The doctor said it was a ‘freak accident’
A student tragically had to have his limbs amputated after eating leftovers from his friend.
This might sound like something out of an urban myth or a scary story about the risks of eating leftover food, but it actually happened to a 19-year-old student known only as JC, who decided to eat his friend’s leftover chicken noodles.
According to the New England Journal of Medicine, JC ate a noodle dish that his friend had purchased from a restaurant and left in the fridge overnight.
However, shortly after consuming the noodles, JC began feeling very ill.
The medical report notes that JC experienced a severely high temperature and a rapid pulse of 166 beats per minute.
Due to the severity of his condition, he had to be sedated.
His condition became so critical that he was airlifted to the intensive care unit of another hospital for advanced treatment.
JC, who had no known allergies and was up to date on his childhood vaccinations, was not a heavy drinker but did admit to smoking two packs of cigarettes each week and using marijuana daily.
The medical details continue: “The patient had been well until 20 hours before this admission, when diffuse abdominal pain and nausea developed after he ate rice, chicken, and lo mein leftovers from a restaurant meal.
“Five hours before this admission, purplish discoloration of the skin developed, and a friend took the patient to the emergency department of another hospital for evaluation.”
‘Dr. Bernard,’ a medical professional, discussed the case in a YouTube video, explaining that JC likely contracted a severe bacterial infection from the dish.
Within just 24 hours of eating the leftovers, JC’s kidneys failed, and he began to develop blood clots throughout his body.
Lab tests from the previous hospital showed that he had a type of bacterium called Neisseria meningitidis in his blood.
This bacterium can lead to Meningococcal disease, which causes abnormal clotting within the blood vessels.
“It’s kind of like getting a cut on your skin – the bleeding stops eventually because of blood clot, then the area around the cut becomes swollen and warm,” Dr. Bernard said.
“It is swollen because the blood vessels dilate so that more blood can get to the area and the swelling is partly due to the fact that there is increase fluid and the warmth is the inflammation.
“But, when bacteria is present in the blood, the entire body’s blood vessels dilate, dropping then blood pressure, preventing oxygen from getting into the organs.”
He continued: “Little clots [start to] form everywhere, as they get lodged into small blood vessels blocking blood flow.”
“As his hands and feet become cold, they are starved of oxygen.”
The lack of oxygen caused the tissues in JC’s hands and feet to become necrotic, leading to a condition known as Purpura fulminans, which rapidly results in tissue necrosis.
Even though JC’s condition eventually stabilized, the gangrene that developed in his fingers and legs was severe.
He underwent amputations of parts of all 10 fingers and both legs below the knees.
26 days after the incident, JC regained consciousness, and his health showed signs of improvement.
Dr. Bernard noted that while the food appeared to be the source of the infection, it remained unclear exactly how the bacteria got into the food, as it typically spreads through saliva.
He described the incident as a ‘freak accident’ and acknowledged that the exact cause might never be determined.
Interestingly, JC had received his initial meningococcal vaccine before middle school but had not received the recommended booster shot four years later.