She thought she was dying. That’s how New York City realtor Penny Penzner felt last summer when she became violently ill from what she thought might be some cut-up fruit she had bought at a nearby deli. Late that night, she woke up feeling sick — very sick.
She ran into the bathroom with what she immediately realized was a severe case of diarrhea. Worse yet, she started vomiting. While still on the toilet, she picked up the nearby trash can and started vomiting into it.
Her entire system was exploding. It scared her. To make matters worse, she was experiencing painful cramps.
What could it be? Was she dying? When morning came, she was still feeling miserable but managed to get dressed and ready to walk around the corner to an urgent care facility. But diarrhea hit again and she had to turn back. But later that afternoon, she did manage to get there.
The medical provider told her it would be hard to say what caused her “upset stomach” but recommended she get plenty of rest and drink a lot of fluids. When she got back home, she called the grocery store where she had bought the fruit and asked to speak to the manager. He told her he had had no complaints from any customers.
When she told him how sick she was and suggested he throw out all of the cut-up fruit, he told her he was too busy “to deal with this” and hung up on her. Several days later when she called a friend and told her about how her digestive system had “exploded,” her friend told her it could have b.
