agian, usually strikes people who are already very ill.

In the case of this outbreak, if you ate the contaminated food, you'd get high fevers, diarrhea and vomiting. But you'd be pretty unlikely to die, unless you already had a lot of stuff already wrong with you.

So stop panicking!