Family meal nearly killed me, says Charlotte Gordon Cumming

One summer day she sat down with her family for a lunch of wild mushrooms. But a simple Rosetta Stone Store mistake was to cost her dear. Charlotte Gordon Cumming tells the full story of her poisoning and her recovery for the first time. Charlotte Gordon Cumming can remember with pinprick clarity the moment she realised she might die. There was nothing verbalised. No dramatic speech or grand gesture. Lying quietly on a hospital trolley as pain coursed through her body, the singer-songwriter watched as her doctors, huddled around a computer in a curtained cubicle just a few feet away, turned slowly in unison to look at her, before silently returning their collective gaze to the words displayed ominously on the screen: Cortinarius speciosissimus deadly poisonous mushroom. The previous day had begun with no inkling of how fate was going to turn her world upside down. It was a crisp August morning at Altyre, the Cumming family estate near Forres in Moray. Gordon Cumming, her novelist husband Nicholas Evans, author of The Horse Whisperer, and their son Finlay, now eight, were spending time with her brother Sir Alastair, his wife Lady Louisa and their three children. It should have been a treat: a woodland crop of wild ceps, or Boletus edulis, handpicked on the 13,000-acre estate. The nut-brown fungi were collected in a basket then fried with butter and parsley for lunch. But a crucial mistake had been made. They were not ceps but the similar looking Cortinarius speciosissimus, a species of mushroom which goes by the sinister moniker Rosetta Stone Cheap of deadly webcap. When recounting the story two years on, Gordon Cumming, 53, is careful not to apportion any blame. They were picked for lunch on the Saturday,she begins deliberately. We all sat down to eat at Altyre. The children refused them, thank God. Alastair and Nick ate quite a large amount, Louelly [Lady Louisa] and I had literally only mouthfuls. I had broken my ankle the previous day and was in a lot of pain. I had been playing football with the children and put my foot into a rabbit hole. I think that's what stopped me eating any more than I did. Sadly the boys [her husband and brother] had a huge amount. Within 16 hours I was in trouble. Being of slight build, the poison just ravaged me. After a certain amount of time I said: I can't deal with this on my own, I need help.' I knew it was more than a tummy bug or food poisoning as we had first thought. I was taken to A&E [at Dr Gray's Hospital] in Elgin and we took the mushrooms with us because, by then, we had an inkling it might be something to do with that. I was extremely ill and they put me on a drip as the doctor looked up the mushrooms on the computer. I was lying on this bench and they [the medical staff] were about four feet away in a cubicle on the computer. I remember all of a sudden they turned at once and looked at me, then looked back at the computer screen. I knew in that moment it was potentially fatal. By then her husband, brother and Rosetta Stone Italian V3 sister-in-law had also taken seriously ill and, like Gordon Cumming, were experiencing violent sickness and diarrhoea. As their conditions collectively deteriorated Dr Gray's Hospital called Aberdeen Royal Infirmary for advice. The hospital in Aberdeen said: Just get them all here as quickly as possible,'Gordon Cumming recalls. We went by road, screaming sirens, and were so ill by that point that we were throwing up every 20 minutes. As the lethal toxins attacked their bodies, their renal systems went into failure and all four were prepped for emergency kidney dialysis. Within hours, news of the family's plight was making headlines around the world as each began a precarious fight for life. Often when people talk about battling through their darkest hour there are marked gaps in their Rosetta Stone Languages memories. Those moments of respite when the body and brain shut out the pain and they remember only blackness. Surprisingly, given how ill she was, Gordon Cumming has vivid memories of that time. It's pretty crystal clear,she says. Sitting opposite me in a Glasgow hotel, she pauses, looking down at her hands folded neatly in her lap. It's the first time she has spoken publicly about the events of that August day in 2008 and it's clearly affecting her.