Well, I can now say that I have caught and survived E. Coli (and that I’m writing this the day before it goes up since I’m super behind on blog posts for what should be obvious reasons). I got extremely lucky that my entire case was incredibly “mild” and that I only missed four days of work for what amounted to bad food poisoning, so I’m saying this extremely gratefully. To my understanding, based on the results from my urgent care trip and the messages I exchanged with my practitioner afterwards, the only way I could have gotten more lucky than I was would be by not getting it in the first place. Anyway, I got to interact with the modern public health aperatus on a state and federal level, spend time digging through my trash for what I suspected was the culprit, and spend three solid days consuming a single can of soup, a handful of pretzels, and maybe a gallon of gatorade (I didn’t exactly track the specific amount I drank) on top of at least a gallon of water every day. It was quite an experience and not one I’m keen to repeat, so I’ll no longer be taking “pre-washed” vegetables at face value for the foreseeable future. As far as I can tell, I got it from some bagged salad I bought and now I’m never buying another bagged salad again (though this is the strongest suspect in my mind, it is not the only one, unfortunately). Fresh vegetables only, from now on, so I can thoroughly wash them. Which probably means I won’t be doing any more salads like that since I don’t want salad enough to make my own. It was a different question when I could buy a mix to toss with some extras thrown in, but that life is behind me now.

Initially, while I was in the grips of the thing, I cursed the current government and it’s attempts to destroy any and all safety regulations around any industry in the US. Now, after it, I still curse the current government and its attempts to destroy all regulations, but I’m more willing to consider that I might have just gotten unlucky no matter what. Most of the regulation is visible in the form of the reporting and what happens after cases crop up since it’s not like the regulations around food safety have grown more lax so much as how stringently said regulations are enforced (and there’s been a lot of lettuce-based E. Coli outbreaks in recent years that apparently haven’t been handled particularly well, so it’s not just the current government but the last decade of government). And that’s even assuming I caught it from those bagged salads (literally the only food I ate in the days preceeding the start of my illness that wasn’t cooked enough to destroy any possible bacteria). It’s entirely possible that I wasn’t as stringent with my personal hygeine regime at work as I should have been and touched a surface that might have been contaminated by one of my coworkers who doesn’t wash their hands after using the bathroom. I could have caught it while wiping sweat off my face after leaving the grocery store where I touched a lot of stuff that was also touched by a significant number of people who might not have been practice proper personal sanitation. I don’t know.

It feels kind of wild that I need to genuinely consider that I might have gotten sick as a result of touching a surface at work. Aside from my own efforts to never touch a surface I don’t clean myself without thoroughly cleaning my hands afterwards, the fact that this is a reasonable precaution in the first place is staggering. I mean, barely five years have passed since we had a major health crisis that saw the installation of handwashing signs everywhere and a huge push for proper handwashing techniques and there are still fully-grown adults who will leave the bathroom without even running their hands under the water, let alone properly scrubbing them. Sure, proper hand-washing technique is more common in my coworkers than masking (and my limited ability to get a good sample size when it comes to the hand-washing suggests it might be even more pervasive than my own observations indicate), but it feels like the sort of base-level requirement for proper hygeine. Washing your hands properly is a great way to help create a healthy environment for the people around you, sure, but it also DIRECTLY benefits you! You are the primary beneficiary of hand-washing! There’s no reason to not do it! I understand I’m probably not a great representative of the general population since I’ve washed my hands properly for years even prior to the pandemic, but it is still boggling every time I see someone go from stall to exit in the bathroom without even hesitating near the sinks.

I don’t even know what to do in that situation! The person clearly cares nothing for the people around them or their own health, so how am I supposed to take this person to task? The only weapons I could possibly wield in this fight are public shame but the way my employer is structured suggests that I’d likely get in trouble instead of the disgusting people putting everyone’s health at risk by using the bathroom without washing their hands. I’d be seen as a troublemaker if I brought public attention to it and I’m not even sure how to go about dealing with this issue in any kind of “private” or individual way. Is this an HR issue? A Health & Safety issue? Something I should bring to my manager’s attention? There’s no policy on the potential spread of commicable disease as a result of someone’s unsanitary behaviors despite the fact that we have incredibly recent and expansive examples of just how badly that can go if left unaddressed! Every day that people die of Covid an example of how a decent, sensible policy that is actually enforced could be saving the lives of people we’re just letting sicken and die because we couldn’t be bothered. I’m going to need to figure it out, somehow, especially if the food samples I sent in turn up negative since the only other place I likely could have gotten it was at work. Which, I’m sure, is only going to continue the rise of my current popularity with my coworkers. There’s absolutely no way this could all go wrong and massively backfire on me.