I know I know, another one of those threads... Trust me, I get it. I'm the guy who is usually rolling his eyes whenever I see another one of these threads, but I did have something really weird happen to me yesterday and I'm curious what you all think.
10/11/18 - 3:00pm
I fragged several zoas for a customer. These were all pretty standard zoas (rastas, bam bams, etc).
I did not use gloves, mainly because whenever I have tried using them in the past I end up tearing the glove and have to take them off.
I did not have any cuts on my hands, and I did have goggles on so I didn't get anything in my eyes, etc.
I want to add that I am pretty anal when it comes to washing my hands after doing anything with the tanks and I usually take the time to wipe everything down with rubbing alcohol after fragging (I didn't this time for some reason).
I felt fine the rest of the day, no issues.
10/12/18 - 9:00am
I noticed a conch had flipped over one of the zoas I had fragged, I reached in and flipped it over, then went and washed my hands.
10/12/18 - 11:00am
I came home to eat lunch and I fed the fish before heading back out. To the best of my knowledge, I did not touch anything that I had come in contact with when fragging the previous day.
10/12/18 - 11:45am
I get in my car to head to a customer appointment and out of nowhere, my lower back is killing me. It proceeds to get worse and by the time I am heading to my 2:00pm appointment, I am in some serious pain.
At this point I'm trying to find out if my chiropractor is open (they weren't), so I figured I'd just go home and take some meds.
10/12/18 - 3:00pm
I get home, take some advil and I start to feel awful. Over the next hour, the pain spreads up my back, and down to my knees, very severe pain in my knees. At this point, I am getting sore all over, the way you feel when you have the flu. I also got the chills pretty bad. I checked my temp around 4:00pm and it was 100.9. I then took my blood pressure and it was fine (115/70) but my pulse was 115. My resting heart rate remained around 110-120 for the next 8-10 hours.
I thought I must be getting the flu or something (even though I wasn't congested or coughing or anything like that).
Sometime last night it dawned on me that some of my symptoms seemed related to palytoxin exposure so I looked it up. The main thing is I never had the metallic taste in my mouth or trouble breathing. But all of my other symptoms seemed consistent with it.
My biggest reservation is the timeframe. I think I would have to had been exposed yesterday at lunch when feeding the fish, and I just don't know how that would have happened.
As of 10:00am on 10/13/18, my temp is 98.4, almost all of my soreness is gone and my resting heart rate is back down in the 80's.
Do you think it was palytoxin related or some other random 24-hour bug?
10/11/18 - 3:00pm
I fragged several zoas for a customer. These were all pretty standard zoas (rastas, bam bams, etc).
I did not use gloves, mainly because whenever I have tried using them in the past I end up tearing the glove and have to take them off.
I did not have any cuts on my hands, and I did have goggles on so I didn't get anything in my eyes, etc.
I want to add that I am pretty anal when it comes to washing my hands after doing anything with the tanks and I usually take the time to wipe everything down with rubbing alcohol after fragging (I didn't this time for some reason).
I felt fine the rest of the day, no issues.
10/12/18 - 9:00am
I noticed a conch had flipped over one of the zoas I had fragged, I reached in and flipped it over, then went and washed my hands.
10/12/18 - 11:00am
I came home to eat lunch and I fed the fish before heading back out. To the best of my knowledge, I did not touch anything that I had come in contact with when fragging the previous day.
10/12/18 - 11:45am
I get in my car to head to a customer appointment and out of nowhere, my lower back is killing me. It proceeds to get worse and by the time I am heading to my 2:00pm appointment, I am in some serious pain.
At this point I'm trying to find out if my chiropractor is open (they weren't), so I figured I'd just go home and take some meds.
10/12/18 - 3:00pm
I get home, take some advil and I start to feel awful. Over the next hour, the pain spreads up my back, and down to my knees, very severe pain in my knees. At this point, I am getting sore all over, the way you feel when you have the flu. I also got the chills pretty bad. I checked my temp around 4:00pm and it was 100.9. I then took my blood pressure and it was fine (115/70) but my pulse was 115. My resting heart rate remained around 110-120 for the next 8-10 hours.
I thought I must be getting the flu or something (even though I wasn't congested or coughing or anything like that).
Sometime last night it dawned on me that some of my symptoms seemed related to palytoxin exposure so I looked it up. The main thing is I never had the metallic taste in my mouth or trouble breathing. But all of my other symptoms seemed consistent with it.
My biggest reservation is the timeframe. I think I would have to had been exposed yesterday at lunch when feeding the fish, and I just don't know how that would have happened.
As of 10:00am on 10/13/18, my temp is 98.4, almost all of my soreness is gone and my resting heart rate is back down in the 80's.
Do you think it was palytoxin related or some other random 24-hour bug?
