Unusual deaths have been recorded for about as long as people have been recording things. For example, in 3200 B.C. the Egyptian pharaoh Menes was allegedly carried off and eaten by a hippopotamus. But Egyptians are not Americans, so we have to look a little closer to home at a website called America is Weird.
Luckily for us, there’s no shortage of bizarre tales. Consider “The Toxic Lady.”
What Was So Weird About Gloria Ramirez’s Death?
Gloria Ramirez was brought to Riverside General Hospital in Riverside, California on the evening of February 19, 1994. She was having severe heart palpitations and irregular breathing. She was in the late stages of cervical cancer, so the admission itself was not unusual, but she was in a dire situation… and it was about to get weird.
Due to the severity of Ramirez’s condition, the hospital staff attempted to sedate her. The staff reportedly used diazepam, midazolam, and lorazepam, but the important thing is that these are just sedatives. They didn’t really work, however, so the next step in treating her arrhythmic heart was a defibrillator.
What exactly happened next is a little uncertain. What we do know is that several members of the medical staff promptly felt unwell: One nurse fainted, a medical resident became lightheaded and left the room before fainting in a common area, and a respiratory therapist also fainted. At this point, the staff was ordered to evacuate all patients from the area and a small crew stayed behind in an effort to revive Ramirez. CPR didn’t work and she died of kidney failure about 45 minutes after her arrival. Twenty-three people who were in the surrounding area reported getting sick in the incident and five were hospitalized, including one staffer who was in the ICU for two weeks.
The uncertain parts are the claims from staff of what they saw or felt. Reliability of these eyewitness accounts have been disputed, thanks in part to the fact that three of the people giving testimony fainted, but their reports included some insane things. Numerous workers reported an “oily sheen” covering Ramirez’s body. Some noticed a “fruity, garlic-like odor” emanating from her. The nurse who drew the patient’s blood reported an ammonia-like smell coming from the tube. The tube in question was reported – by one of the residents – to have yellowish-brown particles floating in the blood.
The odor, the sheen, and the intense physical responses felt by the staff led Ramirez to earn the unflattering (though kind of badass) nicknames “the Toxic Woman” or “the Toxic Lady.”
At face value, a woman came into the ER near death. Unsuccessful attempts were made to revive her, but nearly everyone who came in contact with her got sick, including at least one very serious case.
What Actually Happened With Gloria Ramirez?
Frankly it’s a little unclear, though there is a prevailing theory. The original investigation showed that people who worked within two feet of her and had been exposed to her blood were at notably higher risk than those who were farther away. But the study also suggested that those who experienced symptoms did not correlate to how an exposure to toxic fumes would or should look. And after the afflicted staffers’ blood tests came back normal, the county health department cited the event as mass hysteria.
A bunch of ER workers treated a patient in a high-traffic hospital, several fainted, five spent time admitted to the hospital immediately afterwards, and the county said “Nope. You’re imagining it.”
The aforementioned medical resident, a woman named Julie Gorchynski, took issue with the “mass hysteria” diagnosis, as she was the one who spent two weeks in the ICU. Furthermore, after the incident, she developed hepatitis and avascular necrosis in her knees (this is the disease that Bo Jackson famously suffered from and ended his career far too early). It was all pretty damn weird.
The coroner’s office requested a lab to look into the death, and that is where we ultimately got the theory for what happened. Their conclusion is the following possibility: Ramirez was treating herself with a degreasing solvent known as dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) as some sort of home remedy for her pain and discomfort. It has a garlic-ish scent and is sold in gel form, which connects to the oily skin and garlic smells. It also may have built up in her body due to the kidney failure she was experiencing, and a higher concentration would be more likely to react to stimuli.
Oxygen given by the medics would make it DMSO2, which crystallizes at room temperature, potentially explaining the floating particles in her blood. When the defibrillator added electricity to her system, it could have created DMSO4, which is highly toxic, and would explain the symptoms of the staff onsite.
Lastly, due to the highly corrosive nature of the chemicals she (probably) ingested, Ramirez’s body decomposed incredibly fast. The Ramirez family tried to find an alternate cause of death, but an investigation by a pathologist turned up nothing since the heart was gone and her other organs were effectively nonexistent.
Let this be yet another reminder to not use household cleaning products as medicine.