He says the mushrooms tasted delicious when he sautéed them at home for dinner, but hours later, Hickman suffered excruciating abdominal pains.
An Ohio man whose family foraged for mushrooms for generations nearly died after eating poisonous mushrooms.
Bill Hickman found a patch of mushrooms growing in his parents' yard. To be safe, he says he used a smartphone app which identified the mushrooms as safe to eat.
He says the mushrooms tasted delicious when he sautéed them at home for dinner, but hours later, Hickman suffered excruciating abdominal pains.
“I felt like I could have died on the bathroom floor,” Hickman tells Inside Edition.
As Hickman grew more sick, his wife, Tammy, wondered if the mushrooms caused it.
“We’ve been together many many years. I’ve seen all kinds of sickness, flu, things that he’s gone through and this was totally different and it was so sudden,” Tammy says.
Tammy took pictures of the mushrooms and emailed them to poison control for analysis.
The mushrooms her husband ate were known as destroying angels, a highly poisonous variety known for its lethal toxicity.
Hickman was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with amatoxin poisoning. His condition worsened. Doctors told Tammy to say her goodbyes.
“He told my wife that if I wasn't gonna make it that she should make arrangements,” Hickman says.
Hickman was saved after doctors at the University Hospitals in Cleveland put him on an experimental medication to counteract the deadly mushrooms.
“People need to pay attention to this. Foraging mushrooms is ill advised in my opinion,” Dr. Pierre Gholam at University Hospitals in Cleveland says.
About three percent of mushrooms are poisonous, but experts say it is not worth playing the odds. With many varieties bearing resemblances, there is no easy way to spot the difference between a mushroom that is safe to eat and the kind that could be deadly.
Inside Edition joined mushroom enthusiast Paula Peng at Franklin Canyon Park in Los Angeles, where a highly poisonous death cap mushroom was found in plain sight.
“There is a chance that what [people] are finding can be deadly so they need to educate themselves,” Hickman says.
