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A paramedic knelt on the side of a snowy mountain, frantically digging into the deep powder. The sun was already low in the sky, which made him all the more desperate. He normally didn't work in the alpine backcountry, and in fact, he wasn't actually on duty at all. He was on a ski trip with a friend, and they decided to ski away from the marked slopes at the resort. And now, his friend was trapped somewhere underneath all this snow.
The paramedic redoubled his efforts, knowing that every second counted. His arms were burning with fatigue, but he just kept on digging. Finally, his gloved hand brushed against something soft and fleshy. And so feeling excited, the paramedic used both hands and whipped away the snow until finally he could barely see the side of his friend's face. And so he kept on digging and then when he saw his friend's snow suspenders, he just reached down and grabbed them and yanked his friend all the way out.
But right away, the paramedic could see his friend was not breathing, and so he flung himself down and began administering CPR while begging his friend to please just breathe. But as he continued doing CPR, the paramedic knew his friend had been buried for 15 minutes, which was certainly long enough to do permanent brain damage if his friend even survived at all.
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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, the next time you're at the gas station with the follow button, kindly offer to pump their gas. However, don't fill up their tank. Instead, pump the gas directly into their back seat.
Going on a big, exotic vacation is supposed to be fun and exciting. You wait for weeks or months or even years to take a dream vacation to some exotic island or rugged mountains or some beautiful foreign city. And then you come home with all these memories that will last a lifetime. It's incredible. Or at least that's what's supposed to happen. But in today's stories, people's once-in-a-lifetime travels end up bringing them right to the edge of death.
Our first story is about a man whose ski trip goes wrong in the worst way possible, leading to a very strange condition that leaves his doctors scratching their heads. And our second and final story today is about a young woman whose travel study in Ghana teaches her a dangerous lesson she'll never forget. Here's our first story, The Buried Brain.
Noah Schneider felt a rush of excitement as he glided on his skis down the side of a mountain. It was November of 2008 and the 25-year-old from Munich, Germany had spent the past few days at a ski resort happily racing through the snow with his friend Simon. Noah came to a stop and paused to enjoy the view. He and Simon were far away from the resort. They were out in the backcountry where the terrain was much more rugged. Noah loved how wild the backcountry was and how the surrounding forests filled the air with the smell of pine sap.
Noah looked up above him and saw Simon was working his way down the slope as well. Noah was ready to get going, so Noah took a deep breath and then launched himself down a wide open snow field full of deep powder. But just a few turns later, he felt the snow under his feet begin to shift, and then suddenly it completely gave out underneath him. Noah's heart leapt into his throat as he was pulled down into a river of snow. Then the snow loosened and began to slide down the mountain.
It was an avalanche, and there was nothing he could do to get out of it. Noah tried as hard as he could to try to find the way up to get his head out of the snow, but he was flailing his arms, and as the momentum turned his body from side to side, he was left feeling totally disoriented. He could feel himself rushing down the mountain, but the snow had now blocked out the sun, and it was too dark to see anything, so he had no idea where he was and what direction was what.
Noah wanted to scream and try to get someone to hear him, but as the avalanche grew as it rushed down the mountain, the weight of all the new snow piling on began pressing down on his chest, making it nearly impossible to breathe, let alone speak or yell. Noah knew if he couldn't get out of here, he would be buried alive. And so, as Noah tumbled down the mountain inside of that dark snow, he was left thinking of his family and friends, who he would never see again.
But the next thing Noah heard was a soft and steady beeping. He faded in and out of consciousness as he slowly came to, but then he began to recognize the rhythmic whirring and buzzing of what sounded like medical devices. His head was pounding and his eyelids were heavy, but he managed to open them just enough to take in his surroundings. He was propped up in a bed in a beige clinical-looking room he didn't recognize. Next to him, a blue curtain was drawn, cutting the room in half.
Noah realized he was in a hospital. He had somehow survived. He just had no idea how he actually had survived or how he had wound up here. A few moments later, Noah heard approaching footsteps on the tile floor. He opened his right eye just a sliver and he saw a tall woman wearing scrubs handling one of the machines near his bed.
He tried to say something to her, but when he opened his mouth, no words came out. He just basically breathed out and that was it. But him breathing out was actually enough to get the nurse's attention. She looked over at him and smiled and told Noah she was glad to see him awake. Noah swallowed, which actually hurt a lot. It felt like his entire trachea was bruised. But he tried to speak again, and this time he was able to whisper something. He asked her, what happened?
The nurse explained that the previous day, Noah had been caught in that avalanche, and then he was trapped under the snow for about 15 minutes. But luckily for Noah, his friend Simon, who was a paramedic, had been able to find him, dig him out, and perform CPR. That had saved his life.
Noah slowly nodded and then suddenly understood why it hurts so much to breathe. He'd seen Simon perform CPR before, and he knew that chest compressions could be hard enough to crack a rib, and so maybe that's what happened to him. The nurse told Noah that he had been flown to the hospital by helicopter, but by the time he landed, he was barely alive. He had a ruptured spleen and a hip fracture, and for a long time while he was crushed under the snow, he hadn't been breathing.
The nurse explained that that's called hypoxia, when there's no oxygen getting to the brain, and she said that, frankly, the hospital staff could not believe he had made it out alive with that much time without oxygen. Noah didn't quite know what to say, so he stayed quiet. The nurse didn't seem to mind. She just told him to rest and that it would take him a while to recover fully from this kind of accident. Noah gave her a half-smile and then closed his eyes and went to sleep.
Several weeks later, Noah gritted his teeth as he tried to stand upright while holding on to some parallel bars. He had been at a rehab facility near Munich for a few days, and so far, he liked his new surroundings. It was quieter than the hospital, which made it easier to relax and sleep. Plus, he had physical therapy sessions every morning, which he knew were helping him regain his strength.
Noah kept his eyes on his physical therapist who was standing at the end of the bars as he inched his way along toward her. His fractured hip was really burning from muscle exhaustion, but Noah kind of loved the challenge. When he first got to the rehab center, he'd been barely able to sit upright in a chair. But he'd been pushing himself every day and now he could almost make it down the whole 10-foot long section of bars before he had to collapse back into his wheelchair.
Noah hoped he'd be upright and walking again by the end of February, that way he could get back to school and finish his studies. So he willed himself to keep on going down the bars. When he finally reached the end of the bars, his physical therapist helped him sit down in his wheelchair and then gave him a high five.
Noah smiled and leaned his head back, feeling proud of himself. It was the first time he'd gone the entire length of the bars, and he'd only been at the rehab facility for three days, and so he was hopeful he'd be able to be discharged much sooner than he thought. An hour later, Noah leaned back on the bed in his room, watching TV, and opening a care package that his friends had sent him. He was grateful for the distraction. Aside from his morning therapy sessions, he had the whole day to himself, and so Noah was feeling pretty bored.
He sorted through the box and then pulled out the packages of nuts and snacks, a little container of homemade cookies, an adult coloring book, and a big book of Sudoku puzzles. Sudokus are puzzles where players put numbers into a grid that contains a total of 81 squares. The idea is to fill every row, column, and group of nine squares with the numbers 1 through 9 without repeating them.
Noah's face lit up when he saw the Sudoku puzzles. He liked solving them, and it was a lot more mentally stimulating than the boring TV reruns he'd been watching. Normally, he'd be in school and studying at this time of the day, but it was winter break and all of his books were back home, so he'd been running out of ways to keep himself occupied. He opened up a bag of gummy worms and popped one in his mouth, then rummaged through the box and found a pencil. Then he opened up his Sudoku book and began his first puzzle.
But as he started filling in the boxes with his right hand, the fingers on his left hand started feeling shaky. He finally put the pencil down and tried to steady his left hand, but then his entire left arm just began convulsing. Noah reached for the call button with his right hand, which still felt normal. Then he grabbed his left arm with his right and just tried to hold it in place and stop it from shaking.
But his arm just kept on convulsing and so he took a deep breath and told himself it's okay, this is not a big deal, I'm gonna be fine. And just then his left arm stopped convulsing and was just back to normal. As a nurse came flying into the room to see what was going on, Noah just stared down at his left arm in disbelief. The nurse asked him what was wrong and he explained that he was pretty sure his left arm had just had a seizure but now it had stopped.
Noah kind of hugged his left arm to his chest and told the nurse that actually his left arm now felt sore. She nodded but told him that unfortunately there really wasn't much she could do about his arm. So she told him she would go inform his doctor about what happened to see if maybe she wanted to run some tests. Noah smiled and nodded, but inside he was feeling very anxious. To this point, his recovery had been really nothing but steady progress. But now it felt like this was the first time he was kind of backsliding.
The next morning, after he finished his physical therapy session, Noah asked his nurse to wheel him into the cafeteria for breakfast. She said yes and rolled him up to his usual table, then told him he could relax while she grabbed him some food. While he waited, Noah took out his Sudoku book. He picked up his pencil and flipped to the puzzle that he'd started yesterday before his seizure. He looked over the empty boxes and then began counting through different ways of solving the puzzle.
But as he worked on this puzzle, just like the day before, there was this jolt of energy that kind of burst through his left arm and then his arm was shaking and spasming all over again. One of the patients sitting at his table asked Noah if he needed help and Noah, who was terrified, just nodded and then he heard the patient call a nurse over. The shaking moved up Noah's left arm and kept shaking even when he grabbed it with his right hand. He could hear movement all around him and he knew the entire dining hall was now looking over at him.
Noah leaned back in his chair, still clutching his left arm, right as his nurse arrived. And when she did, Noah took a deep breath and then made eye contact with her, doing his best to try to breathe deeply and evenly and try to block out everything else around him. He was basically trying to stop panicking. And as he focused on just the nurse's face and on his breathing, slowly, the shaking in his left arm actually dissipated.
After Noah told the nurse that, you know, his left arm was back to normal, the nurse bent over him, kind of puzzled, and inspected his arm. And then she asked him if the seizure he had just felt felt like the one from the day before. And Noah nodded and said, yeah, it felt identical. The nurse nodded and told him to wait right there. She was going to grab Noah's doctor immediately.
A few minutes later, Noah sat on his bed while his doctor took his vitals. She shone a flashlight in his eyes, then asked him to follow the movement of her finger while she drew a big square in the air in front of him.
After following her finger for a moment, she put it down, and Noah gave the doctor a half-smile and kind of wrapped his fingers on his knees, which was something he did when he was nervous. He watched as the doctor scribbled a few notes, then she asked him to tell her what he remembered of the seizures. What was he doing right before they started? What was he thinking about? How was he feeling? Noah told her that both times he had this seizure in his left arm, he'd been eating something and also doing a Sudoku puzzle.
He'd felt relatively calm, almost bored before it happened. His back had felt a little sore during the seizures, but he thought that was just from how much he had been sitting and lying down recently. He couldn't remember what he had been thinking about before the seizures, so he told the doctor that he really wasn't thinking about anything. He was just trying to solve these puzzles. The doctor thought for a second and then told Noah that she'd actually like to try to recreate the moments right before the seizures as best as they could.
So she grabbed a Sudoku book from the bedside table and handed it to him and asked him to start solving a puzzle. Noah nodded and opened up the book to the puzzle that he'd earmarked, and almost as soon as he began trying to solve it, his left arm began to visibly spasm. He looked up at the doctor, who was staring back at him in total disbelief. She told him she was calling a neurologist right now.
The next day, Baron Feddersen, who was a neurologist, looked in on his new patient from the hallway of the neurology wing at the University of Munich. Through a glass window, he could see Noah in a hospital room filling out a worksheet of complex math problems and also a crossword puzzle. Dr. Feddersen suspected that Noah's seizures were somehow being triggered when Noah tried to solve puzzles.
He watched as Noah worked on the math problems, expecting his left arm to begin shaking just like when he had solved the Sudoku puzzles. But after about 10 minutes of doing these math problems, Noah's left arm was steady and so was his right. He finished his worksheets, then put his pencil down and looked up at Dr. Feddersen through the window.
Dr. Feddersen frowned. He had been so sure that it was just trying to do math that would cause Noah's arm to seize. But clearly, it was not just math because that didn't do anything. So, Dr. Feddersen decided that Noah should try another Sudoku puzzle because maybe it was just Sudoku that triggered his seizure. So, the doctor brought a Sudoku puzzle into the room and he watched as Noah began to solve it and within moments, Noah's left hand began to shake uncontrollably.
Once the seizure had passed and Dr. Feddersen was sure Noah was okay again, he took a step back and just thought for a second. There had to be something unique about these Sudoku puzzles that was causing these seizures, but the doctor just could not understand what that kind of x-factor was. What was it about Sudoku puzzles that was triggering this reaction from Noah? I mean, the doctor had never heard of a case like this in all his many, many years of practicing neurology,
Finally, the doctor told Noah he'd be right back. He needed to go run some tests. Thirty minutes later, Dr. Feddersen watched as a nurse secured a cap containing sensors and wires to Noah's head. Then, Dr. Feddersen turned his attention to his computer screen, right as the nurse handed Noah a Sudoku puzzle. As Noah began working on the Sudoku puzzle, Dr. Feddersen watched squiggly lines appear on his monitor. These were Noah's brain waves, and at first, Noah's brain activity looked completely normal.
Then, a section right in the middle of the screen, right in the center of Noah's brain, began to light up, just as his left arm began to shake. Noah put his pencil down as the nurse moved a bit closer, and within a few moments, the seizure stopped, and his brainwaves went back to normal. Reviewing the chart, Dr. Feddersen could see Noah had just suffered a classic seizure.
But there was one little piece of brain activity that caught Dr. Feddersen's eye. And he realized he needed to ask Noah some questions about the way he solved Sudoku puzzles. And what he learned shocked and amazed him. It turned out that Noah pictured the Sudoku numbers in a three-dimensional grid, like a big blank cube that he could fill with numbers. Imagining the puzzle that way activated the part of his brain used for spatial reasoning called the parietal lobe.
During the avalanche, while Noah was buried under the snow and unable to breathe for 15 minutes, the lack of oxygen had killed neurons in this part of his brain. So now, when he tried to use spatial reasoning to solve these Sudoku puzzles, he was overstimulating his parietal lobe, which caused a seizure. And because he did not think in three dimensions when he did simple math problems or crossword puzzles, those didn't trigger a reaction at all.
Dr. Feddersen told Noah that there was no cure for these seizures, but he might be able to keep doing Sudoku if he imagined the numbers in a more traditional two-dimensional way. But Noah actually was not able to work on the puzzles that way. He was too rooted in the way he typically solved these puzzles, and so ultimately he just gave up Sudoku altogether.
After that, Noah's seizures disappeared, and he was able to leave the rehab facility a few weeks later. Other than giving up Sudoku, one of his favorite games, he would make close to a full recovery.
When your schedule is packed with kids' activities, big work projects, and more, it can be easy to let your priorities slip, even if you know doing so will make you miserable. But when you feel yourself losing control over your time and your sanity, that's when you need to remind yourself that certain priorities are non-negotiable. Things like taking care of your mental health.
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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Then it's time to escape into a bygone age of danger, glamour, and romance as you immerse yourself into the world of June's Journey, a captivating hidden object detective story set in the 1920s. Play as June Parker in her quest to solve the truth behind her sister's unexplained death and uncovers a scandalous family secret along the way.
With hundreds of mind-teasing puzzles, the next clue is always within reach. And you don't have to play alone. You can chat or play with, or against, other players by joining a detective club. Lose yourself in this captivating quest of mystery, murder, and romance. Can you crack the case? Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. Here is our second story called Killer Jetlag.
On July 3rd, 2010, Kelly Granger walked out of the arrivals gate at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City. She had a huge smile on her face, not just because she was happy to be home after more than six weeks away, but because her travels had changed her life. After finishing her sophomore year of college, 19-year-old Kelly had gone abroad for study in the African nation of Ghana. Kelly was an anthropology major, and she'd studied modern and traditional Ghanaian life while also volunteering to help Ghanaian people in need.
On weekends, she and her classmates had traveled all over the country. She'd made some local friends she hoped to stay in touch with forever. All in all, this trip had been one of the best times of her entire life. Kelly made her way to the baggage claim area, where her family was already waiting for her. She already missed Ghana, but she had to admit that it was good to be back in New York and to feel the warm embrace of her mom and dad. She was also exhausted and ready to get home and sleep off the jet lag after crossing four time zones during her long flight.
But over the next few days, Kelly had trouble shaking off her fatigue and she had a very persistent headache. She figured these things would just go away once she got fully readjusted to being back in this time zone. But when Kelly woke up on the fifth morning after she got back, her headache was worse than ever.
She rolled over and realized she was drenched in sweat. In fact, she was feeling so sick, she couldn't even get out of bed. So she wrapped her comforter around her more tightly and called for her mom, Gina. Then she laid in bed shivering with her eyes closed until she heard her mom come into her room and sit beside her on the bed.
After her mom put a hand on Kelly's forehead and felt how warm she was, she told Kelly she was going to take her to the doctor. Gina just had a feeling that whatever was going on with her daughter seemed more serious than just jet lag or a little bug she'd caught on the way home. And so she wasn't going to take any chances. That afternoon, Kelly sat on her doctor's examination table with a thermometer in her mouth.
She kept her eyes closed as though that might get rid of the terrible headache that was pounding in her temples. Her doctor asked her if she was on any medications and Kelly shrugged as if to say, sort of. While she was in Ghana, she had been taking a malaria prevention medication called mefloquine, but she'd stopped taking it when she left, even though that was kind of recently, and since then she had not taken anything else. Suddenly the thermometer beeped and so the doctor gently pulled it out of Kelly's mouth.
He told Kelly she did have a mild fever, but nothing too alarming. Then he quizzed Kelly about whether she had always remembered to take her anti-malaria pills. "Meflequine is highly effective," he said, "but only if you take it every single week. You can't miss taking it." Kelly's mind was fuzzy from her headache, but she felt positive she'd taken the medication. Her school had made a big point of reminding her and everybody else that they had to take it every single week.
The doctor nodded and sat back in silence for a moment. And then he told Kelly and her mom that this looked like just a very bad case of jet lag. In some people, that groggy feeling can last for a week or more. And the best treatment is just to rest. And so the doctor told Kelly to go home and rest and come back in a week if she still didn't feel better.
Two nights later, Kelly rolled from side to side in her bed. It was nearly 3 a.m., and while she was usually a sound sleeper, this night her headache and nausea were so bad she was finding it really hard to sleep. It also felt like her fever was spiking, and her chills were so bad that her teeth were actually chattering, but every time she pulled her comforter around her to warm herself up, she'd start to sweat. It was like she was alternating between being stuck in a furnace and a freezer.
Finally, out of just sheer exhaustion, she did begin to drift off to sleep. And all of a sudden, Kelly heard a low voice calling out to her from somewhere in her bedroom. And it was saying something extremely strange and kind of threatening. She would soon be moving on to the next step, the voice said. But it warned Kelly not to tell anyone or she'd be sorry. Kelly was so scared that she jolted awake.
But there was no one in her room, and her room seemed totally normal. Morning light filtered through her curtains, bathing her room in a reassuring glow. But Kelly still felt terrible and clammy and cold, and she was even panting like someone had just been chasing her. She told herself whatever had just happened had to have just been a bad dream. But at the same time, Kelly did not want to be alone right now. So she got out of bed and went downstairs where she could hear her mom and sister in the kitchen making breakfast.
Kelly's mom looked up when she went into the kitchen and she asked Kelly how she slept. Kelly wanted to give an honest answer about this weird voice she heard in her room that maybe was in her dream and maybe wasn't.
But then she remembered what that weird voice had actually said. Basically, don't tell anyone about the voice. Now, Kelly was not superstitious, but for some reason, she obeyed the voice's commands. So without mentioning the voice to anybody, Kelly just sat down at the kitchen table and said she slept just fine. The next morning, Kelly awoke in a cold sweat again, clutching her chest. The deep voice was back again, telling her she was nearly ready for the next step.
Kelly couldn't help but feel scared even as she told herself that, you know, probably her fever was responsible for making her dreams so vivid to include strange voices. But regardless, Kelly got out of bed to go brush her teeth. However, when she got to her bedroom doorway, she stopped. She looked down the hallway and realized she had no idea where the bathroom was. She looked at the other doors in the hallway and the stairs leading down to the foyer, but somehow nothing looked familiar.
For a moment, she wondered if she was actually still asleep. But no, she was not. This was no dream. As Kelly began walking down the hallway, the floor began to move, knocking her off balance. She fell into the wall, then held it for support as she stood upright. She tried to walk again, but now the walls were bending and warping. The stairs began to slide away from her, and each door in the hallway slowly moved up and down and up onto the ceiling.
Kelly kept trying to get her footing, but every couple of steps she just hit the wall again. It was like the walls were jumping out to knock her off balance. So Kelly sank down onto all fours and began to crawl to the steps that led downstairs where she knew her mother would be. When she reached the stairs, Kelly closed her eyes and sat on the top step. Then slowly she began to slide down each stair almost like a slide. Finally, she reached the bottom of the stairs and felt the hardwood floor beneath her feet
and at this point she was able to actually stand. And right away she thought to herself, "I need to find my mom." Gina was standing over the stove scrambling eggs when Kelly came into the kitchen with a blank look on her face and totally covered in sweat. As Kelly walked toward her mother, she kind of staggered into the wall. Gina exchanged confused glances with her other daughter, Jessica, who was sitting at the kitchen table waiting for eggs. And then Kelly stumbled over to the table too and sat down staring at the wall.
Not really sure what was going on with her daughter, Gina just asked Kelly if she'd like some scrambled eggs too. But Kelly didn't answer. Instead, she began mumbling under her breath, speaking nonsense and still just staring at the wall like she was having a full conversation with someone Gina couldn't see. Gina called Kelly's name, trying to get her attention, and asked who she was talking to. But Kelly did not seem to hear her.
Gina turned off the stove and walked over to Kelly and put a hand on her forehead and she could tell she was warm to the touch. And so between that and the fact that Kelly was basically not responsive, told Gina this was an emergency.
Gina did her best to stay calm, and as she went to grab her purse, she told her other daughter, Jessica, to get her shoes on, because they were going to take Kelly to the doctor's office. But when Gina tried to guide Kelly from the kitchen table towards the front door, she could see Kelly basically couldn't stand. She was very unsteady. And so at this point, Gina said, you know what? We're not going to the doctor's office. We're going to the hospital's emergency room right now.
Later that morning, Gina stood in the corner of a hospital room at the Cohen Children's Medical Center on Long Island, New York. She hugged herself nervously as she watched an ER doctor and a triage nurse perform a head-to-toe examination of Kelly. Gina thought Kelly looked absolutely terrible. Under the bright fluorescent lights in the ceiling, Kelly's skin and eyes looked yellow, a condition Gina knew was called jaundice, but Gina had never seen it in person before.
A moment later, the doctor confirmed that Kelly did have jaundice and that that could be a sign that she had a blood disease or a liver infection like hepatitis B. The doctor explained to Gina that he would have to call in an infectious disease specialist to take over Kelly's case because jaundice could be life-threatening. Gina felt a knot form in her stomach, and the feeling only grew when she looked over at Kelly's terrified face.
Kelly was not entirely lucid, but it looked like she just heard what the doctor said and understood that whatever was wrong with her was quickly turning dangerous. Gina thanked the doctor as he stepped out of the room. Then she sat on the edge of Kelly's bed and held her daughter's hand while they waited for this specialist.
Minutes passed, and the longer they waited, the more Kelly seemed to slip farther and farther away from reality. Her eyes were roving around the room without really focusing on anything. Gina tried to get Kelly's attention over and over again, but her daughter just kept kind of looking around and sort of babbling. By the time the specialist finally knocked on the door, Kelly seemed fully delirious.
The specialist introduced himself as Dr. Sunil Sood, but Gina did not waste time introducing herself. Instead, she just hopped off the bed and directed Dr. Sood to Kelly and said, "Please help her."
Dr. Sudd walked across the room and immediately began assessing Kelly. After just a few moments, he turned to Gina and confirmed that Kelly did seem delirious, which unfortunately was a very bad sign. It meant that whatever Kelly had was rapidly evolving and now causing neurological complications. The doctor said he needed to order a full blood workup right away and hoped it would tell him what was wrong with Kelly.
45 minutes later, Gina, Jessica, and Kelly's father, Albert, paced in the waiting room until Gina finally spotted Dr. Sood walking down the hallway toward them. Gina held on to Albert for support as Dr. Sood cleared his voice and then explained to the parents that he did know what was wrong with Kelly. She had malaria.
Gina shook her head. That was impossible. She promised Dr. Sud that Kelly had taken the medicine to prevent malaria while she was in Ghana. She asked him if maybe this could be something else. But the doctor said there was absolutely no mistaking malaria for something else under the microscope. He wasn't sure how this happened, but Kelly's blood was full of the parasites that caused malaria.
These parasites were attacking her red blood cells and in response, her immune system had launched a massive counterattack to fight the malaria off. But now, the battle between the disease and Kelly's immune system had caused such intense inflammation that her heart, liver, and other organs were in danger of failing.
Dr. Sood explained that normally malaria could be treated with drugs, but at this point Kelly had such a huge number of these malaria-causing parasites in her body that no drug would be able to kill them all without also killing Kelly. There was only one treatment that might help Kelly, however it was drastic.
Instead of trying to treat the disease with drugs, Dr. Sud proposed actually removing the infected blood cells from Kelly's body and replacing them with healthy donated blood.
But to do that, Dr. Sood needed to remove up to three-quarters of the blood in Kelly's body and replace it with clean, healthy blood. The healthy blood, coupled with antibiotics, could then fight off the rest of the infection. The doctor admitted this was sort of a long shot, but it was very likely Kelly's only shot at survival.
Dr. Sood assured the family that the health risks of actually replacing Kelly's blood with other blood were relatively low, but it was far less clear whether this procedure would actually allow her to successfully fight off the malaria. And so, for the next several hours, Gina sat by her daughter's bedside as the infected blood was extracted from her body and the new blood was fed back into her body through other tubes. The entire time, Gina prayed as she never had before.
Finally, the last of the new blood trickled into Kelly's arm and all of the bad blood was out by this point. And so Dr. Sood came back into the room to tell Gina that Kelly's procedure was now over. And so now her daughter would stay unconscious for a while as her body adjusted. And then everybody would just have to wait at least several hours to see if this procedure had actually worked.
After three long, anxious hours of waiting, Kelly's mother, Gina, could hardly stand it anymore. So she stood up and announced she was going to get some coffee from the vending machine. Basically, she just needed to do something to take her mind off this waiting.
But just as Gina picked up her purse to leave, she heard a rustling noise coming from the bed. She whipped around and looked at her daughter, and Kelly's eyes were wide open and focused. She was looking at her father, and she smiled and said hi to him as though she'd just woken up from a nap.
A few moments later, Dr. Sud strode into Kelly's hospital room and told Kelly and her family that the blood replacement strategy had worked. The malaria parasites were rapidly disappearing from her body. Gina smiled at him and thanked him over and over again for saving her daughter. But there was one thing that still didn't make any sense to her. She didn't understand how her daughter could have gotten malaria in the first place.
Just then, Kelly cleared her throat. She was finally clear-headed enough to remember everything about the medication she'd taken. She said that she definitely took all of her anti-malaria pills, but there was one small thing she'd forgotten.
Just before she came home from Ghana, she forgot to use bug spray when she took a hike in the rainforest. And she did remember getting bit by mosquitoes. But she always thought she was safe as long as she took her pills. Dr. Sud said that normally, the medicine she was taking was all you needed to protect yourself from getting malaria. But Kelly was just very unlucky. The mosquito that bit her had carried a much more potent form of malaria
that overwhelmed both the anti-malaria medicine and her own body's defenses. And before long, the malaria parasite had gone to work destroying her red blood cells and cutting off oxygen to her organs, which had caused really intense hallucinations like that weird voice she was hearing. That was just a product of malaria and then also jaundice.
Four days after the blood exchange procedure, Kelly went home, and in the following weeks, she made a full recovery. Kelly returned to college in the fall to continue pursuing her degree in anthropology, and she still has very fond memories of her time studying abroad in Ghana, despite the fact that that trip nearly killed her.
From Ballin Studios and Wondery, this is Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, hosted by me, Mr. Ballin.
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 Aaron Lan. Our editor is Heather Dundas. Sound design is by Andre Pluss. 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 Teja Palakonda. Fact-checking was done by Sheila Patterson. For Ballin Studios, our head of production is Zach Levitt.
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 Villapondo. Senior producers are Laura Donna Palavoda and Dave Schilling. Senior managing producer is Ryan Lohr. Our executive producers are Aaron O'Flaherty and Marshall Louis for Wondery.
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