Gloria Ramirez - The Toxic Lady

Serving as the inspiration for an episode of X- Files and many other TV shows, the curious death of Gloria Ramirez still puzzles people to this day.

Born on the11th of January 1963, Gloria Ramirez, an American woman living in Riverside, California with two children and a husband.

On the night of the 19th of February 1994, at approximately 8:15pm Gloria would be rushed into the Riverside General Hospital Emergency Room, only a few months earlier being diagnosed with late onset cervical cancer.

It was discovered that her heart was beating too fast for her body and her blood pressure was dropping fast. She could hardly breathe and was answering questions in incoherent sentences.

Doctors and nurses followed procedures as much as possible by injecting her with drugs to try to bring her vital signs to normal, but nothing was working. The medical staff on duty attempted to defibrillate, but they discovered that Gloria's body was covered in an 'oily sheen' and her mouth was emanating a 'strange, fruity, garlicy smell.'

A nurse, named Susan Kane, attempted to draw blood and noticed that the blood had a chemical odour like ammonia. There were manila-coloured particles floating in her blood, noticed by medical resident, Julie Gorchynski and attending physician, Dr. Humberto Ochoa. Shortly after, nurse Kane fainted after stating her face was 'burning’ and was escorted out on a gurney.

Then, medical resident Gorchynski described feeling light headed after smelling the syringe of blood, and then also fainted, then proceeding to shake and experiences apnea (a condition where people stop breathing for a few seconds).

Straight after that, respiratory therapist Maureen Welch, also collapsed, and upon waking up, couldn’t control her limbs.

Four other staff then passed out, all standing right next to each other. The paramedics who rode in the ambulance to the hospital with Ms. Ramirez and who remained in the room, as well as one nurse and Dr. Humberto Ochoa, the director of the ER all were unaffected.

The hospital assumed that this was a case of toxic contamination and declared an internal emergence, meaning the ER was sealed and all other patients were evacuated to the car park, while a small crew remained to try and save Gloria's life. and brought in the County decontamination unit.

Ms. Ramirez died in the ER at 8:50 pm, after the staff tried to resuscitate her for about 35-45 minutes. The body was moved into an isolation anti-room by two other staff members, one being nurse Sallie Balderas, who began to vomit and feel a 'burning sensation' like nurse Kane.

Nurse Balderas would be hospitalised for 10 days after exposure to Gloria’s body and would experience apnea like Gorchynski.

Gorchynski experienced many issues, making her stay in intensive care, with conditions such as vascular necrosis (where the bones don't get enough blood and begins to die), and had to use crutches for months after hospitalisation.

Other staff members affected by Gloria were treated in the car park, having their clothes taken and sealed in bag, for fear of a toxic chemical. In total, Ramirez's body affected 23 out of the 37 emergency room staff, and 5 staff members were held in the hospital overnight.

Around 11 pm, almost 2 hours after the incident, a hazardous materials team arrived in full hazmat suits and searched the hospital for 2 chemicals which could possibly be responsible. However, no chemical was found.

The official cause of Gloria's death was kidney failure due to her cervical cancer and her body was placed in a sealed body bag and sent to the county coroner for autopsy in a special sealed unit. 6 days later, an autopsy was performed, taking samples of blood, tissues and even air from the body bag, but nothing conclusive came from the autopsy.

County officials called Ramirez's death 'the most baffling in local history', generating a media frenzy with 10 different local state and federal forensic departments investigated the case.

On April 20th, 1994, Gloria was buried in Riverside California, 2 months after her death.

One theory about the events is mass hysteria, supported by the California department of health and human services, who interviewed 34 emergency room staff members on duty that night. Mass hysteria is defined as an illness with no identifiable, environmental causes, despite a group of people agreeing on a set of experienced symptoms. This is usually brought about by a trigger, which the CDHHS identified as the smell the staff reported coming from Gloria.

This was backed up by the fact that there was no poison found in Gloria's blood, and no one in the ambulance who took Gloria to the hospital had experienced any symptoms.

However, Julie Gorchynski, the medical resident on site that day filed a lawsuit for $6 million against the department and the coroner, disapproving of this explanation. Maureen Welch, the respiratory therapist, also felt that she was not a victim of mass hysteria.

Another possible explanation comes from the Livermore Laboratory, who discovered a large amount of the compound dimethyl sulfone in Gloria's autopsy samples. They theorise that Gloria used an anti-inflammatory gel called DMSO to cope with her cancer pains, which would explain the garlicky smell and oily sheen.

DMSO is also one oxygen atom away from becoming dimethyl sulfone, so the laboratory tested it by adding oxygen to DMSO, which would have happened when an oxygen mask was put on Gloria and found that white crystals formed. These crystals looked similar to the manila coloured particles found in Gloria’s blood at the hospital.

However, dimethyl sulfone is harmless, but it was theorised that if it broke down, which could have happened due to the electric shocks from the attempted defibrillation, and then combined with natural compounds found in Gloria’s body, it could form dimethyl sulphate.

This chemical can cause damage to the heart, liver and kidneys as well as paralysis, delirium and convulsions.

This theory has been highly scrutinised by other scientists as impossible, and the Livermore Labs didn’t run any tests for this theory or create a successful simulation. The head of the lab said in a statement, 'we've never said this is what happened, just that people should look into it.... it’s just a theory.'

The final supposed reason behind Gloria's mysterious death comes from the Ramirez family, stating that it was due to the hazardous conditions already present at the hospital. In 1991, 3 years before Gloria’s death, 2 employees at Riverside Hospital were forced to receive medical treatment after exposure to poisonous gas leaked by a steriliser. Then in 1993, sewer gas was found in the emergency room following an inspection.

There is also evidence of a county cover up, with the deputy coroner, Dan Cupido, originally having said that Gloria did not die of natural causes, and only changing his opinion after the county got involved and revealed their official autopsy conclusions.

Another strange occurrence was that the initial investigator from the coroner’s office, Stephanie Albright, regarded as a top investigator, committed suicide one month into the investigation. Dan Cupido made a statement that Albright 'might have been under pressure from the case.'

The most curious incident was that the syringe containing Gloria's blood, taken at the hospital, was accidentally tossed out, meaning no further tests could be done.

The Ramirez family filed a malpractice and wrongful death lawsuit against Riverside County, however the true cause of Gloria Ramirez's death is still up to speculation and more theories continue to emerge.

#Conspiracy #Hospital #Chemical #Coverup