Big Bad Botulism

Decadence fears little. The assumption that the things she does fear are irrational, would be on point. 

As mentioned in A Decadent List of Grievances, as a child Decadence had a strange fear of large patches of mud for fear the MudMan would grab her shoe, foot, ankle or entire leg. At least he might according to the warning Father Brown gave Decadence time and again when nearing patches of mud while walking through Atlanta parks.

Decadence has since overcome this fear...at least 90% of it. 

Perhaps Decadence's most crippling fear is that of botulism. Food botulism, not Botox botulism-although Botox is not an option for Decadence as her age progresses. Actually, strike that, Decadence does not age.

Just as her fear of the MudMan has roots in her childhood, so does her fear of botulism. The fear of botulism and/or botulism poisoning is far more serious than the MudMan fear ever was. This fear is far-reaching and at times has affected Decadence's life in a negative way. It is a pervasive and persistent fear…the features of this fear may in fact make it a borderline phobia.

As a child, and usually while reheating leftovers, Mama Brown would tell Decadence of the time when distant family members ate leftovers for dinner. This particular dinner contained corn. Specifically under-cooked corn. Mama Brown warned of the grave dangers in not boiling corn when it is reheating. "ALWAYS make sure that the leftovers containing corn are so hot they boil" she would tell young Decadence. "Boiling kills the bacteria." 


Case and point: the family member preparing the food for these distant relatives did not boil the leftovers properly. As a result, the entire group was poisoned by the botulism lurking in the sub-par reheated corn and all almost died from the poisoning. Luckily they arrived at the hospital just in time to counteract the botulism poisoning.

Mental image of corn for young Decadence

Decadence wondered, "does this 'botulism' show signs of its presence? Does it smell?" Decadence never asked these questions of her mother; she simply pondered silently. It seemed that there was no way to know other than to boil leftovers. 

Decadence later learned that botulism often finds its way into canned goods. Somehow Decadence missed the detail that it was much more of a problem in the past due to home canning methods and not those employed by modern times. Instead Decadence assimilated  the idea of this danger, resulting in her associating the botulism danger to all canned goods and feared that she was at risk every time canned vegetables were presented for her consumption.

Silent, but deadly

"Have these vegetables been boiled?!" she would wonder in a state of internal hysteria. "It would be rude and wasteful not to eat them." The weight of the potential danger as well as the knowledge of it were daunting. 

She constantly found herself in a two-part struggle:

-to eat or not to eat

-to warn others, not to warn others, or run from the table in a hair-pulling, arm-flailing, screaming fit

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Somehow Decadence made it to college away from home. During her second year, her fear experienced a breakthrough.

Her roommate, who will be referred to as "Mo-licious" was also a teammate on the college soccer team. One afternoon before practice, Mo-licious opened a can of sweet peas. Mo-licious decided to forego heating the peas in order to save time and dirtying a bowl. 

Instead she dipped her fork into the can of peas, blissfully unaware of the impending danger.

Decadence, witnessing what could potentially be her roommates final moments, knew she had to act quickly.

Decadence ran and jumped directly at her roommate from across the small dorm room, screaming "NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!" 

When she reached Mo-licious, she attempted to hit the deadly botulism can out of her unsuspecting hand. Luckily Mo-licious had cat-like reflexes and pulled the can out of Decadence's reach.

Mo-licious returned Decadence's look of panic with an expression of bewilderment and surprise:

Mo-"What is wrong with you?!"

DB-"You canNOT eat those!"

Mo-"Why not?"

DB-"You didn't heat them! You have to boil canned vegetables to kill the botulism or you could die!"

Mo-"What the hell are you talking about?! I eat peas out of the can all the time!"

DB-"What? You aren't worried about botulism?"

Mo-"Seriously. What are you talking about?"

DB-"My mom told me that you have to boil canned vegetables to kill the botulism and bacteria, otherwise you could get really sick and die."

Mo-"I promise I eat canned vegetables like this all the time. I have never gotten sick and I have no idea what you're talking about."

DB-"Oh. Sorry."

Decadence had some reevaluating to do. She clearly had not done her research on this fear. 

Also it was abundantly clear that she had missed out on a world of food. As such, Decadence began eating her canned vegetables without boiling them. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Decadence continued however to fear leftovers and previously opened canned goods, i.e. spaghetti sauce.

For an example of Decadence's fear of left-over consumption, review the previous post: Staycation Cleanup.

Most recently, Decadence spent 20 hours convinced that the spaghetti sauce she used on her spicy red pepper noodles might be the end of her reign on Earth.

Decadence's first warning that something may be amiss was the popped out sauce lid...on both bottles of spaghetti sauce. (Decadence likes to mix the marinara and alfredo sauces together, it's more decadent this way.)

The fact that this was the label on the jar should have also
been a red flag, bad spaghetti sauce indeed

Not wanting to waste the delicious noodles she had just prepared, as they were the last of her noodles, Decadence poured her favorite sauce combination.


Pouring the sauce, Decadence thought: "Should I boil this sauce? I never have before-this time it seems risky not to... Hmm, maybe this is a bad idea, but maybe I'm just being paranoid."


Then the botulism fear began to rear its ugly head.

Botulism fear looks strangely like Al Pacino

The fear told her:
-"You could be eating botulism infested sauce right now."
-"Each bite could take you one step closer to death's door."
-"You might want to call someone."


The pace of her eating slowed as she realized that she was the only person home. She then realized that after only a month in a new city, the only 2 people she knew were her 2 roommates. Where were they anyway? 


She put the pasta down and pulled out her computer.


Google screen. Search: Botulism


Search: How long does spaghetti sauce stay good


Search: Symptoms of botulism poisoning 


This did not look good.


Lucky for Decadence, her first roommate in grad school was a dietetics graduate student and she now lived a couple of hours away (we shall call her KayPay). "She'll know what to do," Decadence decided. 


Decadence called her dear, long lost roommate.


After some panicked explanation of the current situation, Decadence and KayPay searched from their respective homes for various combinations of situations that may arise from eating bad spaghetti sauce.


KayPay asked if the sauce smelled funny. "No, replied Decadence, "but that doesn't rule out botulism poisoning!"


KayPay, after a year of living with Decadence was aware of her fear and in being around Decadence's fear, had slightly adopted a similar feeling about the potential danger in keeping food too long-although she was open about her misunderstanding of what Decadence's fear contained. Clearly KayPay knew about foods, health, and the like, but to her Decadence's fear seemed odd and misplaced.


Nevertheless, the situation escalated. The two decided that Decadence should stop eating the spaghetti (which she finished during the escalating conversation), and "wait it out."


KayPay: "Basically you have 24-36 hours to live if you ingested botulism. This means we will know by tomorrow afternoon because you will either get really, really sick or you won't. If you start to get really sick, it's probably too late. So, just call me tomorrow at 12 noon and no later. By then we'll know if you're going to make it or not."

I'm afraid I have bad news, you may or may
not die in the next 24-36 hours

Not comforting words, but having a plan seemed to help. Ahh-who am I kidding, it didn't help at all. Decadence was panicked. Her current roommates came home and got to hear all about her botulism fear.


Decadence managed to sleep through part of the night and made it, albeit nervously, through the day. At noon, her fears had not subsided, but by noon the following day, she sensed she had made it through the danger zone.


Decadence dared not laugh about the incident until a week later when she knew that she had not been exposed to any potentially botulism-infused foods, and even then it was cautious, shifty-eyed laughter.

Always watching for the next botulism attack

Moral of the story: Watch your food and take inventory of your roommates fears.


Also-to dispel some myths about botulism click here, just in case you share Decadence's fear.