Gloria Ramirez And Her Mysterious Death
The Toxic Lady, Gloria Ramirez and her Mysterious Death. Gloria Ramirez was dubbed “the Toxic Lady” or “the Toxic Woman” by the media when several hospital workers became ill after exposure to her body and blood.
Listen To ” The Toxic Lady : Gloria Ramirez And Her Mysterious Death” Right Here!
Find Your Preferred Streaming Platform
Follow Bizarre Buffet on Facebook
Follow Bizarre Buffet on Instagram
Support Bizarre Buffet on Patreon
” The Toxic Lady : Gloria Ramirez And Her Mysterious Death ” I Episode Credits
Hosted By Mark Tauriello , Jen Wilson , & Marc Bluestein
Original Episode Art By Mark Tauriello
Original Episode Story Concept By Jen Wilson
Episode Production By Marc Bluestein
” The Toxic Lady : Gloria Ramirez And Her Mysterious Death ” I Show Notes
Question
What is the most bizarre thing a toxic person in your life has done to you? Mentally, physically, emotionally?
What Was Going On In 1994?
- Nancy Kerrigan was attacked and hit in the right knee.
- Nelson Mandela becomes president of South Africa.
- The Civil War in Rawanda is happening.
- OJ Simpson flees the po po in his white Ford Bronco.
- Movies like Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, and The Lion King hit the movie theatres.
- Gloria Ramirez dies.
What Happened To Gloria Ramirez?
- On February 19, 1994 at around 8:15 pm, Gloria Ramirez was rushed into the emergency room of Riverside General Hospital in Moreno Valley, California.
- She was extremely confused, and her heart rate exceeded over 100 beats per minute.
- The medical staff injected her with multiple sedatives to sedate her.
- She wasn’t responding well to the treatment, so the staff tried to defibrilate her.
- at that point several people saw an oily sheen covering Ramirez’s body, and some noticed a fruity, garlic-like odor that they thought was coming from her mouth. Registered nurse 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, Kane fainted and was removed from the room. Shortly thereafter, Gorchynski began to feel nauseated. Complaining that she was lightheaded, she left the trauma room and sat at a nurse’s desk. A staff member asked her 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 department patients to the parking lot outside the hospital. Overall, 23 people became ill and five were hospitalized.[2][3] A skeleton crew stayed behind to stabilize Ramirez. At 8:50 p.m., after 45 minutes of CPR and defibrillation, Ramirez was pronounced dead from kidney failure related to her cancer.
The Aftermath
The Aftermath
- The county health department called in California’s Department of Health and Human Services, which put two scientists, Drs. Ana Maria Osorio and Kirsten Waller, on the case. They interviewed 34 hospital staff who had been working in the emergency department 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 did not appear 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. They believed the hospital workers suffered from mass hysteria
More Details
- 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. Riverside Coroner’s Office contacted Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to investigate the incident. Livermore Labs postulated that Ramirez had been using dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), a solvent used as a powerful degreaser, as a home remedy for pain. Users of this substance report that it has a garlic-like taste.[2] Sold in gel form at hardware stores, it could also explain the greasy appearance of Ramirez’s body.[2][3] The Livermore scientists theorized that the DMSO in Ramirez’s system might have built up owing to urinary blockage caused by her kidney failure.[3] Oxygen administered by the paramedics would have combined with the DMSO to form dimethyl sulfone (DMSO2).
- DMSO2 is known to crystallize at room temperature, and crystals were observed in some of Ramirez’s drawn blood.[2] Electric shocks administered during emergency defibrillation could have then converted the DMSO2 into dimethyl sulfate (DMSO4), the highly toxic dimethyl ester of sulfuric acid, exposure to which could have caused some of the reported symptoms of the emergency department staff.[4] The Livermore scientists postulated on The New Detectives that the change in temperature of the blood drawn, from the 98.6 °F (37 °C) of Ramirez’ body to the 64 °F (18 °C) of the emergency department, may have contributed to its conversion from DMSO2 into DMSO4. This, however, has not been confirmed.
