Could your pets be making you sick? Yes according to Dr Casey Barton Behravesh, an epidemiologist at the CDC. She works in the Outbreak Response and Prevention Branch of the CDC.
The most common culprit is Salmonella.
What Pets Can Expose You?
Reptiles including turtles (their sale as pets banned since 1975), snakes, or lizards
Amphibians like frogs
Poultry such as chicks, chickens, and ducklings
Rodents which in addition to your pet lab rats, would include hamsters. Doesn’t everyone have a lab rat these days?
These animals can be otherwise healthy, clean and pristine and yet still be sharing Salmonella with you, their caretaker.
Know the Signs and Symptoms of Salmonella
Salmonella infection usually causes acute gastroenteritis with fever, diarrhea, abdominal cramps, vomiting, and often bloody stools. The incubation period lasts from 12-72 hours and the duration of the illness typically ranges from 4-7 days.
In plain English, you will feel like someone sucker punched you in the gut, and at the same time, your tummy wills sound like a kettle boiling over. The pain may come and go in waves. In the most sever form, you may have thoughts of wondering if death is an option because anything would be better than the pain. Conversely, if you are a parent, you may be thinking natural child birth would be more desirable, even if you are a guy.
The bloody stool will not be the bright red typical of hemorrhoids rather, a it will be a darker mahogany colored stool.
The incubation period is how long it takes you to get really sick. The duration is how long you have to be sick till you get well.
Treatment
Unless you are already dealing with something really bad and especially a compromised immune system, you really need to see a doctor and start boosting your immune system.
Otherwise, the usual treatment is to rehydrate and tell you to suck it up. Not very comforting but that is the usual way it is treated.
There is a dark side…. Salmonella can result in serious illnesse. Sepsis, joint infections, and meningitis, and other infections can result in you being even more sick. Even worse, they can result in you being dead if you already have health conditions like HIV infection, other immunocompromising conditions or sickle cell anemia. If you have any of these, not only do you not want to have the above as pets, you need to know if family or friends have them. Even a handshake could cause the spread of the infection.
Otherwise, like mom always says, wash your hands.
If you should get sick, if it is any consolation, there are 525,600 moments in a year. You will only be sick less than 2.7 percent of those moments and unless you read another article like this in the next 20 years, you will probably forget all about it.