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Hey Prime members, you can binge episodes 41 through 48 of Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries right now and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. In October of 2004, a 15-year-old girl suddenly woke up in the middle of the night in a total panic. She didn't know where she was, and it was so dark in the room she couldn't see anything. And when she tried to move, she realized she couldn't. She was paralyzed.
She tried to calm down and just listen for some sign of where she was or what was going on, but all she could hear were the unfamiliar sounds of machines beeping and whirring. Then the horror sunk in. She was locked inside of her own body, and she had no idea why.
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Audible makes it easy to be inspired and entertained as part of your daily routine without needing to set aside extra time. There's more to imagine when you listen. One of my most recent favorite titles is The Lost City of Z. It's non-fiction, but it totally reads like a thriller. It follows this very famous explorer named Percy Fawcett, who went out looking for this legendary lost city in the Amazon in 1925 and then mysteriously vanished.
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From Balan Studios and Wondery, I'm Mr. Balan, and this is Mr. Balan'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. If you liked today's story, please invite the follow button to an overnight paranormal investigation at an abandoned hospital, and after you get inside, tell them you need to use the bathroom, but just proceed to leave and lock all the doors.
This week's story is called Silent Scream. On a Monday morning in October of 2004, 15-year-old Gina Giese rode the bus to school in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, a suburb about an hour outside of Milwaukee. As the bus hit a pothole, she felt her stomach lurch. She'd had a stomachache all morning and barely touched the toast her mom handed her for breakfast.
Normally, Gina would have taken any excuse to miss school on a Monday, but today was different. It was the start of homecoming week at St. Mary Springs High School, and she had been looking forward to it since the end of summer vacation. It was also her first year on the varsity volleyball team, which was a big deal for a sophomore. Gina didn't want to miss practice for the big game against their rival school, which was taking place that Thursday.
As the bus pulled into the school parking lot, Gina convinced herself that she'd feel fine once she saw her friends and got to class. But the moment she stood up from her seat, she felt heavy and sluggish. It was like an invisible weight was trying to pull her through the floor. It took all her energy just to make it to English class. She spent the rest of the day fighting to keep her eyes open until it was finally time to go home. Later that night, while watching TV, Gina felt her arms start to tingle.
She shook it, but the tingling wouldn't go away. Gina decided that she was probably just fighting off a flu bug, and so she just needed a good night's rest. And so she went to bed, and it didn't take long for her to fall into a deep sleep. But when she woke up the next morning, she didn't feel any better. In fact, as the week went by, Gina still just did not get any better. By Thursday, she was still exhausted and feeling achy. But today was the day of her big volleyball game, and Gina was not going to miss it.
She dragged herself out of bed, but when she reached for her robe, her arm felt like it was made of lead. But she shook it off and took a deep breath and then headed to the bathroom. A few hours later, Gina took her spot on the volleyball court. She felt a bit queasy, but she chalked it up to pregame nerves. The stands were full of supporters chanting and eager to cheer her team on.
Once the game started, the opposing team served the ball over the net. One of Gina's teammates got underneath it, lobbing the ball towards Gina and setting her up for an easy play. All she had to do was spike it over the net. But as the ball got closer to her, her vision suddenly doubled. She was seeing two white volleyballs sailing toward her face. Gina blinked, unsure of which one to hit.
She leaped up, swatting at the air, and her palm did make contact with the hard vinyl ball, and immediately a jolt of pain shot through her arm. But she didn't care because she had done her job and returned the ball. The other team dove for it and missed. As the ball fell to the floor, the stands erupted. Gina had scored. She smiled and blinked a few times. A moment later, her double vision had cleared, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She was on a roll for the rest of the game.
After the game, Gina went out with her teammates for some celebratory ice cream. By the time she got home, she had forgotten all about the double vision from the start of the game. Her arm was a little stiff from hitting so many balls, but she felt better.
The next morning, Gina slept through her alarm and woke up late. She tried to get up, but her entire body was so achy and stiff. Her forehead was hot, but her teeth were chattering. And she was thirsty. She desperately needed a glass of water. Gina swung her legs over the side of the bed, then lurched forward to stand up and nearly fell over sideways. It wasn't that her body felt limp. It was like her joints were so stiff she couldn't move them so she couldn't walk.
She felt like a mechanical doll whose battery had run out. Gina fell back into bed and called her dad, John, for help. John ran upstairs and came over to help his daughter out of bed. Gina threw her arm around his shoulder and he propped Gina up onto her feet. Then John walked her down the hallway to the bathroom.
Even though he tried to look calm, Gina could see the fear in her father's eyes. She tried to thank him for helping, but it was like talking with a mouth full of peanut butter. Her brain knew the words, but her tongue just couldn't keep up. That's when her dad yelled out to her mom, Ann, and said to get Gina's pediatrician on the phone right away. Ann got an appointment and helped John get Gina into her jacket, and then they guided her out to the car.
Gina could barely put one foot in front of the other. But on the way to the doctor, something even more frightening happened to Gina. Her left arm just started jerking uncontrollably, and so her mom held Gina's other hand, looking totally panicked and afraid. Gina's mind was so foggy she could barely process what was going on. Less than an hour later, Gina was at her pediatrician's office. The doctor put her through blood tests, a CT imaging scan, and an MRI.
Once those were all done, they sent her to an examination room to wait for the results. Gina shivered as she sat on the thin paper stretched out over the doctor's examination table. Her arms still shook uncontrollably and her parched mouth was filled with saliva. She had been drinking water but nothing could quench her thirst. Eventually there was a knock at the door and Gina's doctor walked into the room. He had a calm demeanor but Gina could see in his eyes that something was clearly wrong.
He told Gina and her parents that there was clearly something going on to make Gina extremely sick, but he just didn't know what it was yet. Gina's blood work came back fine. The neurologist couldn't find anything on her CT scans either. Gina didn't understand what this all meant, but she was scared. She could feel drool leaking out the side of her mouth, but she couldn't muster enough energy to make it stop. The doctor handed Anne a tissue, and Gina felt her mother's hand gently wipe it away.
The doctor said that Gina needed to see a specialist at a larger hospital in Milwaukee, 70 miles away, and she had to get there fast. Minutes later, Gina was loaded into the back of an ambulance. Her parents held her hand and promised they'd follow right behind.
During the ride to the hospital, Gina felt dizzy, so she leaned her head back against the stretcher she was strapped to and closed her eyes. She hoped that this next doctor would have an answer and she'd feel better soon. Despite the sound of the blaring siren, Gina could barely keep her eyes open and she quickly fell asleep. The next thing that Gina remembered was waking up in a stark white hospital room with fluorescent ceiling lights that hurt her eyes.
A nurse came in to check Gina's blood pressure. She asked if Gina could stand up. Gina slid off the hospital bed and for a moment she stood perfectly still. Then her body started jerking violently. The nurse caught her before she fell to the ground and helped her into a wheelchair.
When Gina sat down, her eyesight became blurry again. It was like she was looking at the nurse through a sheet of wax paper. But even still, Gina could make out the nurse's sympathetic expression. The nurse told Gina not to worry. The neurologists would have her test results soon. Dr. Rodney Willoughby was in his office when Gina's test results arrived a few minutes later.
He read and reread the results a dozen times. He was the lead doctor on Gina's case, and he needed to be absolutely certain of what he was seeing. He'd been a doctor for over 20 years, but this was his first time encountering a case like this. And now he was about to deliver the most tragic diagnosis of his career. With a heavy heart, he left his office and walked into the small room where Gina's parents were waiting.
Anne and John both stood to greet him, looking hopeful. Dr. Willoughby sighed and broke the news. Gina had contracted a fast-moving fatal disease that killed almost 60,000 people every year. And while there was a vaccine, Gina was now too far gone for it to work. No one in recorded history had ever survived once this disease progressed this far.
Dr. Willoughby told Gina's parents that over the next 24 to 48 hours, Gina's organs would fail and her heart would stop. At this point, the only thing they could do was keep her comfortable until she died. Judging from Anne and John's blank expressions, Dr. Willoughby could see that his horrific words had not sunk in yet.
Then, Anne collapsed into her husband, sobbing. John begged Dr. Willoughby for a solution. There had to be something they could do. But Dr. Willoughby just shook his head. There was no beating this disease. He stood with Gina's parents while they grieved, then gave them privacy to sit with their daughter. By this point, Gina was drifting in and out of consciousness. Dr. Willoughby could tell she wasn't coherent enough to understand what was happening to her. It was heartbreaking to know there was nothing he could do to help her.
But throughout the afternoon, Dr. Willoughby was finding it harder and harder to accept Gina's fate. He called the CDC before he left the office. He knew the chances were slim, but he wanted to know if there was any new or promising research that could save Gina's life. They said no. But Dr. Willoughby was not satisfied. So he decided to do some digging of his own.
Later that night, he poured over a stack of medical studies and published research. For hours, he flipped through page after page of the same grim findings, drinking coffee to keep himself awake. Finally, sometime past midnight, an autopsy report caught his eye. Until that point, most of the medical community assumed that Gina's disease caused organ failure by eating away at the brain.
But this report suggested that wasn't actually true. The pathogens left the brain completely intact. Instead, the virus kills by disrupting the brain's ability to regulate necessary body functions like respiration and heart rate. That's what causes the body to shut down and die, but not by damaging the brain itself. Dr. Willoughby was even more fascinated by what he read next.
The autopsy showed that just before each of these victims died, their immune systems actually began to fight back. That meant that the disease was beatable. It just caused organ failure too quickly for the immune system to react.
Dr. Willoughby wondered if there was a way to temporarily shut down Gina's brain activity without killing her. If this could be done, her brain would be protected from the deadly viral attack. The pathogens would be prevented from causing her brain to malfunction and destroy her body. This would give her immune system time to produce antibodies and fight off the virus. That's when Dr. Willoughby came up with a radical idea. It was Gina's only hope.
Gina's mother, Anne, was filled with dread as she and her husband walked into Dr. Willoughby's office the next morning. She was expecting a discussion on how to prepare for Gina's death. But when they sat down in front of the pediatrician, he told them about the shocking information he'd found the night before. At first, Anne began to feel some hope. But as the doctor went through the details of his plan, she felt like she'd fallen back into a nightmare.
After the doctor was done explaining his radical plan, Anne just stared at him in disbelief. The doctor wanted to put Gina into a deep, medically induced coma to take her an inch from death, to the point that her brain was completely silent. She would have no thoughts and no signals to the rest of her body. Gina would be kept alive by machines. She would need to be kept in the coma for at least 10 days, hopefully long enough to fight off what was attacking her body.
Dr. Willoughby admitted they would be gambling with Gina's life. No one had ever attempted anything like this before. If it didn't work, Gina would surely die. And even if the doctor's plan worked and Gina's body managed to fight off the disease, there was no guarantee that she would even wake up from the medically induced coma. Her brain might never be able to regain its proper functions and she would be left in a vegetative state dependent on machines to keep her alive for the rest of her life.
The thought of that sent a shiver down Anne's spine. But if they wanted to save her daughter's life, this was their only option. Anne looked to John, and he nodded. And so, with all the courage she could muster, Anne gave Dr. Willoughby the go-ahead.
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That said, I always make sure to step back and spend time away from work with my family or friends. This is because my therapist always stresses how important it is to recharge whenever I can. That way I don't burn out. This is why I think therapy can be so helpful for people whose lives feel very hectic, which is basically all of us. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try.
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Gina was brought in and the anesthesiologist administered drugs to induce a medical coma. The coma would help to regulate her routine brainstem functions, such as breathing and circulation.
After the procedure was completed, Gina was wheeled back to the ICU. Dr. Willoughby barely left the hospital for the next few days. He would walk by Gina's room and hear the steady sounds of the machines that had taken over her body functions. He would see her parents were praying at her bedside. Dr. Willoughby prayed silently for Gina too. Ten days passed. The waiting was unbearable.
Dr. Willoughby spent every moment anxiously hoping this treatment would work, and Gina's parents spent every possible second by their daughter's bedside. Finally, it was time to take her out of the coma and see if her body had been able to fight off this disease. Throughout the day, Dr. Willoughby lessened the amount of drugs that were keeping Gina asleep. If everything had worked, she'd soon be able to wake up on her own.
But, as the hours ticked by, the monitor tracking her brain activity was still a flat line. This was a bad sign. If the monitor didn't start showing something soon, Gina might never wake up. When Dr. Willoughby came into work early the next morning, he ran to Gina's room and checked her brain activity monitor again. The screen showed a flat line with the tiniest blips of movement on it. That meant Gina's brain was working.
Dr. Willoughby breathed a sigh of relief. He couldn't believe that his plan might actually work. But Gina still had not actually woken up from the coma.
When Anne and John arrived at the hospital later that morning, Dr. Willoughby led them over to Gina's bedside. He positioned Anne right over Gina's face. Then he opened Gina's eyes with a speculum, which is a tool eye doctors typically use to keep patients from blinking. Dr. Willoughby watched Gina's pupils flood with light, going big as saucers. Then they started to move. Gina was awake.
Dr. Willoughby could see her eyes darting from right to left, looking all around the room, and then finally her eyes settled on her mother's face. Gina's pupils went wide with recognition, and Dr. Willoughby knew she had recognized her mom. Anne realized it too. She flashed Dr. Willoughby a grateful smile, her eyes welling with tears, and Dr. Willoughby breathed a huge sigh of relief.
He took out his reflex hammer and tapped Gina's knee. But, to his surprise, she didn't flinch. He tried again, but there still was no reaction. Dr. Willoughby's stomach turned. Even if Gina was still groggy, her body should have naturally had a reflex. He tried to keep a neutral expression, but he knew Anne and John could tell something was wrong. He didn't know how to tell them that Gina was awake, but physically she was paralyzed. She was literally locked inside of her body.
The condition is actually called being "locked in" and it's a rare disorder of the nervous system. People with locked-in syndrome are paralyzed except for the muscles that control eye movement. They're conscious and can think and reason, they can hear and see but they can't move or speak, and they can't chew, swallow, or breathe on their own. And there was nothing Dr. Willoughby could do to help Gina. Their only hope was to wait and see if anything changed.
That night, as he drove home, Dr. Willoughby prayed to God for forgiveness. He felt like he had sentenced Gina to a fate worse than death. She could spend the next 60 years as a prisoner in her own body, able to think and reason and feel, but never move. He could imagine how terrifying it would be for Gina to be going through this after almost dying of a deadly disease.
When Dr. Willoughby returned to the hospital the next day, nothing had changed. Gina's eyes darted around the room, but her body remained motionless on the hospital bed. And the day after that was exactly the same. On the third morning after Gina had woken up, Dr. Willoughby arrived at the hospital full of dread. He stopped at Gina's room first and grabbed her chart from its holder on the door. Then he walked to Gina's bedside and removed the reflex hammer out of his breast pocket.
Holding his breath, he gave her knee a soft tap. Gina flinched. A short time later, Anne and John arrived in Gina's room, and Dr. Willoughby excitedly asked them to watch as he tapped Gina's knee. Again, her muscles contracted, and Gina's parents went wide-eyed. After two weeks of surviving on slim threads of hope, they started crying. This time out of joy. Three months later, Gina took a deep breath and opened her eyes. She was back home in her bedroom.
Even though she'd left the hospital a week ago, she still worried that she'd wake up in that awful bright white hospital room, hooked up to machines, unable to move. Coming out of the coma had felt like being underwater. She could hear the muffled voices of people she knew and see the blurry outlines of their faces. But it wasn't until Dr. Willoughby pried her eyes open that she finally broke through the surface.
It had taken days for the feeling to return to her body. First she was able to flutter her eyelids, then she was able to twitch her fingers, eventually she could feel her mother holding her hand. But even as the world began to snap into focus, Gina just couldn't move very well on her own, and even though she understood what others were saying to her, she couldn't speak back.
Her parents and the nurses at the hospital had to do everything for her, like bathing and feeding her, and she would spend two months relearning how to walk and how to say basic words. But Gina was very grateful to be alive, and while her time in the hospital was a total blur, she remembered every detail of how her deadly illness had started. One month before her symptoms had appeared, Gina and her family had gone to Sunday Mass together at St. Patrick's Catholic Church.
A few minutes after mass started, Gina looked up and spotted something small and black flying around the ceiling. It was a little bird who was trying to get outside, but it wasn't moving toward any of the open windows. Instead, it was swooping down towards the pews a little lower each time.
most of the congregation was totally annoyed and kept swatting at it with their hats when it flew down. Then the bird grazed an usher who managed to knock it out of the air with a collection basket and it fell to the floor and appeared stunned. Gina was an animal lover and she felt bad for the little bird so she got up from her seat and hurried to the back of the church and she scooped it up. But as Gina carried this little bird in her hands, she got a closer look and realized it wasn't a bird, it was a bat.
Outside the church, she opened her hands to let it go, but the bat bit her finger, hard. Gina almost screamed, but she knew there were little kids watching her from inside the church, and she didn't want to scare them. So she bit her lip and whipped her hand away from the bat, sending it flying across the church lawn. Gina watched as the bat flew away and then cradled her finger. A small pinprick of blood bubbled up where the bat had broke the skin.
Gina washed her hands in the bathroom and then snuck back into the church pew beside her parents, smiling as parishioners looked over and flashed grateful looks at her.
Gina would tell her parents that the bird was actually a bat. But it never occurred to Gina or her family that the moment the bat's tiny fangs pierced Gina's skin, a lethal pathogen had latched onto one of the nerves in Gina's fingertip. And over the next month, that pathogen replicated and grew, crawling its way up Gina's arm and rooting in her brain.
It caused her to have flu-like symptoms, blurred her vision, made her jerk and salivate uncontrollably, and eventually led her to Dr. Willoughby's care. But at that point, it was too late, because Gina now had rabies.
Rabies is an acute viral infection that is transmitted to humans by a bite or by the exposure of broken skin to an infected animal's saliva. The most common wild animals that can transmit rabies to people are raccoons, skunks, bats, and foxes. Domestic mammals can also get rabies if they're unvaccinated, like cats, dogs, and cattle. Rabies can be cured with a vaccine,
But it must be given within 24 to 72 hours after exposure. If it's left untreated, rabies is fatal. The virus causes significant and progressive damage to the brain and spinal cord, and by the time it's reached the brain, it's almost always too late to prevent death. Victims die painful deaths and experience delirium, abnormal behavior, hallucinations, and insomnia.
But thanks to Dr. Willoughby's radical idea, Gina Geese became the first person to survive a case of full-blown rabies without a vaccine. Since then, other doctors have used the technique Dr. Willoughby pioneered to treat rabies patients when they are not eligible for the vaccine. It doesn't work every time, but sometimes the patient does pull through. It's now known as the Milwaukee Protocol.
It took Gina two years to restore her language and motor skills, but she finished high school on time with the rest of her class, and then after graduation, she enrolled at Lakeland College to study biology because she wants to work with animals. In one of her classes, Gina studied bats, and over time, her fear of them melted away. Now, she absolutely loves them. From Ballin Studios and Wondery, this is Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, hosted by me, Mr. Ballin.
A quick 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 Aaron Lan. Our editor is Heather Dundas. Sound design is by Ryan Patesta. Coordinating producer is Sophia Martins. 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 producer is Alyssa Tomineng. Our head of production is Zach Levitt. Executive producers are myself, Mr. Ballin, and Nick Witters.
For Wondery, Senior Managing Producer is Ryan Lohr. Our Head of Sound is Marcelino Villapondo. Our Producer is Julie Magruder. Senior Producers are Laura Donna Palavoda and Dave Schilling. Our Executive Producers are Aaron O'Flaherty and Marshall Louis for Wondery.
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