Shownotes Transcript
In late September of 1994, a nurse at a small clinic in rural Minnesota scrambled to help a long line of patients check in. Now, normally, this clinic was not very busy, but over the past few days, there had been a flood of sick teenagers pouring in. They all had very similar symptoms: extreme stomach cramps, nausea, diarrhea, and dangerously high fevers.
Doctors at this clinic had not been able to diagnose them yet, and now this nurse was beginning to worry that this outbreak, whatever it was, was more than the small clinic could even handle. As yet another nauseous teenager stumbled inside the packed waiting room, this nurse finally made up her mind. She needed to call in the Minnesota Health Department to help them figure out what was making all these people sick. Otherwise, this outbreak would just continue, and who knew how bad it might get.
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From Ballin Studios and Wondery, I'm Mr. Ballin, and this is Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, where every week we will explore a new baffling mystery originating from the one place we all can't escape, our own bodies. So if you like today's story, please offer to make the follow button a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but instead of using peanut butter or jelly, just use fermented blobfish. This episode is called Cold Case.
On Sunday, September 18th, 1994, Jennifer Thompson went to the county fair for the fourth day in a row. Growing up in the tiny town of Orofino, Idaho, not much usually happened. So 14-year-old Jen wasn't about to waste the most exciting days of the year.
Back on Thursday, Jen and her friends had gone on all the rides from the carousel to the Ferris wheel, and then on Friday they went to the county livestock auction, and Saturday was the parade, and now on Sunday they had already watched the log cutting competition, and as they had, they totally gorged themselves on every kind of food the fair had to offer. Corn dogs, funnel cakes, cotton candy, caramel apples, and also all the soda they could drink.
Now it was time to go home, and Jen was feeling completely full, like she had just eaten an entire Thanksgiving dinner. Still though, she and her friends each bought one more corn dog for the road, before taking one last walk around the fairgrounds and saying their goodbyes. When Jen got home, her dad Dennis was on the phone, and her mom Sherry was busy making dinner. So Jen just went upstairs to her bedroom. She had a bunch of homework she needed to finish before school on Monday.
Jen likes school sports a lot more than school work. But she was in eighth grade now, and she didn't want to fall behind. So she grabbed her math assignments out of her backpack and worked on equations until her mom called her for dinner. Jen made her way downstairs and sat down at the dining room table. Her mom had made one of Jen's favorite meals, chicken and rice casserole.
But, after all that junk food at the county fair, Jen really didn't have an appetite. So she mostly picked at her plate and told her parents all about her day at the fair. And about how sad she was that it was now over. After dinner, Jen's mom asked Jen if she wanted any dessert. And despite her very full belly, Jen said yes. And so before long, Jen was crushing a big bowl of vanilla ice cream. And then afterwards, she helped her parents clean up before she went back upstairs to her bedroom.
Once there, she finished her homework and then just went to bed early. She wanted to be well rested for school the next day. When Jen's alarm went off in the morning, she dragged herself out of bed and shuffled into the bathroom. But when she turned on the light, a sudden sharp pain shot through her stomach. She doubled over and grabbed the bathroom counter to keep from falling down. For a second, Jen felt like she was about to throw up. But she breathed through the pain and slowly the cramp sort of went away.
Jen released her grip on the counter and straightened up again. She stood for a moment, afraid the pain might come back, but everything seemed okay. Jen told herself that most likely she had just eaten too much at the fair and she was still feeling it today, and so she just went back to getting ready for school. After brushing her teeth, Jen got dressed and slid the math homework from last night into her backpack. Then she zipped up the bag, slung it over one shoulder, and started going downstairs.
But, about halfway down the steps, another sharp shooting pain cut through Jen's abdomen. And this did not feel like any sort of normal bellyache she had ever had. It felt more like something was trying to tear its way out of her stomach. Jen dropped her backpack and kind of hunched forward, clutching at her stomach. The next thing Jen knew, her mom was at the foot of the stairs, looking up at her with a mixture of confusion and concern on her face.
Jen barely had time to tell her mom that she was in pain and feeling sick before suddenly a big wave of nausea hit her and she had to run back upstairs to the bathroom where she vomited and also had diarrhea. A few moments later, Jen's mom, who had gone upstairs as well, knocked softly on the bathroom door and asked Jen if she was okay. Jen called out no and said she felt absolutely horrible. She said something was definitely wrong with her stomach.
Through the door, Jen's mother suggested that Jen stay home from school that day. Jen was relieved, but was too nauseous to reply. When Jen's father, Dennis, got home from working at a local car dealership that evening, he went straight upstairs to check on his daughter. Sherry had told him that Jen was having a lot of stomach pain, and both parents agreed that the four days of crushing sugar and fried foods at the county fair was very likely responsible for this pain.
But when Dennis walked into Jen's bedroom, he was shocked by how miserable she looked. Her face was red and her hair was damp with sweat. Jen told him she'd been throwing up and having diarrhea all day. Her stomach ached when she was lying down, but it hurt even worse when she was standing up. And some of the cramps were so intense, Jen said they made her cry. Dennis brushed a strand of hair out of his daughter's face, then said he was going to get her a glass of water.
When he went downstairs, Sherry was waiting in the kitchen, and she would tell him that the only thing Jen had been able to stomach all day was just a few bites of ice cream, and she had been running a low-grade fever for hours. Both parents were very concerned now, but they weren't quite sure what to do. They knew their daughter absolutely hated going to the doctor, and so they agreed that maybe now was not quite the time to take her yet.
For now, Dennis and Sherry decided they would just continue giving their daughter water and Tylenol and check on her throughout the evening. Eventually, despite all her discomfort, Jen would fall asleep, and after she did, Dennis went to bed, hopeful that his daughter would feel better soon. Two days later, on Wednesday morning, Dennis got out of bed and walked upstairs to his daughter's room, but when he went inside, Jen barely stirred.
She'd hardly eaten anything for two days. But still, her stomach cramps had only gotten more painful and more frequent. And she was still running a fever, she was still vomiting, and she was still having diarrhea. Dennis knelt next to his daughter's bed and shook her shoulder until she slowly blinked awake. Then he told his daughter he had bad news. She clearly was not improving, so he and her mother had decided it was time now to go to the doctor. Jen groaned, but she didn't put up a fight. And to Dennis, this was actually a bad sign.
His daughter was clearly so sick that she wasn't even trying to avoid the doctor. Dennis helped Jen get out of her bed and let her hold onto his arm for stability as they made their way down the stairs and out to the car. Then Dennis backed out of the driveway and headed to their usual family medicine clinic. A few minutes later, Dennis helped Jen climb onto an exam table and he could tell she was struggling just to sit upright. Before long, Jen's longtime pediatrician, Lyndon Bishop, came into the room,
and he was surprised to see his athletic, young patient looking so ill. He listened closely as Dennis explained his daughter's symptoms, and all the while, Jen just silently sat there clutching her stomach and leaning forward. Dennis told Dr. Bishop that he was pretty sure his daughter had food poisoning from something she must have eaten at the county fair.
But when the doctor gave Jen a quick physical examination, he said that he thought Dennis was actually wrong, that this was something else. Because he said, you know, food poisoning usually only lasts for one to two days, and Jen had been in pain for over three days. And so Dennis was taken aback by this, but he understood the logic. Dr. Bishop asked Jen if she had any history of stomach pain. Her father was about to answer for her, but then Jen lifted her head up and said yes in a weak voice.
but that was all she could manage to say before she had to slump forward again. At this point, Dennis stepped in and he explained that, not long ago, Jen had suffered from debilitating cramps in her lower abdomen for seemingly no obvious reason. Dennis and Sherry had taken their daughter to a gynecologist who found that one of Jen's ovaries was swollen to three times its normal size. Fortunately, this swelling was not cancerous, and eventually Jen's cramps had just kind of gone away on their own.
Dennis admitted that, you know, when Jen first got sick after the county fair, he didn't even think about her swollen ovary because her illness was so much worse this time. He didn't think a swollen ovary could give his daughter symptoms like a fever, diarrhea, and vomiting. But Dr. Bishop said he did think it was possible. Maybe Jen was ovulating and that caused the swelling to return and her symptoms came back even worse than before. It was the best and really only theory they had for now.
So, Jen was ultimately sent home with strict instructions to come back if the pain got any worse. Dennis was disappointed there wasn't more they could do for the moment, but he trusted Dr. Bishop's judgment, so he helped Jen off the exam table and walked her back out to the car. He leaned the passenger seat all the way back so Jen could lie down, and then as they drove home, Jen curled into the fetal position and began moaning. It made Dennis feel terrible to see his daughter suffer so badly when he really couldn't do anything to help her.
but he reminded himself what Dr. Bishop had said right before they left. Don't worry, Jen will feel better soon. Later that evening, Dennis tucked his shivering daughter into bed. Sherry had gone out of town to visit the couple's other daughter. Dennis was going to be holding down the fort by himself along with Jen, and so far, everything seemed to be okay. At least Jen was resting. Dennis put on his pajamas, brushed his teeth, and climbed into bed to watch TV,
But as soon as he turned it on, he heard his daughter screaming, so he jumped out of bed and sprinted to Jen's room. When he got there, he found his daughter lying on the floor curled up into a ball with tears streaming down her face. Jen kept screaming that she'd never felt anything that hurt this badly. She said she literally felt like she was going to die. In a total panic, Dennis ran back downstairs to the living room. He grabbed the phone and called the nearest emergency room.
A receptionist answered and patched him through to a nurse, and Dennis explained what was happening, and the nurse paged Dr. Bishop, and he responded immediately, saying, "You know what? It sounds like Jen has appendicitis." The nurse told Dennis to bring his daughter to the emergency room immediately. In severe appendicitis cases, the appendix can burst open inside the body, causing complications and even death.
And so if Jen had acute appendicitis, then she would need surgery to remove her appendix as soon as possible. By the time they made it to the hospital about 20 minutes later, Jen was barely coherent. Dennis lifted her out of the passenger seat and carried her into the emergency room. Under the bright fluorescent lights, he could see that his daughter's face was bright red and drenched in sweat. As soon as Dennis approached the check-in desk with his daughter in his arms, the receptionist called for the nurse who he'd spoken to on the phone.
Within moments, the nurse and other members of the hospital staff loaded Jen onto a gurney and Dennis followed as they wheeled his daughter into a nearby exam room. The nurse began taking Jen's vital signs and saw that she had a fever, she was severely dehydrated, and her pulse was distressingly high. The nurse began to explain to Dennis what his daughter's vital signs could mean, but then a short man wearing glasses and a white coat entered the room.
He introduced himself as Dr. Maurice Mazur, and he'd already been briefed up on Jen's condition, so he went straight to her bedside and began examining her. He began to press lightly on the lower right-hand side of Jen's abdomen to check her appendix. The doctor's prodding seemed to wake Jen up, and she began to cry out in pain and tried to push the doctor away. Dr. Mazur said that it did look like Jen had appendicitis. This would explain her extreme abdominal pain, her fever, and her confusion.
The doctor said the only treatment was an emergency operation to remove her appendix, like right now. But as Dr. Mazur reviewed Jen's medical charts, he told her father that something didn't look right to him. Jen's white blood cell count, her body's natural defense, was going down. The doctor said the number of those cells should be soaring right now as Jen's body fought off this appendicitis.
Dr. Mazur said the drop could mean two things: either her infection was getting better, which seemed very unlikely based on how sick Jen still appeared, or her appendicitis was getting so severe that it was overwhelming her natural defenses. And so Dr. Mazur told Dennis that bottom line, he believed Jen's appendix needed to be removed immediately. Otherwise, his daughter's life could be in danger. Dennis looked at Jen, who looked absolutely terrified.
Tears filled her eyes as she said she didn't want to have surgery, but all Dennis could do was promise her that she would feel better when it was all over. And then he gave his daughter a gentle hug before the nurses took her away to be prepped for surgery.
Jen's mother, Sherry, returned from visiting her other daughter just in time to find Dennis sitting in the hospital waiting room. The couple spent the next hour waiting on the edge of their seats until finally Dr. Mazur entered the waiting room and sat down beside them. Right away, the doctor said Jen's surgery had gone smoothly and she was okay, but then Dr. Mazur frowned. He explained that while Jen's appendix did show modest signs of infection, it wasn't nearly bad enough to cause the agony she had been going through.
The parents were confused. Their daughter had been rushed into emergency surgery to remove her appendix, but now that that was done, it sounded like it might not have been necessary. But Dr. Mazur, who was sensing this in the parents, assured them that they'd actually done the right thing. Because during the course of this operation, Dr. Mazur had discovered something very unsettling about Jen. Jen's whole intestinal tract looked red and inflamed, and Dr. Mazur didn't know why.
And so in short, because of this operation, it was discovered that Jen's appendix was not badly infected. However, the rest of her digestive system was. And so Dr. Mazur said he hoped Jen would feel better now that her appendix was out, but he just wasn't sure if that had really done anything to fix the issue.
Dennis and Sherry turned to each other in amazement. Neither of them were comforted by the idea that Jen might or might not feel better. It sounded like she had a dangerous infection that the surgery hadn't really touched. But there was nothing they could do about that now, so Dennis grabbed a magazine off the waiting room table and began to read, doing his best to distract himself until he could see his daughter again.
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to go head-to-head for the last chicken wing. Shop Game Day Faves on Instacart and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three grocery orders. Offer valid for a limited time. Other fees and terms apply. 1,200 miles away at that very moment, a different and yet eerily similar story was playing out in rural Minnesota. A young nurse named Callie Vins was working at a small local medical clinic, and it was totally packed.
Normally, it was not her job to check patients in, but there were so many people crammed into the small waiting room that the receptionist needed Callie's help. Callie pushed her short dark hair out of her face, feeling totally overwhelmed. She was an experienced and highly capable nurse, but the past few days had really pushed her to her limit.
Dozens of teenagers had come into the clinic with fevers, diarrhea, vomiting, and extreme stomach pains. One of the doctors who worked at this clinic thought the teenagers had the flu, but to Callie, that didn't make any sense. For starters, if this was the flu, then why were only teenagers getting sick? Why not their parents or younger siblings? And why didn't they have runny noses, coughs, or any of the other respiratory symptoms typically associated with the flu?
Callie heard the bell above the front door ring as yet another nauseous teenager and their parents stepped inside. Looking around at the waiting room full of sick kids, Callie knew she needed to do something. Whatever was going on here, she did not believe their small clinic was equipped to handle it. Callie turned and told the receptionist that she'd be right back. Then Callie made her way through the crowd of people and into the back of the clinic. At the nurse's station, she pulled out the office phone book and found the number for the Minnesota Department of Health.
As soon as a representative answered her call, Callie described the mysterious outbreak in her small rural town. The representative told Callie to collect saliva, urine, and stool samples from all the patients and send them in to the health department for testing. This way, state analysts could try to figure out what was causing this widespread illness.
Callie thanked the official and then hung up the phone. As one of the clinic's doctors rushed past her on the way to visit yet another patient, Callie pulled them aside and explained what they needed to do. A couple days later, 14-year-old Jen Thompson was back at home in Orofino, Idaho, lying on the living room couch and watching TV. She'd been released from the hospital, but so far, recovering from her appendectomy had been very difficult.
The incision on her lower abdomen was always itchy, her stomach ached constantly, and she could barely keep food down. Plus, on top of that, she'd never been so bored in her life. It had only been a little over a week since she got sick, but she already just felt so isolated. She missed going to softball practice and spending time with her friends. She even missed school, which was something she never thought she'd say. Jen picked up the TV remote and began flipping through the channels trying to find something she wanted to watch.
But then suddenly, this sharp, totally overwhelming pain filled her stomach, and it was so intense it made her drop the remote. The pain she was having felt just like the cramp she had had before her surgery. Jen's bottom lip started to tremble. She called out for her dad, and a second later, Dennis rushed into the room.
Jen was in so much pain she could barely breathe, let alone talk. But as soon as Dennis walked into the room, she really didn't have to explain anything to him. He could see clearly how much pain his daughter was in, and so a second later he had ran out of the room, got Jen's mother, and got the car keys, and then within minutes the entire Thompson family was back on the road heading to the hospital. Less than an hour later, Jen was lying on a hospital bed with Dr. Mazur standing over her.
Dr. Mazur pressed lightly on Jen's abdomen and said her incisions seemed to be healing fine. But, clearly, something other than appendicitis was making her sick. Dr. Mazur said he was beginning to wonder if maybe Jen was suffering from an infection that was inside of her intestines. So, he ordered a stool sample to be tested for a number of different bacteria. The idea of foreign bacteria inside her digestive tract really freaked Jen out. But it wasn't nearly as bad as what Dr. Mazur said next.
Bacterial testing would likely take at least 24 hours to complete, and he didn't think they had any time to waste. Dr. Mazur was worried that he'd miss something along the way, so he suggested an exploratory surgery to see if he might be able to determine the source of her illness. Jen had already gone through one surgery, and the idea of being cut open again was almost too much for her to handle.
She looked at her parents wishing they could save her from this. Her mother looked like she was about to cry, while her father was just shaking his head back and forth. But Dennis told the doctor that if another surgery was what they had to do, then that's what they had to do. And deep down, even though Jen did not want to do this surgery, she knew he was right. So, despite Jen's deep anxieties, nurses began prepping her for the operation. They hooked her up to an IV and then cleaned the skin on her belly where the scalpel would cut her open.
All the while, Jen felt like she was going to throw up, both from nerves and also from her illness. But just as the nurses were about to wheel Jen back into the operating room, Dr. Mazur came running into the room saying the surgery would not be necessary after all. The hospital lab was not very busy that day, so they'd been able to expedite the stool sample tests, and now he knew the source of Jen's illness. It would turn out Jen's illness was not from her enlarged ovary or from appendicitis.
The doctor said she had a potentially deadly microorganism living inside her digestive tract. Now, it most likely came from something she ate, but the doctor said he had no idea what that could be. However, on the positive side, Dr. Mazur said that, you know, while this microorganism was very dangerous, there was a very effective treatment that they could begin right away.
As Jen's treatment began, three states away, a man named Larry Edmondson was standing in his office at the Minnesota Department of Health staring at a large map that he'd taped up on his wall. It was a detailed picture of the state of Minnesota, and Larry had stuck a number of red thumbtacks into the map to mark different locations.
Larry was leading the investigation into the mysterious disease outbreak in his state. After nurse Callie Vins had called the Minnesota Health Department, Larry and his team had received dozens of biological samples from patients at Callie's clinic. They tested each one, and they too discovered the source of the outbreak. It was the same microorganism that infected Jen in Idaho.
But Larry didn't know about Jen. He thought the microorganism was only in Minnesota, and right now he was trying to figure out exactly where it came from. The Minnesota Health Department had continued receiving calls from medical clinics across the state reporting patients with similar symptoms. Every time Larry got a call, he would send a representative to interview the sick patient and also to collect samples of anything they'd eaten recently. Then Larry put a red thumbtack on the patient's location on the map.
He had hoped these red thumbtacks would be more concentrated in one particular area, allowing him to sort of pinpoint the origin of the disease outbreak. But the thumbtacks were spread out in a way that looked totally random. Larry didn't know what to make of this, but he knew that with each passing day, more people were getting sick. While Larry Edmondson puzzled over the Minnesota outbreak, representatives from the Idaho Health Department were digging through Jen Thompson's kitchen.
As they did, Jen watched them from her spot on the living room couch. It had been just one day since Dr. Mazur diagnosed Jen, and she was already feeling much better. Dr. Mazur prescribed some antibiotics that were working well, and for the first time in over a week, Jen didn't feel nauseous. She could finally keep food down, but she was scared to eat anything that came from inside her house because it might contain the deadly microorganism.
Jen looked on as the employees pulled fruit, vegetables, cheeses, and meats out of the refrigerator. They took small samples of each item and sealed them inside of small labeled baggies. Jen heard them tell her parents that they would test the samples and let them know the results as soon as possible. Dennis and Sherry thanked them, and then the employees left. As soon as they were gone, Jen's dad walked into the kitchen and took all the food out of the fridge and out of the freezer and just dumped it into a trash bag, went into the backyard, and threw it away.
When he came back inside, he told Jen they'd just go grocery shopping for new food tomorrow. That way they would know for sure that whatever they bought was safe to eat. At the Minnesota Health Department, Larry Edmondson had collected hundreds of food samples from the homes of people who had gotten sick. Now, microbiologists were hard at work testing those samples to determine which, if any, contained the deadly microorganism causing all the illness.
Larry entered the lab to find two analysts staring down at a line of petri dishes. They looked up when they heard him come in, and he asked them for an update on their progress. And one of the analysts said that Larry's timing actually couldn't be any better, because they had just found something he needed to see.
Larry immediately rushed over to them to see what they were talking about. He knew that each of these petri dishes contained a swab from the food samples that the health department had collected. The lab analysts were watching all of them for signs of this microorganism. And all of these samples currently looked normal, except for one, which had grown a whole bunch of small black circles all over the sample. Larry's eyes widened when he saw it, because those black circles were a telltale sign of this deadly microorganism.
He asked the analysts which food that sample came from and they said it was from ice cream. Larry quickly reviewed the records from his investigation and the truth dawned on him. Every person who had fallen ill had recently eaten ice cream from a company called Schwanz and now the health department had proof that this ice cream contained this deadly microorganism.
Larry almost wanted to cheer, but he reminded himself that this was not really a time to celebrate. He was sure that the company, Schwann's, had no idea their ice cream was poisoning people. So, Larry would have to call them right away. A few days later, Larry sat in his office at the Minnesota Health Department feeling very frustrated. This case just kept getting more difficult. When Larry had called the ice cream company, Schwann's, he learned something very concerning.
Schwan's ice cream was not typically sold in grocery stores. Instead, it was delivered directly to customer stores all across the United States. Now, Larry still knew nothing about 14-year-old Jen Thompson's severe illness out in Idaho, but he now understood that this disease outbreak likely went far beyond Minnesota.
On the bright side though, Schwan's had been extremely cooperative. As soon as they learned their ice cream was tainted, they shut down their factory and recalled all of the potentially contaminated products. Schwan's delivery drivers were going door to door across the nation, informing customers of this outbreak and collecting tainted ice cream.
But the Minnesota Health Department still hadn't figured out how the microorganism got into the ice cream in the first place. And that was the only way to prevent this disaster from happening again. Larry read over a report from one of his colleagues. They had swabbed miles of stainless steel piping at the company's giant manufacturing plant, but none contained any trace of this microorganism that sickened all the teens. So where was it coming from?
Minnesota officials had expanded their investigation to include the company's distribution system, and so Larry's coworkers were now analyzing the company's trucks, trying to see if maybe the product was contaminated during shipping. Just then, Larry's phone rang, and he picked it up, hoping it would be one of his colleagues with good news.
But it wasn't. When Larry answered, he heard a man's nervous voice. And this man said he had a tip about the department's ongoing food safety investigation, but this man was calling from a payphone because he wanted to stay anonymous. When Larry heard this, he sat upright, pressing the phone hard against his ear. He told the man that was fine. Larry didn't need his name, he just needed whatever information he had.
So, the man whispered that he was a truck driver and the company he worked for shipped two kinds of cargo: bulk ice cream for Schwanns and unpasteurized liquid eggs. The driver said that the same trucks could carry liquid eggs one day and ice cream the next. And then in between, the refrigerated cargo tanks on the back of the trucks were supposed to be thoroughly cleaned so that there was no contamination from one load to the next.
But, the tipster said, one driver had not been given the right cleaning supplies to disinfect their vehicle after hauling thousands of gallons of liquid eggs. So, bacteria from the unpasteurized eggs contaminated the entire truck. And so as soon as the Schwan's ice cream was loaded into that truck, the ice cream got contaminated. Larry thanked the driver for coming forward. Because of him, the Minnesota Health Department could finally close this case. Larry immediately went to his supervisors and told them the whole story.
When that cargo truck wasn't cleaned properly, it turned into a giant incubator for a type of deadly bacteria found in unpasteurized eggs called Salmonella. The Salmonella bacteria then mixed with a giant shipment of Schwan's Vanilla Ice Cream. And so after 14-year-old Jen Thompson got home from the county fair on Sunday, February 18, 1994, she did her math homework, she ate her dinner, then right before bed, she ate a bowl of the contaminated Schwan's Vanilla Ice Cream.
And so, of course, she and her parents had no idea that her dessert was full of salmonella bacteria. And so as a result, Jen just kept eating more and more of this contaminated ice cream each time she felt sick because it was really the only food she could actually stomach. And so as this bacteria continued to multiply inside of her body, she got sicker and sicker.
Jen and her family had no idea the ice cream was behind her illness until sometime in mid-October when a Schwann's delivery driver came to their door and asked to take the contaminated ice cream back. The Schwann's salmonella contamination was one of the biggest mass poisonings in American history. In total, there were 593 confirmed cases of salmonella poisoning across 41 states and as many as 5,000 suspected cases nationwide.
However, some experts estimate that there may have been nearly 225,000 people who got sick from this tainted ice cream. They just didn't report it. The ice cream company, Schwann's, paid out thousands of settlements to victims and changed their shipping procedure to make sure this contamination could never happen again.
As for why the illness predominantly struck teenagers, it was likely due to two factors: 1. Young people tend to eat more ice cream and 2. Young people tend to be more shy or embarrassed to talk about gastrointestinal issues than their more senior counterparts. And so as a result, you know, maybe they began having symptoms and could have gone to the doctor and dealt with them, but in fear of being embarrassed, they didn't go to the doctor and let this condition get worse and worse and worse, and
and then finally it turned into a full-blown emergency room visit. But very few of the people who got salmonella poisoning had symptoms as severe as 14-year-old Jen Thompson. Even after having her appendix removed, she had to undergo at least three more surgeries to fix her damaged digestive system, including having her gallbladder taken out.
The salmonella also caused her to develop a rare type of arthritis. To this day, Jen still lives with chronic pain, all because of a few bowls of ice cream she ate back in 1994.
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A quick note about our stories: we use aliases sometimes because we don't know the names of the real people in the story. And also, in most cases, we can't know exactly what was said, 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 Karis Allen Pash Cooper. Our editor is Heather Dundas. Sound design is by Ryan Patesta. Our managing producer is Sophia Martins, and our coordinating producer is Taylor Sniffen. Our senior producer is Alex Benidon. Our associate producers and researchers are Sarah Vytak and Tasia Palaconda. Fact-checking was done by Sheila Patterson. For Ballin Studios, our head of production is Zach Leavitt.
Script editing is by Scott Allen and Evan Allen. Our coordinating producer is Matub Zare. Executive producers are myself, Mr. Ballin, and Nick Witters. For Wondery, our head of sound is Marcelino Villapando. Senior producers are Laura Donna Palavoda and Dave Schilling. Senior managing producer is Ryan Moore. Our executive producers are Aaron O'Flaherty and Marshall Louis for Wondery. Wondery.
This is the emergency broadcast system. A ballistic missile threat has been detected inbound to your area. Your phone buzzes and you look down to find this alert. What do you do next? Maybe you're at the grocery store. Or maybe you're with your secret lover. Or maybe you're robbing a bank. Based on the real-life false alarm that terrified Hawaii in 2018, Incoming, a brand-new fiction podcast exclusively on Wondery Plus, follows the journey of a variety of characters as they confront the unimaginable. The missiles are coming.
What am I supposed to do? Featuring incredible performances from Tracy Letts, Mary Lou Henner, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Paul Edelstein, and many, many more, Incoming is a hilariously thrilling podcast that will leave you wondering, how would you spend your last few minutes on Earth? You can binge Incoming exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+, and the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.
