The Doctor Will See You Now [Non-Fiction]

Chapter 146: General Medicine

A woman is admitted to the medical ward for profuse diarrhoea. As in, pooping pure liquid up to every hour during waking hours for the past week. She has a high fever and is mildly dehydrated.

I ask her what had changed in her health in the past few weeks.

She says she got her COVID vaccine a week ago and that was when she started having diarrhoea. Her daughter also had the vaccine and also had diarrhoea, but hers only lasted one day then resolved so she didn't seek medical attention.

"Anything else changed in the past week? Any new foods, shellfish, seafoods, raw foods?" I press. Foods are the most common source of diarrhoea. I doubt it's related to the vaccine.

"Oh, my friend made me this Malaysian chicken dish and my daughter and I ate it."

"On the same day of the vaccine?"

"Yes."

She is very concerned her diarrhoea is due to the vaccine and the possibility of it recurring if she has her second dose.

There's a saying in medicine, "If you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras" and "Common things are common". The chances of her getting diarrhoea from her vaccine is a possibility, but the possibility of her just getting regular old food poisoning is much higher.

Case in point, two days later her stool culture return as salmonella.

It's the chicken. At this point, her fever has gone down and she feels well. I discharge her.

"But should I not get the vaccine? I got diarrhoea, after all," she says.

"It's the chicken. It's not the vaccine." Unless she's saying the vaccine gave her salmonella gastroenteritis.

"I think I need an exemption from the vaccine."

"Er, I think not."

"But what if I get diarrhoea from the second dose?"

"I can't guarantee you won't, but I'm pretty sure it's the chicken. Even if you do get diarrhoea, you'll just poop it out and be on your way. That's no reason to not get your vaccine."

More realistically, she should just not eat anything made by that friend again rather than avoid the second dose of the vaccine.