"When we went to the Emergency Room, in 5 minutes we were already in bed and surrounded by doctors. We got scared. We had been researching on the Internet and my wife was very nervous, because we already knew the consequences it could have." This is how one of those affected recounts the moment when, finally, he was diagnosed with ciguatera poisoning, like nine other people who have been victims of a new outbreak registered on the island.
By then, this man had already been living a calvary for a week that began with diarrhea and continued with cramps, toothaches, itching and, above all, alteration of thermal sensations. "I touch cold water and it's like I'm holding ice, it burns me. The sensation is like when you've been playing with snow and your hands are burning. You don't know if you're cold or hot," he says, detailing that this sensation started in his hands, but also spread to his feet and even his mouth. "I drink room temperature water and my tongue burns".
For this affected person, everything started last Tuesday, December 3, more than a week ago. That day he bought grouper at a fish shop in San Bartolomé (like the rest of those affected) and shortly after eating, the first symptoms began.
He was diagnosed with gastroenteritis and continued eating fish
"We ate it that same day and in the afternoon I started having tremendous diarrhea," he recalls. Although he then went to work, he had to return home and went to the doctor for the first time, at the San Bartolomé health center. "A doctor looked at me and thought it was gastroenteritis, because I also had a feeling of nausea," he explains.
With that diagnosis, he returned home and the situation worsened, as he ended up doing things totally contraindicated with the poisoning he was actually suffering from. He even continued eating the fish that had caused this problem.
"I had bought a piece of the belly part, which was what we ate at noon, and another from the head. Since they told us it was gastroenteritis, we made a broth with the head, thinking it would be great for us," he recalls. But nothing could be further from the truth. What they were doing was increasing the problem, re-ingesting the fish that poisoned them.
"I thought I was dying"
"The first night I lost three kilos from the diarrhea I had," he says. From there, the rest of the symptoms arrived. "I thought I was dying. We started to think it had to be something else".
In addition to returning to the emergency room without success, he also visited the dentist. "I told him: Take out the tooth that's driving me crazy. But after looking at me, he said it couldn't be, that I had the filling and it was a little chipped, but nothing more". Now he knows that this pain was another of the symptoms of ciguatera.
Finally, on his last visit to the emergency service of the Health Center, a doctor began to look for other options and "remembered this toxin". "He was worried and told us that if anything happened we should go to the hospital or call him, but it seems that he found out and the next day, at 8 in the morning, he called us himself saying that a protocol had to be activated". That's when he referred them to the Hospital's Emergency Room.
"Normally in the Emergency Room you have to wait and we were worried because we were very bad and my wife's blood pressure had dropped, but in a few seconds they had already attended to us. We told them we had ciguatera and there was a certain disorder in the Hospital, as if it was something new they didn't know," he explains, while detailing the speed with which they began to act. "It was rushing us inside, into a box, doing urine and blood tests..."
This was last Tuesday the 10th, a week after suffering the first symptoms. And although he is still suffering from them, at least he celebrates having a diagnosis, and also that the poisoning has not had worse consequences. "When we found out, we were surprised by the severity of it".
"They should have warned earlier"
Another of those affected, the one who contacted La Voz to make this news public, regrets that Public Health has taken so long to report on this new outbreak of ciguatera. In fact, despite the fact that the Hospital detected the first case last Monday the 9th, it was not until the afternoon of this Thursday, hours after La Voz published the news, that the Government of the Canary Islands sent a press release.
Apart from the legal actions she takes against the fish shop where she bought the grouper, this woman considered it necessary to raise the alarm, to avoid possible new cases. And it is that although this fish was for sale last week, she fears that someone may have acquired a piece and frozen it, so she understood it was necessary to warn the population.
As for her symptoms, she recounts very similar sensations. "One foot gets hot and the other is cold, you have shivers, you think you have 40 fever and you have 37... One of the nights I felt like I had fire, I was unable to sleep". In addition, she experienced the same uncertainty until she was finally diagnosed with having suffered "poisoning" from this toxin.
"It attacks the nervous system and can attack the cardiorespiratory system, that's why it's so serious," she explains after spending days learning about this poisoning, which "can have fatal consequences in a diabetic person, in an elderly person or in a child".
Now, she continues to suffer the symptoms, because "there is no treatment" and you have to wait for them to disappear. "You can only take a paracetamol or an ibuprofen, or antihistamines if you have itching". In addition, she says that she has been told that she must spend "six months without eating fish", and even "some recommend that you never try it again". But above all, she is concerned about the evolution, since according to what she has been informed, "you can suffer from chronic fatigue and even within a year you can have another outbreak".
