While "food poisoning" once meant a 24hour bout of vomiting and diarrhoea, many of the current generation of food-poisoning microbes can knock you out of circulation for a week or more. A strain like Salmonella typhimurium DT104 that's resistant to six commonly-used antibiotics is a case in point. Foodborne microbes may have a debilitating effect or curtail activity for months, not to mention the need for meticulous isolation of an infected person, whether at home or in hospital.
When Mide Reddin's son Ian, then aged seven, got food poisoning in the summer of 1997,
????ide Reddin she believed that with careful minding - starving him but giving him liquids - he would be over it within 36 hours. It was some three months before the salmonella enteritidis strain responsible was shown to have cleared his system.
The Reddin family, who live in Bray, Co Wicklow, had just returned from a holiday in Portugal on a Sunday in August. By Tuesday, Ian was off his food, his eyes were glazed and he had a temperature of 104F. Diarrhoea followed but he seemed to recover a little over the following days.
By Saturday, however, it was obvious he was still very ill. He had been due to ride at a local horse show but had to be brought home and, on medical advice, taken to Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin. Then began what seemed like endless analysis of samples to find the offending microbe. A week later came confirmation.
Ian was very ill for close to three weeks, but in tandem with this, a comprehensive investigation had to be undertaken in an attempt to find the source. In the end, it drew a blank. The Reddins believe - taking into account the disease pattern of the particular strain involved - it was likely to have come from contaminated ice-cream he ate in a restaurant the night before returning home (possibly, it was allowed to defrost in warm conditions, and may even have been refrozen), or from chicken he ate on the plane.
As he was not seriously dehydrated, Ian was allowed to return home and he could soon eat most things other than protein-rich foods.
But for Mide it was an anxious time, as it was thought the infection could have originated at home. While she says she is "not a hygiene freak", she was always careful and thorough when it came to minimising food poisoning risk and maintaining good household hygiene.
It was a time of questions. "What is salmonella? What could he have eaten in the house that contained salmonella? How come he got it and the rest of us didn't?", she says. With the uncertainty, all the family needed to be checked to see if they were carrying the bug. Meanwhile, Ian had to be given his own toilet and could not be taken to public places or other people's houses. He was kept out of school for almost three months. He lost weight to a worrying extent initially and was lethargic for quite some time.
While her husband George thought she was going over the top in scrubbing worktops and meticulous washing, Mide knew there was no other option. That included individual nail brushes and disposable kitchen towelling to replace standard towels to prevent any spread.
"I was told that was all we could do. It disrupted family life. Everything had to be put on hold."
