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CASE 4: The toxic woman
PLACE: Riverside, CA - YEAR: 1994
The story we're about to tell is true and it's joined in the branch of "Urban Legend"
for its strangeness and the inability to provide a valid explanation, rational and satisfactory still today.
Is the story of a 31 year old woman suffering from cervical cancer that,
on the evening of February 14, 1994, was brought to the emergency room of the hospital of Riverside, in Southern California
Her name was Gloria Ramirez.
The heart rate was accelerated, the blood pressure to a minimum and the breathing was irregular.
Paramedics injected her a mix of sedatives to calm her and other medications to regulate the heartbeat.
The woman was connected to an oxygen mask; but Gloria didn't answer and they tried with defibrillation.
When doctors stripped her, they noticed something disturbing:
the patient's skin was oily, and a smell like garlic flowed from her mouth.
But the surprises do not end here.
When the nurse was prepared to take a sample of blood for analysis;
while the syringe was filled, she felt a chemical smell,
then she tried to sniff it feeling surprisingly a strong and unusual smell of ammonia.
Another nurse also noticed some strange brownish particles floating in the blood specimens.
Suddenly, doctors and nurses who were in the room,
one after another began to accuse burning sensations in the face, nausea,
some fainted in the grip of strong convulsions.
And what is even more disturbing, some of them, when they woke up,
could not even control the movement of the limbs.
It was declared a state of emergency in the whole hospital, and patients were immediately evacuated.
The woman, after desperate attempts of the few doctors left inside,
was pronounced dead at 20:50 and his body was placed in solitary confinement.
The vast majority of staff are felt sick that night.
The nurse worst hit spent two weeks in intensive care, where she suffered, among other things,
avascular necrosis, ie a disease for which the bone tissue does not get enough blood and begins to die.
Necrosis attacked the knees, and she had to use crutches for months.
Around 11:00 P.M. a team specialized in toxic materials arrived
and began to looking for the point of origin of all that devastation,
but in the room where Gloria died, they didn't found anything potentially dangerous.
Pathologists of the hospital, then began a long autopsy on the body of the woman,
from which emerged with blood samples and tissues.
Initially, the analysis of the coroner did not lead to decisive conclusions,
so he was asked for help at the forensic studies center that have analyzed the blood
and tissues of the heart, lungs, brain, kidneys and liver of Glory.
It was found, however, that the elements could not alone explain the faintings
and diseases developed by those who had been in contact with Gloria to the emergency room.
Despite the unusual findings, therefore, the investigation had reached a dead end.
During a press conference, were announced that the official cause of death of Gloria
was cardiac arrhythmia caused by the collapse of the kidneys, exhausted from cancer of the ***.
But the malaise of the emergency team remained unexplained.
All this led to downgrade this story as mass hysteria,
triggered perhaps by 'the smell of death" of the blood of the patient.
But this conclusion provoked the ire of those who, between patients and physicians,
had accused the symptoms described.
So it was that they considered another track:
the culprit could be the DMSO, which is a gel used as a remedy against chronic pain,
and probably Gloria had made heavy use to relieve the excruciating pain of the tumor.
DMSO reacts with oxygen to form the Dimetilsolfone
(one of the elements found in high concentration during the autopsy),
but we know that when the woman was taken from the ambulance,
the paramedics had tried to keep it alive pressing to her face a mask oxygen,
but what is obtained by adding another molecule of this item?
The answer is dimethyl sulfate, the effects can be devastating
and correspond to the symptoms reported by the medical staff with the exception of nausea and vomiting.
According to scientists, some Dimetilsolfone molecules found in the blood of Glory, would break,
joining the sulphates present naturally in the body, forming the dimethyl sulfate.
When the nurse accomplished blood sampling on Gloria, the syringe was filled with dimethyl sulfate,
a few molecules of which leaked from the syringe and poisoned the hospital staff.
This explanation provoked very mixed opinions in the scientific community:
some of them were totally convinced, others pointed out that the Dimetilsolfone
not usually "breaks" within the body and that the effects of dimethyl sulfate are seen only after several hours.
Gloria was buried in the Olivewood Memorial Park of Riverside in an unmarked grave,
bringing what, even today, remains one of the mysteries of the most controversial in the history of medicine.
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