Toxic wild mushrooms poison Waikato doctor
A doctor who survived cancer and chemotherapy says death cap mushroom poisoning was the most painful ordeal she has ever had.
Dr Anna Whitehead saw some mushrooms near an oak tree in Raglan on the Easter long weekend.
The Waikato public health doctor hadn’t planned to forage but decided to pick the mushrooms and check online if the ones she’d found near the waterfront on Cliff St were toxic.
But she was so busy, partly due to commitments during the pandemic, she forgot to check. She fried two mushroom caps and a stem, ate them with fish at lunch and felt fine – for a while. She woke up at 3am the next day. ‘‘I had this vomit which was unusual. It was a green liquid.’’
She went back to sleep but woke up again, and had ‘‘a huge amount’’ of green diarrhoea and vomit.
‘‘By eight in the morning I thought: I’m actually really unwell.’’
She realised only the mushrooms could be making her so ill.
Guilt set in. With health systems focused on fighting coronavirus, she did not want to go to hospital.
Whitehead phoned Healthline and a paramedic was sent. She said she was asked if she’d eaten a ‘‘magic mushroom’’ but had to emphasise she hadn’t.
Later, her own GP rang the National Poisons Centre (NPC) and Whitehead was put on a drip at the GP clinic.
But the toxins were destroying her liver. It was impossible for her to keep enough fluids down, and she was hospitalised.
‘‘I have never ever felt so terrible.’’ Death cap (amanita phalloides) poisoning is still relatively unusual in New Zealand and Whitehead said health professionals asked if she was sure what she’d eaten.
She was given activated charcoal, which turned her lips and vomit black.
But the toxins were damaging her liver so badly, the New Zealand Liver
Transplant Unit in Auckland was contacted. Eventually, tests showed her liver functions very slowly returning to normal.
She said staff at Waikato Hospital’s high dependency unit helped her recover.
More than three weeks later, the usually active outdoor enthusiast is still recuperating.
And Whitehead said all mushrooms are off the menu, partly because she can still smell the disgusting green funk of the toxic death cap.
The NPC has fielded an increase in mushroom exposure inquiries this year, compared to 2019.
NPC director Dr Adam Pomerleau said in early 2019, most death cap exposures were in children, but so far this year, most exposures were in adults.
‘‘It is the mushroom foragers and people who make a meal out of foraged mushrooms who are at higher risk of being seriously poisoned.’’
Pomerleau said death caps were notorious and responsible for most mushroom-related deaths, but many other species could cause injury and death.
Whitehead and Pomerleau encouraged people to call the poisons centre on 0800 POISON / 0800 764 766 if anybody was suspected of eating death caps.