BY JORDAN DOLL THE TOXIC LADY (Insert Ex-Girlfriend Joke Here) BEST OF BIRDY 044 Look, I’ll be the first one to tell you I’m a bit of a hypochondriac. Actually, the first one to tell you that would probably be my primary care physician, Dr. Grimaldi. The next one to tell you would probably be his wife, Trisha Grimaldi, who usually answers when I call them at home. And the third one to tell you would be my downstairs neighbor when I can’t get ahold of either Grimaldi. Oh, is it “just allergies,” Karen in 3b? Or is my body rejecting its own eyeballs!?!? I DON’T KNOW, KAREN IN 3B! THAT’S WHY I’M ASKING YOU!!! Thing is, we all experience mysterious ailments from time to time. And just like you, I’m not a doctor. Nobody is. There are maybe 50 doctors in the world and the rest of them are, by and large, just Lyft drivers who found a lab coat in the back of their car after work and thought, Yeah, I could poke a rash with a pen and tell someone they need to change shampoos. So we do what we can. We drink glass after terrible glass of water. We try not to touch dead squirrels when we find them on the street. And we spend countless hours scouring WebMD for vital queries like “too many teeth?” “Netflix poisoning?” and “I messed up and spent all day recreating episodes of Frasier using a bunch of dead squirrels. What am I looking at here, plague-wise?” But in the end, when things get truly grim, the pragmatic among us will seek professional help. We go to a doctor and have them give it to us straight. Usually it’s nothing, sometimes it’s something, and at least a few times the doctor is No. 137 just like, “WOAH! WHAT IS THAT!? WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU!? GUYS GET IN HERE!” The strange and tragic case of Gloria Ramirez, aka “The Toxic Lady,” falls firmly into that last category. On the evening of February 19, 1994, the Riverside, Calif. woman was admitted to Riverside General Hospital suffering from the effects of advanced cervical cancer. Things went south fast and the decision was made to defibrillate Gloria. And that’s when the staff at RGH discovered there was something south of south. Around that time a few of the attending physicians noticed an oily sheen across Gloria’s skin, while others reported smelling a distinct “fruity garlic” smell emanating from her mouth. Two nurses, Susan Kane and Julie Gorchynski, drew a sample of Gloria’s blood and instantly noticed it smelled of ammonia. Upon closer inspection they discovered “manila-colored” particles floating in the blood! That’s not good. Strictly speaking your blood should just have, uhh, blood in it. That’s when the nurses began to feel a little ill themselves. Susan passed out right there in the trauma room while Julie managed to stagger to a nearby reception desk before losing consciousness. Next, one of the attending doctors went down, at which point the rest of the staff hit the “Fuck this!” alarm and ordered the hospital to be evacuated. All told, around 30 people developed symptoms of nausea, shortness
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