See the pomegranate tree in the picture below?
I studied and lived in Italy, and this tree is at the crossroads of my way home.
For more than a year, I watched the tree go from flowering to fruit, and the fruit gradually grew, ripened, cracked, and then fell to the ground.
Finally, one day in the autumn of 2021, I couldn't restrain my curiosity anymore and tasted one.
It's sweet and sour!
Pandora's box opens.
From that day on, I was on the first step of being admitted to the emergency room of an Italian hospital.
Autumn is so beautiful! When the fruit was ripe, I found many more fruitful trees on the road.
I used to see cute little flowers and fruits on the road, and I just took a picture at most, and then continued on the road.
But since eating the pomegranate on my doorstep, I thought I had achieved "fruit freedom."
I went to consult the botanist next to me, and he identified that this time I saw persimmons, quince fruits and strawberry trees (Author's Note: Arbutus unedo, rhododendron family berries, not the usual strawberries).
Simply put: these are all edible!
Before the first few times I ate, I was still instinctively alert and asked my friends:
Wouldn't it be toxic?
The friend gave an analysis that was difficult to refute: it should not be, at most it was difficult to eat. If such a common, hand-pickable fruit is poisonous, I don't know how many people have been in the hospital.
I was so convinced of my friend's analysis that I completely let go of my guard against the unknown wild fruit and wanted to taste whatever I saw.
Yes, highly toxic plants should belong to the wild, how can they be planted casually in the city?
Therefore, my happy and happy career of "Shennong Tasting Hundred Herbs" was in full swing this autumn.
But soon, I encountered the calamity of this road---------------------------------------
This wild fruit looks like a small grape (later learned to be commonly known as "Turkish grape" in Italian), purple and purple, full and cute.
Of course, I didn't know it, but I just thought it was some kind of ordinary berry, and I took two of them: not sour, not astringent, and a hint of sweet taste, which tasted like blueberries.
After eating, I also happily sent a message: I encountered wild fruits again, but only ate two, so sorry!
On the way back, I passed by the place where the weeping order was planted again, and with the attitude of "eating more fruit and getting better", I grabbed a handful again.
In the end, I ate about ten of them.
Fortunately, my friend saw the dynamics I had sent before, and she replied to me: This is highly toxic! Can't eat!
At this point, more than two hours had passed since I had eaten the two fruits, and I didn't feel anything out of the ordinary.
I quickly check the information: after eating, generally 2 to 3 hours of toxic attacks, there will be sharp high fever, nausea and vomiting, severe diarrhea and even breathing difficulties and other conditions, the most serious will even cause life-threatening.
Reading it line by line, I was not good at all: my heart was pounding, my legs and feet were weak, my stomach felt hot, and my head began to be confused. (Author's note: In fact, according to the later developments, it is likely that it is only a nervous or psychological effect, but at the time, I thought it was a sign of "lying board". ）
I decided to go to the emergency room immediately, even if I sat in the hospital hall and waited for the symptoms to appear.
In case after a while the house starts to vomit up and down, breathing difficulties, the cat can't help me call for emergency.
I quickly called to call for a ride – although it is already 2021, there are no cars on the road, and there is no taxi software.
The way to take a taxi in Italy is still to make a phone call, and the dispatch center then contacts the driver by radio to pick it up.
From waiting for the bus to come, to the time to enter the hospital, I was at war with heaven and man:
What if the symptoms are obvious, vomit in the hospital, and you are directly arrested and washed your stomach?
However, there are no symptoms, and it seems that it is not very good, in case the hospital ignores it and directly lets me go home, will I be blind?
It turns out that worrying is useless, the expected situation did not appear, and what really appeared later was unexpected in advance.
When I arrived at the hospital, facing the nurse at the emergency desk, I directly showed the photos taken in the afternoon to explain the drug treatment, thinking in my heart:
Such a common fruit, there must be many people who have eaten it by mistake... Right?
Just like in Yunnan, as soon as you say that you eat the "red umbrella", everyone immediately knows what happened, as long as I show the nurse a picture, she should be able to understand what is going on.
However, the sister of the nurse at the emergency desk had a suspicious look on her face.
She used her tax number to directly retrieve my health insurance file while communicating something with her colleagues.
After a while, she came back and asked me to show her the picture again...
Finally she quickly typed up the description of the visit, tied the visit slip around my wrist, and I saw that the rating was Azzurro (blue).
Today's Italian emergency department divides patients into five levels of urgency:
Red, serious threat to life, immediate treatment;
Orange, greater risk, to be treated within 15 minutes;
Blue (newly added grading), which is more stable but more risky, and needs to be treated within an hour;
Green, the condition is relatively stable, within 2 hours of treatment;
White, not urgent.
The latest emergency grading rules are explained in detail
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(Source: Corriere della Sera)
The blue tiering just took effect on October 1, and I caught up.
At that time, I did not expect that what awaited me in the hospital was a "large social death".
I was taken away from the front desk and went to the small room next door to take my blood pressure and do an electrocardiogram.
The nurse had been communicating with the doctor, coming in and out and asking me several times about the details of taking the poison, how many pills I had eaten, when I had eaten them, and how I felt now.
The one question that most got me thinking about was: perché hai mangiato. Why are you eating this stuff?
Yeah, why? Per curiosità. Curious, I can only answer like this.
After the nurse came back again, I was given a bed. Since then, I have been fixed to this bed, and the emergency room bed is like this.
I was pushed further inside, and at the foot of the bed was my admission report, electrocardiogram and a series of other materials.
Then the nurse asked me to send a phone number the few pictures I had taken of the plants.
I took a closer look at the profile picture of the number, the National Center for Toxicology Information in Pavia.
All of a sudden, I felt that things were a little bad.
Before I could digest it, the nurse came back with a set of syringes and put them on me directly.
Even worse.
The nurse fixed the needle and drew three large tubes of blood to soothe me:
"Wait for the infusion and you don't have to prick it again!"
Then it disappeared again, leaving me alone in a hospital bed doubting life.
At this time, my sister, who was in charge of the hospital bed next to me, came to see the list placed at the foot of my bed.
After all, there are either elderly people around or there are obvious traumas, and I really can't see anything wrong with me.
As her gaze slid, her expression changed dramatically.
Although I ate the poisonous fruit, I could still see that she was trying to hold back her smile, worried that she would hold back her internal wounds.
She was polite, but looked at me knowingly and asked:
What happened?
Probably she was acting too affinity, not as dignified as the other doctors, and I replied to her:
I ate poisonous fruit out of curiosity!
After saying that, I felt that it was not too addictive, so I simply explained how I ate the pomegranate of the neighbor to the experience of "tasting the hundred herbs" and the dish.....
She had a fully understanding expression on her face, covered me with a blanket and left, but I heard her relaying my "tragic case" to other colleagues from a distance, and everyone laughed together.
Oh, adults...
I was so ashamed of myself that I covered my face with a blanket, thankfully wearing a mask, really.
The next day in the inpatient area, I saw her again, and she greeted me happily – la ragazza melograna! ）
Although this title is indeed cute, please don't say it.
Later, I saw the sheet at the foot of my bed, which read:
Ingestione volontaria – "voluntary poisoning".
"Shark" me.
I thought that this embarrassment would end here, but I didn't expect anything more unexpected.
The expected symptoms of high fever, diarrhea, vomiting and other poisoning symptoms did not appear in my body for a long time, and only the ecG that was done at the beginning suggested something unusual, which aroused the doctor's vigilance.
After a while, the hospital made room for ECG monitoring, and I was immediately pushed over, attached electrodes, and hung up with water.
After being monitored by ECG, my mentality has been slightly relaxed, and I just feel very relieved to hand myself over to the doctor, and it should be no big deal.
I naively asked the nurse sister:
You see, I haven't had any serious symptoms so far, is it okay to hang this bottle of water and leave?
The nurse sister brought over a cup of potion and said flatly:
NO, you're staying with me tonight! We'll see what happens tomorrow morning.
Seeing the medicine in the cup, I was completely awake.
The heart is like dead ash, and it is only ash. But this cup of medicine has exceeded my understanding of "ash". Because it looks like this:
It's a cup of charcoal, literally, charcoal and water, the charcoal that's activated, the carbon that's in the pencil refill.
(Editor's note: Although the elements are the same, the two are not the same thing.) The charcoal of the hospital is medicinal charcoal, do not imitate it yourself at will, and try to "detoxify" in a similar way)
The water in the cup was darker than the heart of the black-hearted merchant, no matter how many times it was magnified, it was still so black. The white spoon reached in and dyed black, and the walls of the cup resembled ink bottles.
The nurse told me it was medical and that drinking it would combine with toxins, and she said that "it can be a little disgusting to drink."
I lay on the bed and looked at the cup of medicine, and my heart was strongly impacted.
What's going on in the world?
So full and seductive fruit is poisonous, but this seemingly poisonous black water is lifesavering.
The elements are also carbon (C), hydrogen (H), oxygen (O), carbure bombs are so pleasant, charcoal and water are like drinking furnace ash.
After struggling for a long time, I tried to think of it as black sesame paste, and drank it hard, and after drinking it, there was a sense of sand between my lips and teeth.
"It's always over this time, right?"
After tossing and turning for most of the day, it was already night after reacting.
The hospital was still busy at night, and the doctor finally personally confirmed my condition, took a palpation of my abdomen, and checked the monitor again, and my heart rate was only a little over 50.
In fact, before this poisoning, I had bradycardia, and I was already accustomed to this setting.
However, after nightfall, I wore a mask, one arm with a needle that could not be bent casually, and the other arm tied to a sphygmomanometer.
Looking at the e-book half asleep and half awake, the heart rate is still gradually falling: the highest is only 45, and once you fall asleep, there is only a little more than 30 left.
This has reached the warning line, and the blood pressure is also below normal, and the instrument will start to alarm as soon as I fall asleep.
I was woken up and my heart rate went back above 40.
It was like this all night.
I didn't take it too seriously, but the doctor didn't think so. He reported to the Toxicology Center in Pavia, which responded that it was "continuously monitored until stabilized."
So, I stayed up until the morning to the ticking of the instrument, expecting that the doctor could "release", but was told: No, wait until you stabilize.
I later learned that there are many typical side effects of plant toxins, including heart rate, decreased blood pressure, and respiratory paralysis.
The mechanism of action is probably heart block and nerve paralysis, and the doctor's caution is still very reasonable.
Also the next morning, I got another bad news: want to be discharged? First excrete the cup of "potion" that you drank last night.
The problem is, I, don't have any at all!
Since yesterday after lunch, I have only eaten ten fruits in a day, and my stomach is empty, and there is no raw material how to pull it.
At this moment, I was sitting on the hospital bed, with so many wires hanging from my chest like octopus, unable to move, hungry, without communication tools, waiting for a lump of pure black poop that I could not wait for.
And because of my low heart rate and blood pressure, I wasn't even allowed to go to the bathroom alone.
The more I thought about it, the sadder I became, and the more I thought about it, the more regrettable I became: who would have thought that a hungry mouth could make people fall into such a field.
After running out of the last bit of the phone's battery, I asked for help from a friend who lived nearby, who brought a life-saving charger and chocolates.
When the front desk was handed over, the nurse sister instantly showed an excited expression:
Ha, I know you! I was there yesterday!
The air was filled with the joys of others and my landless self-containment.
After having supplies, my mood gradually stabilized, and while preparing to stay another night, I interceded with the nurse:
I really can't hand over the poop!
Later, the doctor saw that my heart rate was relatively stable, and the blood test indicators were not a big problem, and after weighing it, I decided to wait for natural discharge, and finally issued me a discharge permit.
By the time I finally stepped out of the emergency room, it was close to the end of the next night.
Outside the hospital, the air was free, cold.
postscript
Maybe because of the timely medical treatment, or because I habitually vomit seeds, so I did not ingest the concentrated part of the toxin, this poisoning did not bring more serious consequences, it is really unfortunate.
After being discharged from the hospital, I have made a full recovery after a few days of black stools and stomach upset.
My short career as a Shennong taste of hundreds of herbs also came to an end, and since then I have seen strange plants, I always suspect that they are harmful, and voluntarily became a "don't eat image ambassador".
Writing this experience is to exhort the curious babies around me with my own painful lesson: there are some things that the supermarket does not sell!
Be in awe of nature, don't have full knowledge, and don't rush out!
Doctor reviews
The protagonist's encounter in the article is believed that everyone who reads it will pinch the sweat for her, but fortunately there is no major problem in the end.
Everyone has heard of or experienced similar encounters with the protagonist in their lives.
As the saying goes: curiosity kills a cat.
Because ordinary people lack relevant professional knowledge, they can't help but feel the urge to experience the unfamiliar "delicious".
But this is a big risk in reality. Because a lot of the "delicious" that looks like it may be a "demon" in a gorgeous coat.
Because of the different toxins, after different toxic foods enter the human body, they may cause damage to different organs, such as respiratory depression, arrhythmias, impaired liver function, and kidney failure, but they are all "the same way" and may be life-threatening.
The protagonist in the text appears to be a heart rate disorder.
For such patients, in China, we will generally take a very active treatment and rapid response, such as gastric lavage, enema, emetics, infusion and other means to ensure that the patient's condition will not continue to develop.
But the protagonist in the text is lucky, and even if these measures are not taken, he is still recovering well.
So I also advise everyone here to treat unfamiliar substances, even if they look delicious, with caution and think twice.
Once you have eaten various uncomfortable symptoms, you must seek medical attention as soon as possible and inform the doctor of what suspicious substances you have eaten.
It is better to be able to attach a picture of a suspicious object (this is a good job of the article protagonist!). ), so that doctors can diagnose in time and make correct treatment.
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