To call the hotel and let them know we are sick?

[Blondie1092]

Myself and my husband, along with another couple who we are good friends with went to a hotel on Saturday night for their "valentines deal". We had a 5 course meal shortly after we arrived and hung about the hotel for drinks that evening, nothing too mad, all very civilised. We got up yesterday morning, had breakfast and went home.
One of us became very ill on the way home. I thought it was a hangover and we all laughed because none of us were actually drunk.
Last night I started to fall very ill and didn't sleep much. Then this morning all hell broke loose (I'm talking about my stomach an bowels TMI but hey can't beat around the bush). I'm lying in bed shivering yet sweating 😓
My husband rang me to ask if I'll collect him from work as he is also the same.
He rang the other couple to check on them and they're both off work today because they're sick.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm thinking we have ate something that has caused this.
Should I ring the hotel to inform them about this? Or just power through and forget the whole thing every happened? What would you do?

In Wales you would contact environmental health, you would all be tested and the establishment tested. Some employees can be carriers of bugs, not their fault but it needs sorting.

I would call them, just to see whether anyone else has reported the same issue to warn them so that they can take the necessary precautions.

It sounds like it's most likely the norovirus (possibly from one of the kitchen staff) as I believe food poisoning would have happened sooner after your meal. Hope you feel better soon!

I have worked in hotels, if you phoned them it would be a denial. Well be honest would you expect anything else. Which is why it is better if environmental health go in.

that's a long time for food poisoning to hit imo.. i'd day its a bug

No it isn’t. It’s typical of some types of food poisoning. It isn’t always instant or even within a few hours.

Have you checked their social media in case anyone else has posted about symptoms?

My 80 year old mother caught Campylobacter at a local restaurantyear last year. Stool sample confirmed it. GP said he would contact EH. Said they'd hear from us. We never did hear back.

(DM spent 6 weeks in hospital and nearly died because her age and frailty made it so much worse)

Should have added it took 48 hours for symptoms to show with DM. .She had prawns, so did her companion - who also got ill but not as badly

Food poisoning pathogens...

Campylobacter jejuni (commonly from undercooked - e.g. badly barbecued - chicken) 2-5 days to onset of symptoms

Salmonella enteritidis (chicken, eggs) 6 hours-6 days

Clostridium perfringens (beef, poultry) 6-24 hours

Clostridium botulinum (tinned foods) 18-36 hours, wouldn't typically cause diarrhoea and would probably have killed you

Vibrio cholerae (contaminated water, shellfish) 1-4 days, you would definitely know if you had cholera as your rear end would resemble an industrial muck-spreader with no off switch

Escherichia coli (meat, raw vegetables, unpasteurized milk, contaminated water) 3-4 days

Listeria monocytogenes (unpasteurized milk/cheese, raw vegetables, deli meats/patés) 1-4 weeks

Norovirus (anything handled by anyone who has - or has been in contact with someone who has - norovirus) 12-48 hours; similar for rotavirus, although this mainly affects small children as everybody else will have been infected by it during childhood

It would usually be called food poisoning if it has rapid onset due to presence of bacterial/viral toxins in the food before it's eaten, and gastroenteritis if it has slower onset due to colonization of part of the gastrointestinal tract by ingested bacteria/viruses. However, this isn't a hard & fast rule and gastroenteritis may be referred to as a form of food poisoning.

Food poisoning is a notifiable disease in the UK, and doctors are required to inform the local authority if they treat a patient with it. Because most people with mild gastroenteritis wouldn't seek medical attention, it is usually only more severe cases that are notified. Most gastro-intestinal infections have obviously been picked up from another person (family member or ill person in your care) rather than from food.

You should call the hotel because it probably has either a source of contaminated food or an employee carrying an infection. Do it in the spirit of helping them to avoid a repeat rather than of threatening to sue or go to the press.

The campy virus originates from food but can be spread from person to person. This really complicates things. So it could have been the prawns being sloppily prepared but she could have caught it from touching a door handle, a knife handle, the back of a chair, the towel in the loo ..... ect ect. which someone else with the virus had touched.

If you catch norovirus from someone who you haven't been near (e.g. someone working in the kitchen of a hotel where you've eaten) it is still food-poisoning, as food was the medium through which it was transmitted to you. A hotel/restaurant that lets someone with norovirus come to work is behaving irresponsibly. If it were a care home or hospital kitchen it would be likely to result in deaths.

I would definitely ring them. I’d appreciate it as a hotel manager to know if there is possibly something wrong with the hygiena in my hotel so I could take measures to improve it before losing more customers over it.

If it were a care home or hospital kitchen it would be likely to result in deaths.

Yep. We were called to the hospital at 2am to sit with DM 80 as they thought it was the end at one point. She rallied and began to improve later the same day.

Glad you decided against the Imodium. I have no doubt in emergency or unusual situations it is worth taking. This isn’t one of them as your body is fighting to expel whatever is ailing you. And sometimes that means emptying yourself inside out.

Just make sure you do something similar to the recipe above and all being well, you’ll be fine soon.

Been there though and it is properly awful.

Campylobacter is a bacterium, not a virus.

The big problem with Campylobacter is that it proliferates rapidly at quite high temperatures, which kill most other bacteria. So it multiplies while food is cooking and only gets killed when it is piping hot. Obviously, if you handle a piece of meat that is contaminated with Campylobacter and then handle other food you will spread the bacterium to that food, too. Campylobacter can survive for up to 4 hours on hard surfaces or fabrics, so you could get it on your hands from those and then contaminate other food. I'd advise you never to touch the door handle of my fridge.

Another vote for telling environmental health.

My point was about the speed of it starting, not whether it was clearly rotten

(This from a poster who advised the OP that her partner was ill several hours after eating ‘clearly rotten’ fish from a takeaway and has used this incident as proof that the OP is definitely suffering from food poisoning contracted at the hotel despite the relatively short onset period).

You’re not making sense. Anybody could tell if they were eating something ‘clearly rotten’. Rotten food will make you feel ill because your body will usually reject it the same way it came in.

That’s an entirely different situation to the OP’s. She ate food that looked, smelled and tasted fine (albeit the crab wasn’t to her taste), so there’s no comparison between the two events. You can’t extrapolate an onset time for a food poisoning pathogen (like those @SirTobyBelch has helpfully listed) by referencing how long it took your partner to be ill from eating decaying fish, which may have contained no pathogens and was simply rotten.

Don't expect a call back. That was probably just an excuse to get you off the phone. Call Environmental Health instead.

Where I live, doctors usually recommend Coke, but without the fizz.
The acid helps a bit with the stomach upset and the high sugar content helps too. I imagine Lucozade will be similar. Certainly better than just pure water.

Also, water from cooking rice.

*Where I live, doctors usually recommend Coke, but without the fizz.
The acid helps a bit with the stomach upset and the high sugar content helps too. I imagine Lucozade will be similar. Certainly better than just pure water. *

Not sure where the flat Coke myth comes from (yes, doctors do spread myths). Why would the fizz make any difference?

If you are rehydrating yourself after losing a lot of fluid through diarrhoea, you need three things in the drink: (i) water, (ii) salt (sodium plus potassium plus a buffer, e.g. citrate) and (iii) either glucose (or something that is rapidly metabolised to glucose) or amino acids. Absorption of water from the intestines depends on absorption of sodium, which in turn is facilitated by glucose or amino acids.

Coke doesn't contain enough salt to be useful for rehydration. Lucozade contains more than ten times as much. The only medical use of coca cola is for treating acute hypoglycaemia in diabetic patients who haven't eaten properly or have taken slightly too much insulin.

www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/health/03real.html

DH and I had this once many years ago - for me it started the back end (sorry tmi) and then throwing up - lasted 2 days - my DH it was the other way around - we discovered it was the beer or the beer pipes (not cleaned efficiently).
What did you all drink?

My sister and her husband got food poisoning on holiday but it hit my BIL a day before my sister, even though they ate the meal at the same time. Different metabolisms process things differently so you don't need to get sick at the same time to prove food poisoning.

@SirTobyBelch thanks for the information!
@Lweji my mum always gave us flat Coke when we were sick too. It seems to be an old wives tale around here.
Sipping away at the lucozade sport. I've a headache and I feel completely deflated/done. Must be dehydration. DH is just as bad.
Some really interesting suggestions in this thread!
I rang the hotel back and they apologised and said the manager will contact me in the next hour. I'm not even looking for "compensation" or anything, that's not the way I work. But just feel they need to know!
Checked their social media, all is quiet.

Keep an eye on trip advisor, people write lots of things on there, hope you feel better soon op

My DH had confirmed E.Coli poisoning from chicken in a hotel, his symptoms were much the same as yours.

Have you not called environmental health yet? I think you really should do that, especially as it looks like the hotel is just putting you off.

I read your OP when you first posted and liked the way you were giving them the benefit of doubt, but the manager should be taking this seriously, and this delay in calling you back suggests they aren't. If you don't hear back in the hour as promised, I'd be calling EH.