Outbreak Investigation: Ecua Stomach

This blog post is going to be a special treat for all of my Infectious Disease Epidemiology friends (lemurs, if you will). I have prepared an outbreak investigation about my recent bout of Ecua Stomach, which happened to be the worst I've experienced.

In Ecuador, the Day of the Child (Día de los Niños) is a pretty big deal. As a result, I spent the morning in a party for the children of Estero de Plátano, which happened to include a cake. The cake was left out for about 3 hours before we ate it, and probably longer than that since it had to get to Estero from Atacames. Regardless, I have a pretty cavalier attitude about the strength of my stomach and I ate it anyway. Sometime after dinner, I begin to hear the stomach rumblings that signaled trouble on the way. Early the next morning, the worst case of Ecua Stomach I've ever had began.

My philosophy on Ecua Stomach has always been that you just have to let these things run their course. At Day 3, my philosophy changed and I was ready to try anything. Unfortunately, Day 3 was a Saturday and the Health Subcenter wouldn't be open again until Tuesday. So I took some random pill that I bought from a tienda. Which sort of worked, but not really. Next, I submitted myself to an especially interesting cure: having an egg rolled all around my body and being crossed. At which point the egg is cracked and put in a cup of water to see how much of the sickness it pulled out of my body. Surprisingly, this remedy also failed.

On Tuesday, Day 6, I went to the Health Subcenter where I was given some random pills that I had never heard of and some rehydration powder to mix with water. I don't know what the pills were, but they worked. Finally. After 6 days of becoming very well acquainted with the bathroom in our hostel, I felt like a person again. And now I'll know better than to be overly smug with my "stomach of steel."

So, my faithful IDEpi folks, what did I have? Assuming it was the cake that did me in, I would put the incubation period at about 6 or 7 hours. I would guess I was probably headed toward the end of my symptoms by the time I took the pills, so duration of about 6 to 7 days. The fruit on the cake may have been the actual culprit, or it may have been your typical fecal-oral contamination through little kids touching the cake while they desperately tried to wait 3 hours to eat it. I await your answers.