Originally posted by moose
hey, what are the symptoms of food poisoning?
out of the blue i started puking and crapping my brains out yesterday. today i feel pretty normal. 
not a hangover either. very bizarre
depends on what kind of food poisoning you get.
as a guy who spent the last 17 years or so traveling to crappy little mill towns, I've I've occasionally been left with no other options but to live off those sandwiches they sell in those plastic triangles at the local truck stop. the edibility of these is a real crap-shoot (sorry for the pun), so I've managed to get food poisoning a few times.
most give symptoms very similar to what you describe.
I once had a sandwich with mayo on it that went bad. that was a completely different thing. very painfully, like your stomach is constantly filling with air, and a painfully need to belch. when you do I can only describe it as feeling (and smelling
) like your guts are turning to dust inside your body. add to that a really nasty fever followed by a day or so of feeling like some kid is playing with the thermostat in my body, burning up with sweat rolling off me in a cold room, to my teeth chattering as I froze under 6 blankets in a room that is almost 90 deg with space heaters running.
the worst by far though was bad shrimp (and the most embarrassing since I cooked them). I'd bought them from an open case, the kind where the food stays refrigerated as long as it stays below a certain level. we later figured out that the package must have been tossed in with a corner above the refrigeration line. so out of a pound or so of shrimp there were only 3 bad ones.
I was luck I didn't swallow it. I new immediately it was bad, it felt like bitting into a wet cotton ball. I spit it out immediately, and looked through the rest to find a couple more bad ones and through the whole meal out (my apatite was gone after that anyway).
everything was OK for about 16 hours. then I started sweating and feeling real crappy at work. I only remember the first 20 minutes of the hour drive home, I got home some time before noon. my wife says I left the car running in the driveway and walked straight to bed, just babbling incoherently to answer her questions. the next reasonably clear thought I had was about midnight the following night.
it was like all of the worst symptoms from every disease I've ever had plus hallucinations. like having an extreme case of the flu, chicken pox, and measles all at the same time, and then having some one give you about a day and a half worth of strong acid on top of that.
I was freezing my bellybutton off and my temp was barely under 104. at one point my wife had to have my brother come over and put me in the bath tub because she was worried my temp was going to fry my brain.
