I definitely ate raw chicken and am on a downward spiral

[whatanabsoluteidiot]

Hi, I have name changed for this post - I have to post because I’m going absolutely insane and need to talk to someone about this.
we have had a hectic home life lately - lots of work in the evening, ill children off nursery, etc etc. on Saturday I ate a chicken stir fry out of the bowl I’d defrosted the raw chicken in. This is so unlike me - I’m an emetophobe and I am absolutely crazy about hygiene and chicken. As the dinner was ready I just saw the bowl and thought I’d already got myself a serving bowl. I only realised straight after finishing dinner when I was stacking the dishwasher and realised I was missing the raw chicken bowl. I went absolutely cold. I even remember that the bottom of the bowl was wet 😭 why didn’t I realise??

i ate about 9.30pm on Saturday. Yesterday I thought I was going to throw up in Costa, left, drove home, lay down. Nothing more. This morning I had one short bout of diarrhea. It didn’t happen again. This is frankly not usual for me as I suspect I have mild IBS.

i have hardly eaten since Saturday night and I’m starting to feel quite weird and not knowing whether I am ill or hungry. About an hour ago I had a bit of soup and bread and a malt bar to get some sugar into me.

what is going to happen to me?? My brain is exhausted thinking about incubation times and what I need to cancel for the rest of the week. I think salmonella is now less likely but campylobacter is typically days 2-5. I am going out of my mind. I can’t believe I did this and am terrified I’ll give it to my young children (I’m hand washing crazily). I haven’t told my husband as he’s in the worst week of his work at the moment with a million commitments and meetings - and he ate a bite.

uggggghhhh please please quiet my mind one way or another … or just something calming. This is like a nightmare to me and I can’t even think about the horror.

It's really not normal (or healthy) to be this anxious over what you describe.

I would really recommend going to speak to your GP about getting some help - your life will be so much better if you do.

I ate raw defrosted fish fingers that had been in the fridge for two weeks (it was for a bet).

I was fine.

I've travelled the world and the only country I've had food poisoning in is the UK.

I did something similar years ago and phoned 111 who talked it through and reassured me, it was a very brief call.
I think try to eat completely normally as it will help your body cope and if you do throw up you'll want something to actually throw up, rather than bile. I think that is safer for you than not eating. Check with 111.

I think you need some help and support for health anxiety. It is not a usual response to be waiting to be ill and cancelling things in advance before you are even ill. As others have said, food poisoning generally happens quickly.I was ill from a crab pot on a plane and started to get ill before the plane even landed! Was awful. Get some help as you have caused yourself stress and anxiety for no reason.

I will reply to everyone later but just to confirm I am alive and okay and thanks so much to everyone for replying to me! Even to the people who think I’m crazy. I really appreciate it. Thank god for mumsnet xx

You'll be absolutely fine! For context, in Japan, raw chicken is a delicacy!
I once ate raw chicken by mistake at a bbq. I bit into a chicken drummer, realised it was raw, was too polite to say anything, and gulped it down. It didn't cause me any issues at all.

Good, I’m really glad. Now go and eat some proper food. If you’ve still hardly eaten since Saturday start with something small and simple (soup, a sandwich, cereal with milk, ect) as if you eat a big meal you’ll get tummy ache and set the anxiety off again.

but if this sort of catastrophic thinking often affects you you should seriously think about seeing your GP about anxiety. It’s not normal to be that panicky for that long.

hand up me me!!

Just as a note, you’re not always ill instantly with campylobacter. It’s a myth with food poisoning and can be 2-5 days and mine was 3-4 days (as confirmed by the hospital and environmental health)

however I never was sick with it, just diarrhoea and I had a very high temp on day 3 before the diarrhoea

My mum once got served raw chicken nuggets at McDonalds about 30 years ago.

She had a history of really bad serious stomach issues of the kind that resulted in multiple consultants looking at her with endoscopies etc and was terrified of throwing up.

But she was fine.

They were indeed pink inside. She must have eaten at least 3 of 6.

No sickness. Nothing.

All the people saying “food poisoning is quick” “you’d definitely know by now” are just wrong.

Campylobactor and Salmonella have incubation periods up to several days. It’s not always an instant overnight thing!

That said, I totally get your stress OP. I have emetophobia and would be in a complete panic. But it is definitely true that not all raw chicken will definitely make you sick. And often something like campylobactor, the main symptom is diarrhoea, with vomiting being less common

I can completely sympathise , as I too have a great fear of vomiting and would also have been concerned. We all make mistakes , we’re human.It looks quite likely that you appear to have got away with it. You should eat what you feel like eating. Take care .

hope you are feeling ok now and that the replies on here have helped to put your mind at rest. I have had food poisoning twice and both times it was sudden. violent and literally floored me.

I think you would be quite ill by now if it was going to affect you. If it makes you feel better, I recently made and ate gravy from a jug that I had not long before used to make a zoflora solution - and didn’t wash it in between! Oh and I’m pregnant! Baby is fine, this was few months ago. I think this chicken event will just make you much more cautious going forward.

I think in the circumstances you describe, most of the contact between bowl and chicken will be with ice and water (iyswim) rather than the chicken itself. So the chance of the chicken containing enough bacteria to contaminate the little bit of water you consumed, enough to make you ill, is quite unlikely, all other things being hygienic.

I know it’s hard to relax but I do think you’ll be unlucky to get ill, @whatanabsoluteidiot My understanding is that warming the chicken up a bit, as in partially cooking it, is much more likely to result in poisoning as it’s that temperature that the bacteria can flourish in. The icy water that came off from your chicken would have been too cold for the bacteria to reproduce.

You’ll be fine, nothing is going to happen. Food poisoning symptoms appear quickly so you would know about it by now if you ate the chicken on Saturday.

Just to say that it’s not guaranteed you will
get unwell. When my DS was a teen, I bought some southern fried chicken burgers from Aldi, and left them ready in the fridge ready to cook for tea. DS had come home from school, spotted them, and thinking of the cooked chicken goujons I sometimes bought as snacks, he ate the raw burgers, didn’t even notice the texture. He was absolutely fine.

It’s quite possible that the odd feeling you are experiencing is down to hunger and maybe a bit psychosomatic with you expecting to be unwell.

I think you're OK. I've had food poisoning, and I started to feel unwell about 7 hrs after a lunchtime seafood baguette. This was around 9pm. A couple of hrs later saw me vomiting violently, constantly, and with repeated diarrhoea bouts. Vomiting didn't stop until morning and then I continued to feel very sick until late evening. It comes on quickly and violently and what you have isn't at all like it. Raw chicken is only a problem if it's infected, which isn't always the case.

The only salient points in your OP are:

1. you’re terrified of being sick, and
2. you’re ’crazy’ about hygiene

You’re obviously fine. Eat something. You’ll feel better.

I'm no expert but I am sure you would have been ill by now if you were going to be. I think your anxiety is causing a lot of your symptoms. I have health anxiety at the moment and its surprising how much worse my symptoms feel when I am worrying about them. Plus if you are not eating you will feel off

Yooou would have been ill by now. I think you need to get a grip.

Assuming you're male?!?! 😄

You are overthinking and it wont help things one way or another. Tell yourself you are having an anxiety reaction and then refocus yourself- what you are doing is making a problem where there is none (anxiety and tension about what might happen) and will make no difference to whether you get food poisoning or not (which would have happened by now if it was going to happen).

This op.

If you told me half an hour after you ate it, I'd be saying brace yourself.

Now I'm thinking you've been lucky. Not every bit of raw chicken is contaminated.

If it makes you fell better I know someone who licks their fingers after basting chicken. One day it'll get them but it hasn't yet to my knowledge

It's hard to know if the mild illness is mind over matter or just a very small amount of bacteria that your body has coped with. Not many hours till you can rule it out altogether I think.

I recently ate quite a large amount of completely raw chicken, which was also almost at its sell by date (stupid story). As you say, there are different incubation periods for different possible illnesses, and all you can do is wait it out. I had a bit of diarrhoea but was otherwise fine.