Gloria Ramirez

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Gloria Ramirez (January 11, 1963-February 19, 1994^[1]) was Riverside, California woman dubbed "the toxic lady" by the media after exposure to her body and blood sickened several hospital workers.

Contents 1 The emergency room visit 2 Mass hysteria 3 Possible role of dimethyl sulfoxide 4 Methamphetamine 5 Final conclusion and burial 6 References

[edit] The emergency room visit

About 8:15 in the evening on February 19, 1994, Gloria Ramirez was brought into the emergency room by paramedics, suffering from the effects of advanced cervical cancer. She was extremely confused, and suffering from bradycardia and Cheyne-Stokes respiration. The medical staff injected her with Valium, Versed, and Ativan to sedate her, and agents such as lidocaine stimulate her heartbeat. When it became clear that Ramirez was responding poorly to treatment, the staff tried to defibrillate her heart with electricity; at that point several people saw an oily sheen covering Ramirez’s body, and some noticed a fruity, garlicky odor that they thought was coming from her mouth. An RN named Susan Kane attempted to draw blood from Ramirez's arm, and noticed an ammonia like smell coming from the tube.

She passed the syringe to Julie Gorchynski, a medical resident who noticed manila-colored particles floating in the blood. At this point, Susan Kane fainted and was removed from the room. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Gorchynski began to feel nauseated . Complaining that she was light-headed, she left the trauma room and sat at a nurse’s desk. A staff member asked Gorchynski if she was okay, but before she could respond she also fainted. Maureen Welch, a respiratory therapist who was assisting in the trauma room was the third to pass out. The staff was then ordered to evacuate all emergency room patients to the parking lot outside the hospital. A skeleton crew stayed behind to stabilize Ramirez. At 8:50, after forty five minutes of CPR and defibrillation, Gloria Ramirez was pronounced dead from kidney failure related to her cancer. ^[2]

[edit] Mass hysteria

The county health department called in California's Department of Health and Human Services, which put two of its top scientists on the case, Doctors Ana Maria Osorio and Kirsten Waller. They interviewed 34 hospital staff who had been working in the emergency room on February 19. Using a standardized questionnaire, Osorio and Waller found that the people who had developed severe symptoms such as loss of consciousness, shortness of breath, and muscle spasms tended to have certain things in common. People who had worked within two feet of Ramirez and had handled her intravenous lines had been at high risk. But other factors that correlated with severe symptoms didn't seem to match a scenario in which fumes had been released: the survey found that those afflicted tended to be women rather than men, and they all had normal blood tests after the exposure.

Those findings led to an official report that the health department released on September 2. The conclusion: The hospital staff most likely experienced an outbreak of mass hysteria. Osorio and Waller cited the lack of evidence for a poison and the fact that women were more likely to suffer severe symptoms, both hallmark signs of mass hysteria. In addition, they pointed out, neither paramedic who had treated Ramirez in the ambulance became ill--despite the close quarters and their having touched her skin and some of her blood after starting an intravenous line.

[edit] Possible role of dimethyl sulfoxide

Dr. Gorchynski denied that she had been affected by mass hysteria, and pointed to her own medical history as evidence. After the exposure, she spent two weeks in the intensive care unit with breathing problems, she developed hepatitis and avascular necrosis in her knees. Eager to clear her name and win her lawsuit against General Hospital in Riverside, she and RN Susan Welch contacted Livermore Laboratories for a second opinion.

Livermore Labs postulated that Ramirez had been taking dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), a solvent, as a home remedy for pain, and through some unknown reaction this turned into dimethyl sulfate, a poisonous gas. However, they were unable to put forth any possible reaction that could have transformed the one to the other.

[edit] Methamphetamine

The Los Angeles weekly New Times has come up with a possible alternative explanation for the toxic lady episode: the hospital where the incident occurred may been the site of a secret lab used to illegally manufacture the drug methamphetamine. In stories appearing in the May 15-21 and September 11-17, 1997 issues, staff writer Susan Goldsmith reports that "meth chemicals" may have been smuggled out of the hospital in IV bags, one of which was inadvertently hooked up to the dying Ramirez. This triggered the round of nausea, headache, and other symptoms that put six ER workers in the hospital.

This theory is largely discredited by the blood tests performed on Ramirez's body, which showed no sign of methamphetamines or illegal drugs. ^[3]

[edit] Final conclusion and burial

Two months after Ramirez died, her badly decomposed body was released for an independent autopsy and burial. The Riverside Coroner's Office hailed Livermore's DMSO conclusion as the probable cause of the hospital workers' symptoms, while her family disagreed. The Ramirez family's pathologist was unable to determine a cause of death because her heart was missing, her other organs were cross-contaminated with fecal matter, and her body was too badly decomposed. Ten weeks after she died, Ramirez was buried in an unmarked grave at Olivewood Cemetery. Her family held a yard sale to pay for the funeral. ^[4]

[edit] References