JWCW2014 wrote:And for anyone who thinks they’ll be brave and risk getting the runs:
When humans consume shellfish containing biotoxins, it can lead to three different types of poisoning: amnesic (short-term memory loss), paralytic (affects nervous system), and diarrhetic shellfish poisoning (gastrointestinal).
I once treated a patient in Intensive Care who had been on the Isle of Raasay, by Skye, and had been warned not to eat the mussels. She did so anyway, and in the night felt that she had lost sensation in her legs. She called for help, and while waiting to be taken to hospital the numbness spread. Luckily the helicopter got to her on time, she was whisked into hospital where she remained for some days. She needed to be intubated and ventilated (what the press love to call a "Life-Support Machine", our Indian consultant loved to call them "Death-Support Machines") as her breathing muscles were paralysed. So were all her other muscles. She needed haemofiltration, which is a bit like a "kidney machine" or dialysis. Gradually the sensation returned to her muscles, she was able to breath on her own after some days and eventually got out of intensive care and into a ward, before being discharged home. All in all she cost us hundreds of thousands of pounds, a blocked hospital bed, a midnight helicopter run and all the risks that entails to the crew, a lot of work for already over-worked hospital staff, and it could all have been avoided if she had only heeded the warnings. It could also have been avoided if she had not phoned for help - she would have suffocated that night as her breathing muscles failed.