One of the Risks of Spring Wild Mushroom Picking
By Bill Freedman
Near Medford, Oregon on April 16th, a man and his wife collected the first Amanita ocreata they had ever seen growing in their back lawn near an oak tree. They ate several caps. These people had eaten and fed wild mushrooms to their children for years without ever looking at a field guide. Lethal mushrooms are not common there. This is “Mushroom Roulette”. They’ve been lucky.
Both were hospitalized, treated supportively and recovered. Doctors considered the man for liver replacement on the 2nd hospital day, but his liver tests had improved the following day. He was discharged on the 7th day and his wife the day after. She was semi-coherent 3 days after hospitalization and had prolonged abdominal distention and diarrhea, but recovered with therapy.
We may be able to generalize a bit after the series of poisonings we have reviewed in the recent past. For one thing, it looks as if patients who are alive on the 5th or 6th day will recover without specific treatment. This explains why scarring, or cirrhosis of the liver does not occur later. Not enough time occurs for such changes to take place. Second, we must somehow make stronger efforts to get doctors to be more suspicious of the possibility of mushroom poisoning because treatment options are greater if begun within the first 48 hours.
Let us hope that this heralds the end of a very busy toxicology season. And be careful.