What to Listen to Next - MrBallen's Medical Mysteries
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Everyone is dana bursche. If you're hearing this message, IT means that you've probably made IT to the end of historical congratulations, but you enjoyed listening as much as we enjoyed making him. And since you made IT to the end, IT sounds like real life mysteries and psychological intrigue might be a thing that you're into.

In which case, i've got another podcast that you should check out. It's called mr. Bolen medical mysteries, IT host to buy mr.

Bollen, one of the internet most popular storytellers. And the podcast dies into the most perplexing and spine tingling medical mysteries. Each week you will hear about bizarre diseases, maculate recoveries and strange medical mishaps. I'm about to play a recent episode from mr. Bones medical mysteries called common ground, about a boy in minnesota who is rushed to the emergency room with one of the worst food poisoning cases the doctors had ever seen.

Short while later, though, a girl shows up with the same illness, and soon cases are popping up throughout the state, leaving some on the brink of death as doctors scrambled to figure out why. While listening, make sure you follow this balloons. Medical mystery is on amazon music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here is hope you enjoy.

Early one morning, a concern mother, sappi sider Young son, inside of a hospital room, he was lying in the bed, crude into a ball, and he was drench with sweat, and he was clutching a stomach. His doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with him, and until they did, they couldn't cure him. For now, all they could do was keep the boy hydrated and hope for a breakthrough.

But judging from how miserable her son looked, IT didn't seem like the doctors were helping at all. The mother was starting to get worried that her little boy's life was in danger. The mother stood up to call the nurse when all of a sudden he felt dizzy and light headed SHE SAT back down and realized he was starting to sweat a lot.

This was exactly how her son's illness had started. Whatever he had now SHE had IT too. What SHE didn't know, though, was that thousands of other people were experiencing the same terrifying symptoms, too. This was just the beginning of an outbreak that would spread across the entire united states, and there was no cure or insight.

From bowlen studios and wander, I am mr. Bolen, and this is mr. balloons. Medical mysteries. For every week, we will explore a new baffling mystery originating from the one place we all can't escape our own bodies. If you like today's story, please offer to detail the follow bon's car, but be sure to hide a slightly open kind of tuna under their front seat.

The episode is called common ground. On August eighth, one thousand nine hundred and ninety eight, Sharon Anderson's eyes shot open to the sound of our eight year old sons whaling SHE gLance ced over the bedside clock and saw, I was only four A M. Toby, her son, was a very deep sleepers, so SHE knew what had to be something serious to wake him up at this hour.

So Sharon jumped at a bed and rushed down the hall to his room. Toby was still in his bed, and he was holding his belly with both hands. He was covered by a film of sweat, and he was mowing in pain.

Sharing laid the back of her hand until his forehead, and he found that he was burning hot. In fact, he felt much harder than when he Normally got sick. Sharing knew her son needed medical attention right now.

SHE rushed back to her bedroom, woke up her husband and told him to go get the car ready so they could drive their son to the emergency room. Then SHE ran back to tobe's room. SHE scooped him up in a blanket and Carried him down the hall. IT was still dark out as Sharon and her husband loaded toby into their car. Fortunately, the streets of many amplius were empty at that hour as they raised to the nearest hospital.

Attending physician doctor gene Miller, was just starting a shift when our office into combos. Ed and a voice announced that an eight year old boy named toby had just been wheeled into the E. R.

His mother, Sharon, said toby had been feverish for hours and was throwing up. Doctor meller jumped up from her desk and dashed down the hall to the emergency room. SHE found, told by lying in bed, his eyes half open in a skin drained of color, all as pajama as were dark with sweat.

The boy's parents hovered beside the bed, looking worried and helpless. Doctor Miller called for a nurse to bring an iv silan drop to get some fluid into the boy. Then he measured his heartbeat and listen to his breathing.

But the child's intense stomach pains suggested that whatever was going on was an industrial issue that covered a lot of possibilities, from food poisoning to something much more serious, like a panda, tis dark. Miller asked tobe's parents, if you eaten anything unusual lately, they looked at each other and listed various meals from the past few days, but then said that nothing out of the ordinary came to mind. dr.

Miller noted that as toby, where are hurt most with very shaky hands, toby pointed to a stomach tears formed in his eyes, and he told dr. Or Miller the pain was getting even worse. Doctor Miller smile calmly, doing her best to hide her concern that toby seem to be thinking the dark or grab t the phone off the wall and called the lab the order blood and store samples that would likely identify what was happening inside of topic body.

The doctor was pretty sure IT was some kind of food poisoning, but the boy's intensity comfort suggested that IT could be more serious than you're run of the mill twenty four hour stomach bug. Doctor Miller took the parents aside and told them to make a list of every food in every place that toby had eaten in the past four days. Doctor Miller promised they would find out what was happening to their son, and they would do everything in their power to make him right again.

A few hours later, doctor Millers phone ring IT was the lab with toby's results. They found blood in toby store, which indicated in testino bleeding most likely from bacteria in this food. So doctor Miller had apparently been right.

IT was some kind of food poisoning. Now they needed to figure out what kind of food poisoning IT was. The lab technician said they had already isolated the bacteria from toby store for closer analysis.

Doctor Miller thanked the technician and hung up. The good news was that they were now closer to knowing what was making to be sick. But the bad news was, until then, doctor Miller could not really aggressively treat to be illness.

For many bacterial infections, the best treatment is anti biotics. But with certain strains of bacteria, such as highly toxic trains of equally, antibiotics can actually make the patient sicker, even kill them. So for now, all doctor Miller could do was keep told by fevour down with medication, the anti hydration at bay with an iv drop.

Doctor Miller checked in with toby's parents and told them to get some rest and that he would be back at the hospital first thing in the morning. Then the doctor left the room and went to the nightmares and told her to please contact her at home if anything changed with toby. The next morning, doctor Miller had just SAT down behind her desk with a mug of coffee when a nurse knocked on the door and poked her head, SHE said.

There was a new arrival to the E. R. A four year old girl named paid in ear SHE had a sweltering one hundred and four degree fever, and her mother said she's been vomiting on enough for twelve hours with repeated belts of doctor Millers mind raised.

As SHE followed the nurse down to the emergency department, White curtains were drawn all around a gurney that had just been wheeled in. Little patent was lying on the gurney, drenched in sweat. Her face was trained of r and he was struggling to keep her eyes open.

And her parents stood to the side, clutching each other nervously darker. Miller immediately ordered the nurses to hook paint up to an iv drop while SHE checked the girl's vitals. Patent pulse was weak and her blood pressure was dropping.

Dark meller worried he might be going into shock, which could cause her organs to shut down. Doctor Miller realized that patens symptoms were very similar to tobes, so much so that he wondered if both kids had caught the same infection. Patent's parents told doctor Miller that their home was in a suburb north of many aquas, which was nowhere near where toby's family lived.

Still, doctor Miller thought there must be something these two kids had in common. dr. Miller called the lab and told them he wanted full blood work run on patent plus two samples, test IT as well.

Then dr. 点 Miller took patents parents into the hallway and ask them for more details。 The mother said that patent had been complaining of stomach c pains last night, but I really hadn't seen that serious.

But at around midnight, patient woke up crying from all the pain and then began vomiting. After that, he kept formatting nearly every hour and had several episodes of severe diary. Then her temperature started spiking by dawn.

The parents, ts. said. I was clear that whatever this was, IT was only getting worse.

So her parents had rushed her to the hospital. dr. 点 Miller said they had done the right thing。 Patent would be safer. For now, the best thing they could do was just stay calm and wait, but that was advice doctor Miller found easier to give than practice.

As doctor Miller stepped out a patent's room and headed back to her office, a nurse hurried up to her and said the lab had been trying to reach her toby's new results were in. The boy was infected with the bacteria called shigella. Finally, doctor Miller knew what he was up against.

Shiga attacks the digestive system, causing inflation, tion and bleating. Within twelve to forty eight hours, after eating food contaminated with the bacteria, toby had all of the classic symptoms, fever, abdominal in na dia. Doctor Miller knew that if untreated, sega could send toby into shock, which often leads to organ failure and deficient ally, even death, but at the same time, dr.

Miller was relieved. Although sega was obviously serious, IT could be defeated with the antibiotics, so SHE could finally start treating toby. Doctor Miller told me, attending nurse to prepare antibiotics for toby and began in ministering them as soon as they were ready.

Then dr. 点 Miller rushed to tobes room to give his parents the news。 The boy was lying in his hospital bed with his eyes half open. His mother SAT in a chair next to the bed, holding your son's hand and looking flushed and exhausted, doctor Miller asked toby's parents to step outside with her so he could explain what was going on.

But when toby's mother tried to stand up SHE warbled and had to sit back down, SHE admitted he had not been feeling well since he woke up that morning. He said he even vomited a couple of times. dr.

Or Miller told toby s. Mother to stay seated while he called for a nurse to prepare a bed for her. The doctor told her I was entirely possible that he was also now infected with shigella, which was the bacteria that they had just discovered her son was infected with.

After all, sugar is so contagious that I can be passed in a handshake if someone who touched the bacteria didn't wash their hands well enough as soon as doctor Miller had settled toby's mother into her own hospital bed, a receptionist wave the doctor down. IT was the lab calling again. They had the results for doctor Millers, other Young patient patent SHE had SHE got a two dr.

Or Miller put down the phone first, toby, then maybe toby's mother, and now pain. Suddenly, dr. Miller felt like he had an outbreak on her hands.

And given how easily shageia is transmitted, there were likely dozens more people out there suffering symptoms at home. In every one of those cases could make more people suck. Suddenly, doctor Miller had a lot of calls to make.

Later on that same afternoon in August of one thousand nine hundred ninety eight, a Young epidemiologist at the minnesota department of health named doctor, Julie weakland, was sitting at a desk when her secretary SHE told her there was an urgent call coming in from a local hospital, dr. Or weekend, and was only in her twenties and still trying to prove her self professionally.

But one thing you'd already learned was that being an empathetic ologies meant everything was til emergency. People's lives were always on the line. He picked up the phone and called doctor Miller, who described the potential suga ler outbreak.

SHE was facing three cases in her hospital, and likely a lot more people at home right now who just weren't sick enough to head to the hospital yet, but soon they would be once doctor weekend was done, hearing from doctor Miller, SHE requested to have toby and patents families fill out food history with everything they had eaten in the past four days. Then he met with her team at the department of health and assigned smooth, our best investigators, to join her on this case by the time I got back to wear office, dr. Weekend secretary came in holding a stack of papers the families had already filled out in facts over their kids food histories.

Doctor klans spread them out on her desk, scan them to look for commonalty ties right away. He noticed a pattern they had all eaten at a restaurant called Robert s. The odds were extremely low that both toby and patients families had eaten at the same place in the same for day window, especially considering how far apart they lived. And so this was exactly the type of breakthrough doctor weekly and was hoping for.

An hour later, dark or weekend, and two other health officials stepped out of a dark sedan in front of the restaurant Robert, a modest neighbor od eatery. The manager was waiting for them by the entrance, looking very tense. The restaurant was temporarily closed for the rest of the day, so the doctor weekend and our team could go and conduct their investigation there.

Doctor weekend needed to inspect every aspect of the restaurants food handling for possible sources of contamination, such as spoiled food or dirty water. dr. Weakland assigned one investigator to record the temperatures inside the refrigerators and freezers, while another investigator took water samples from all the sinks and taps.

Then dr. Or weaklings studied every step in the foods journey to the table, from the delivery area to the storage room to the food prob stations. The overall layout Albertus meet safety standards, but dr.

Or White leland knew how elusive shigella could be. Chia can show up almost anywhere and then can be spread by the people who are simply preparing the food darker weekly. In told the manager, SHE needed to interview the entire staff.

And so once the staff was gathered in the dining room, doctor weakland circled the room, asking each employee questions about their recent health and also their daily kitchen routine. Several members of the staff admitted to doctor weakland that they had not been feeling very good lately. Some have even been feverish and suffering pretty severe abdominal pains.

IT sounded worrying. Ly, similar to a toby and toby mother and patent, we're all experiencing dark or weekend and then made copies of the restaurant reservation list and credit card receipts from the past four days. Flipping through the pages, SHE estimated at least four hundred people had eaten at Robert s.

Within a few days of when doctor Millers patients headed in there, all of these diners were now at risk of getting shiga back at the office doctor weekly and wrote up a questionaire for all of Alberta's four hundred plus diners. SHE needed to determine how many other customers out there were suffering similar symptoms. If any of them had contracted shag la, but didn't realize that they could be infecting other people, these people needed to be notified right away, or else the situation could get much worse.

The next morning, when doctor weakland arrived at her office, SHE learned that one of her british employees had tested positive for sega. This confirmed that everyone who had eating at the restaurant could now potentially be infected with the shigella bacteria, but at least he now had a prety good idea where the shigella was coming from. A sick food prep worker who likely had not washed their hands properly, dr.

Or wickens, for a step, was to call Robertus and order the restaurant temporarily closed until the sugar a outbreak was totally contained. Then dr. Or wick lin called dr.

Or Miller to get an update on our patients. dr. Miller told her that tobies mom was doing fine, but toby and patent were struggling. Sugar is always hardest on the Young and the elderly, and the children's conditions were not getting Better. If they didn't start getting Better soon, the arter Miller feared they could go into shock and die.

Early the next day, dark or weekly phone rang with new results from the lab. Several more employees at Roberta's restaurant had tested positive for shag la. This meant that the disease outbreak was not coming from a single, unsAnitary worker.

IT was coming from lots of places. Doctor wk. Lin got a fresh cup of coffee and then SAT down at her desk to begin studying the first wave of questioner results from Robert s.

Recent customers. And SHE was disturbed to see that a full half of the four hundred diners reported experiencing symptoms that were consistent with shigella. But as doctor weaklings studied the responses, something about the data just didn't seem right.

A large percentage of infected diners had eaten at Robertus before any of the employees started to get sick, so IT was unlikely that the employees were giving the infection to the customers. The workers were actually victims, too. dr.

Winkler lean back in her chair and took a deep, defeated breath. SHE now realized that he actually had no idea where all the trigger cases were coming from. An hour later, the manager, Robert, unlocked the restaurant door and let in.

Doctor weaklings SHE told the team to put on gloves and start discarding every piece of food in the building. Nothing could be saved. Roberta's manager was happy to comply, and doctor wkly told him the business could reopen.

Once all the food had been thrown away and the entire restaurant professionally cleaned, they couldn't afford to take any chances. Doctor wkly in pulled a bit of produced off the shelf and dumped in the trash. The shag la was somewhere under this roof and doctor weekend was not going to let IT slip past her.

Doctor weekends returned to war office at the department of health to find a report. Sitting on her desk, her hearts sink. There was the details of another case of ga.

This time north of many Apollos, a thirty three year old woman had been rushed to a hospital after hours of vomiting, fever and dia. The night before, the woman had eaten at an upscale restaurant in neighborhood called mars. Not only that, but SHE gone to the restaurant with multiple friends, all of whom had been contacted and reported feeling sick.

But marthy's restaurant was very far from Robert s. For this illness, to strike two restaurants in entirely different areas, miles apart from one another was extremely rare. Doctor weaklings side and called the manager at marty to tell them the restaurant would have to close until further notice.

SHE said that a health official would be there shortly to collect the reservation list and credit card receipts, and all the recent dinner would need to be contacted about the is Operate dark kr weekend, then called a meeting with her investigators to brainstorm. SHE felt lucky that there had been no fatality so far, but he also knew that Young children were in the greatest danger. SHE told her team they had defined the link between martie's restaurant and Roberta's restaurant that could explain all the sega cases.

Maybe both restaurants sourced particular food items from the same place, or maybe an employee worked part time at both restaurants, or maybe they shared the water supplier, whatever IT was, SHE told her team. They had to go find out. By the next afternoon, dr.

Tr weekly and had more information to go on SHE and her team had worked around the clock, contacting people and compiling timelines of symptoms. IT was a lot to sit through, but you knew I was always Better to have too much information rather than not enough. As doctor weekend made their way through all the paper piled on her desk, the differences between the two really jumped out at her.

Mars got its water from a different reservoir than Robert. So this was not a water issue. There was also almost zero overlap in their menus because Robertus and mars served very different types of food.

And a review of the two restaurant employees showed that no staff members worked in both places either. The researchers could not even identify a single food that all the customers at each restaurant had. Eden, everyone ordered different dishes, yet got sick the same way.

And so doctor weakland wander to ourself, you know, how could that be? This just doesn't seem possible. Just then, the phone ring IT was the lab with an update on the martie's restaurant customers.

Everyone who tested had come back positive for shiela. The lab had also done a genetic comparison of the sula bacteria from the mars diners and the Robert s. Dinner, and they found them to be identical.

Clearly, restaurants had been contaminated by the same source, dr. Or weekly, and thanked the technician and hung up. SHE felt stumped, exhausted and ready to call IT quits for the day, but he did have a couple more calls to make the first one just to check up on toby and pin.

On the other end of the line, doctor Miller sounded equally exhausted. SHE said. Toby was still bad written because his body was not responding to the antibiotics.

He was now faced with a painful and slow recovery. Little pate negar was even worse. Doctor Miller had nurses monitoring her around the clock, but her family was obviously worried sick.

Doctor weekly, and thanks for the update. Then he hung up and scrolled through hero addix until he found the united states centers for disease control. This outbreak was clearly not settling down the way doctor wicked lin hoped that would, and so IT was time to call in reinforcements. Doctor Timothy miami was in his office packing up to head home this phone ring.

He considered letting a coat of voice meal, but his position as an epidemic intelligence officer at the centers for disease control and prevention had taught him the danger of missing an emergency call, so he picked up the phone, and he listened carefully as doctor wicked and explained the events of the past week and how the sugar outbreak showed no signs of slowing down. Doctor White lin said he needed the cdc s help in finding the outbreaks origin so they could stop IT. Every bacterial outbreak has its own genetic fingerprint that makes you unique, and the cdc keeps a massive databases of these fingerprints from all over the world, doctor nami told dr.

Or weekly, and to email him an image of the shag la bacteria's DNA profile, then he could use the cdc s database to see if the same shade train had been reported anywhere else. The moment darker nami uploaded the shageia bacteria from minnesota to his database, shigella outbreaks in other as popped up all over from los Angeles county to boston to florida, plus up in canada and Alberta and ontario. Each outbreak had been linked to a specific restaurant, and all were genetically identical.

This meant that there was a good chance all of these sugar outbreaks were caused by the same source of contamination. The sheer breadth of locations baffle dr or nami. He stared at the map.

How did the same contaminant spread across both costs, down to the gulf of mexico and all the way up in the canada? He emailed his co workers the results and ask them to help him contact every restaurant associated with an outbreak and compiled a comprehensive list foods and ingredients on their menus. There had to be something in common to all of them that was Carrying this particular strain of sugar.

The next morning, one of doctor namies fellow investigators strolled into his office in handed him a posted note with one word written IT darter naaman read the note and couldn't help but laugh. The investigators had identified the probable source of the shag outbreak, and IT was something that no one suspected. Darter nami department even had a term for this particular ingredient.

They called its stealth food, because it's used in a wide variety of dishes, yet usually goes unnoticed. Doctor nami congratulated his team. This was the best lead they had.

He picked up a phone and he called a colleague at the food drug administration named jeremy Brown. Dark nami told jeremy what they had discovered and said he d need the F, D, S. Help tracing this particular ingredient, the stealth food, to the original supplier.

Global supply chains for restaurants are incredibly complex, with food shipping from across the world and constantly being reprocessed and rebook aged. And so finding one bad batch of food among all of that would not be easy. Jermy said he would get to work.

A few days later, jeromy road in a jeep through an sonata, mexico. At first, the countryside was dry and dusty, but as they curved over a hillside, suddenly everything turned Green. For miles into the distance, jerrem saw nothing but crops and organized rose.

Finally, they turned onto a dirt road and pass a sign that set the name of the farm via verde. The farm hand pointed out different fields of produce, including tomatoes, salary, cilantro, Green onions, rattles and letters, all watered by massive irrigation machines. But the biggest read of all was an entire fifty five across, so devoted to growing nothing but these health food.

Jeremy had come to investigate, and the style of food was parsely at some point between when I was harvested and when I was shipped. This parsely was becoming contaminated with cheele bacteria. Jeremy was not going to leave the farm until he found out where and how this was happening.

The jeep came to a stop on the banks of an old river bed. Since tainted water is the most common cause of shiga, jeremy had requested to visit the farm's water supply first. The farmhand hopped out and let them to a series of wells that provided all of the farm's water.

Jerrem looked inside one of them. The stone casing was old, but uncracked. The shaft was dog very deep, so that the water came from far on the ground, which meant the likelihood of contamination was actually quite small.

Jermy could tell the issue was not the west. Next, the farm hand drove them past several metals to a reservoir that served as the farms backup water supply. IT looked like a small, fresh lake.

The water seemed clean, but jeremy still bottled up a couple of samples for testing back in the us. The farmhand asked jeremy where he wanted to head next. Jeremy said he could use a break from the heat.

IT had gotten much hotter as the afternoon were on. A few minutes later, the jeep rumbled to a stop in front of a huge farm shed with a core gated steel roof that contained long convey belts stacked with crates of parsely. At the end of the line, men took those crates and stack them on a pallet and then host them down with chilled water from a machine called a hydro cooler.

Jeremy watched as hundreds of boxes quickly piled up and were loaded into the backs of huge trucks and then driven away to be shipped all across north america. Jeremy asked the farmhand if the water for the hydrogen ler came from their wells or the reservoir, but the farmhand took his head and said neither the water for the hydro ool er came from n sonatas. Municipal water supply jeremy put on his sunglasses and told the farm hand that that was where he needed to go next.

At the municipal water plant, the facility's director admitted that they had been a bit overwhelming lately due to government funding cutbacks. They had been understated ed for a while with fewer security guards to watch the place. There had been a few brains lately, and some equipment had even been damaged.

At one of the water filtration systems, jeremy noticed that the machine that Normally disinfect the water with korine was shut down. Jerrem asked the manager if the car orator had just been turned off today or if IT really was not working at all. The manager shook his head in frustration and said, this had ban on their list to get fixed for over a month, but the city hadn't managed to send over the parts.

A jeremy did his best to hide his shock. Without clarine, all sorts of contaminants could flourish in the water, including shaggy. From there, the water was pumped to businesses, homes and farms all over the area, like the parsely crop.

At via verde, jeremy filled several bottles to be tested and told the farmhand IT was time to go. Days later, jerrem got his results, and cato's municipal water was loaded with sugar, and IT was the same strain as the one found at Robert s. Mars and all the other restaurants.

The contaminated water had been spread directly onto the partially right before being shipped to restaurants all across north amErica or people like toby patent and their families at the party. Without giving IT a second thought, jerrem knew they had been lucky in tracking down the source relatively quickly. He estimated that as many as one thousand dinars had caught shagger from one harvest of contaminated persons, but IT could have been so much worse. Fortunately, there were no fatalities in both. Toby and patent eventually made full recoveries, but very few of those who got sick, we will ever look at their partially garnished the same way again.

From bAllen studios and wandering, this is mr. Bolen medical mysteries hosted by me, mr. bolen. A quick note about our stories. We use alliances sometimes because we don't know the names of the real people in the story, and also in most cases, we can know exactly what, but everything is based on a lot of research.

And a reminder, the content in this episode is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. This episode was written by britt Brown. Our editor is heather done.

This sound design is by Matthew chelly. Coordinating producer is Sophia Martins. Our senior producer is alex spended on our associate producers and researchers.

Our serve I attack and tatia alona fact checking was done by sheeta patterson for bAllen studios. Our head of production is jack baby. Script dating is by Scott Allen, and evan Allen are coordinating.

Producer is mathues there. Executive producers are myself, mr. Bollen and nickers. For wondering, our head of sound is marcey no vilipend do. Senior producers are loda palavers and they've shilling. Senior managing producer is ryan law, our executive producers, our arona filer's and martial lowe for wunder.