Our Nannie’s Extreme Gastroenteritis or was it food poisoning or red tide?
A few days ago before the great big flood, our number 1 stay out nannie experienced extreme stomach pain in her whole tummy. I know my children prayed for her around 8pm bed time, but I thought it was just ordinary tummy pain. Until another nannie approached me and asked for assistance on how to cure the number 1 nannie’s extreme stomach pain.
I went to their room around 9pm and saw our number 1 nannie writhing in pain. She had pooped several times already and had thrown up several times already. Sure sign of some vile poison. The body wants to eliminate everything really fast by both poop and throwing up.
The problem was, she was still writhing in pain. It seems her body has not thrown off enough of the poison. She said she drank 1 cup of water. But it seems that wasn’t enough. So I ordered one of the nannies to slice some cool refrigerated water melon and have our #1 nannie eat the water melon for hydration. I also ordered her to eat 1 raw duck egg. She needs both fat and fluids to be able to throw up more. If the body feels it is dehydrated, it will hesitate to throw up and poop some more.
I asked what she had eaten for dinner and the nannies and the maid and the cook all ate the same dinner. My wife had brought home some restaurant food: mixed sea food kare kare (peanut sauce). The mixed sea food was green mussels, squid, shrimp with tiny fermented shrimp paste (bagoong) with the peanut sauce then they of course added white rice to the combination.
For some people, they might see this as impatso (indigestion due to eating too much and too many kinds of food), the other nannies didn’t think she ate that much and it may be due to poisoning or red tide poisoning, maybe a few bad mussels. When food is cooked and combined and sauce covered, your taste buds are deadened and the food is masked of its true flavor. Your tongue cannot save you from bad food.
I thought of poisoning or red tide and looked for the activated charcoal I knew I kept for emergencies. Nowhere to be found. Now I remember, I gave it to my grand father in the province last year. So out I went to every drug store in town. All drug stores did not have activated charcoal. I went to the nearby medium sized hospital and found some in their internal pharmacy.
In the medium sized private hospital, I interviewed the resident doctors about how they were to treat possible red tide poisioning. They said that the first procedure was to treat for gastroenteritis. If it was truly poisoning, they admitted that they were not equipped, none of the hospitals in our tiny city / town were equipped for poison control and they were to call and ask assistance from the big metropolis hospitals for poison control.
That was good enough information. I knew now that I had to go back home and give poison control first aid to the nannie.
In the meantime, we had success with the hydration with watermelons and raw duck egg. The nannie had pooped and vomitted a large amount of her gut contents. But was still in pain.
Upon reaching home, I mixed 1 tablespoon of activated charcoal with 1 cup of cool water. Had her drink the concoction. This is meant to absorb the poison or anything else in her gut.
Then we boarded the car for the hospital. Me, the #1 nannie, another nannie and the cook. We decided to go to the big hospital I trust would do a good job and was equipped, Cardinal Santos in San Juan.
In the hospital, they did the standard gastroenteritis procedure by first guarding against dehydration; she was given an IV drip for hydration. Then she was given an anti-spasmodic through her IV. Blood tests were ordered. Then she was given a pain reliever through her IV. Then she was sent home when the drugs had taken effect. Blood test showed some infection so she was advised to take some oral anti-biotics.
She slept at home and in the morning I asked her to eat a lot of water melon and raw eggs in the morning to force her body to poop out the activated charcoal and whatever content it adsorbed. This was not effective so I asked her to take 1 tablespoon of epsom salts in 1 cup of water. This finally forced her to poop a black poop which was the activated charcoal.
All is well. Then came the floods. This #1 nannie texted at 10am Saturday asking for help. They were trapped on the roof of their house. They are located beside the Tumana river which quickly overflowed. She survived the flood and a few days later I drove up to her in Tumana and gave her relief money and relief goods.