FYI - M, a friend, and I all took a ciguatera hit after the West End trip this weekend. We caught a fish and grilled it super fresh before we left West End. We were all pretty fatigued yesterday, but after such a trip, that was no surprise. M and I had more last night, and that probably brought it on in earnest. The fish was a Tiger grouper, my absolute favorite, and was not a big fish, but maybe could have been described as pretty big, or at least medium sized *for a Tiger*. I guess that's the troubling part: I'm pretty darned careful about our fish intake and, although there have been some where I wondered, this was not one of them. It was probably under ten pounds and defintely under 30".
Progress report:
Today I have still have some sensitivity to cold, mostly in my tongue, but the achiness and much fatigue persists. After some more thought on the matter, we realized that we ate the fish 3 times in just over a day. I've come to the conclusion that we got (what I'd call) a light hit because of that and because we were so exhausted from just 2 hours of sleep before the trip. Had we been well rested and only ate the fish once, we probably would have only experienced a little fatigue, muscle soreness, and maybe a touch of "intestinal uneasiness." Of course, none of which are uncommon for me. :)
A couple good pieces I came across—that are right on from our recent experience:
"Now that you had it you'll know what symptoms to look for. Ciguatera is not an either you get it or you don't deal, it has degrees depending on the amount of infected flesh consumed. It also depends on the physical state of the person who consumed it. A woman or child will be more vulnerable."
"I had two ~6oz pieces for lunch on Sunday and one additional ~10oz piece on Monday night, I didn't start to feel sick until Tuesday. I never had any major GI issues but had everything else: pins and needles feeling on my back and arms, muscle aches everywhere, joint pain in knees, hot flashes, numbness in legs. Cold liquids felt like they were burning my tongue, other stuff like that. My symptoms were not that bad, so it's just an annoyance really, but I'm sure it could have been worse. I was still feeling the symptoms yesterday but today I finally feel like they are gone. I've heard that you can get the symptoms again from eating any fish if you've had ciguatera before."
"I gave a friend some fillets from the African Pompano and he ate them with his family, but they each only had one piece and none of them seemed to have the symptoms. No one else has had the fish. I'm thinking that the cig levels weren't incredibly high in the fish, just high enough to get me sick after eating a bunch of it."
So this now makes a lot of sense: we were really, really worn down on this trip, and thus more susceptible. I ate a lot at the first sitting, and M and I ate the fish 3 times over a little more than a day. Had we been well-rested and only had one large portion, we'd have probably never known the difference. Like the guy quoted above said, we probably have had it many times, but at levels which our bodies were better able to deal with. Thus, at those times, we probably only felt fatigue, achiness, and a few nervy twangs—all of which would ordinarily be dismissed as normal post-trip sensations. - MI
