Fly Agaric Mushrooms Nearly Kill Vladivostok Pensioner

An ordinary mushroom-picking trip nearly ended in tragedy for a 74-year-old resident of Vladivostok. The man gathered the mushrooms himself, brought them home, cooked them and ate them. Soon something frightening began to happen to him: the muscles in his arms and legs started contracting involuntarily, his behavior changed, and his consciousness began to cloud. His wife realized her husband was hallucinating and called an ambulance.

The story of this patient was told by toxicologists at Vladivostok«s Thousand-Bed Hospital (Tysyachekoechnaya Bolnitsa). According to the doctors, the symptoms the man developed could have preceded a more severe condition — a complete loss of self-control, psychomotor agitation, and more serious auditory or visual hallucinations.

«Seeing her husband»s condition, the wife called an ambulance in time. After just a few days of intensive treatment, the patient began to recover. In recent years, deaths have been avoided thanks to timely medical care,« said Viktor Sorokin, a toxicologist and intensive care physician.

Once in the hospital, doctors tried to determine exactly which mushrooms the man had eaten. They showed him photographs of mushrooms and asked him to point to the one he had consumed. The patient chose the fly agaric.

Doctors reminded that confidence in one«s knowledge of mushrooms does not rule out the risk of poisoning. A huge number of mushrooms grow in Primorsky Krai — among them are poisonous and conditionally edible species that are easily confused with safe ones.

Moreover, as the doctors clarified, the risk is not only tied to poisonous species. Improper processing of familiar mushrooms can also pose a danger. Insufficient heat treatment, storage or cooking mistakes can lead to poisoning, including bacterial poisoning.

According to the toxicologists, mushroom poisoning cases occur in Primorye every year, especially often in late July and August, when residents of the region head into the forest en masse to gather wild foods.

Earlier, VLADIVOSTOK1.RU reported that doctors in Nakhodka saved a man with ruptured internal organs and a severe abdominal injury. The victim was brought to the city hospital in critical condition — with a gaping abdominal wound up to 18 centimeters long and internal bleeding after a domestic gas explosion.

Medics at Regional Children«s Clinical Hospital No. 1 did not let a 16-year-old teenager die after excessive consumption of an energy drink and coffee. The young man had tried to cope with stress after a quarrel with his girlfriend in Vladivostok using energy drinks.