On today’s MKD, Nicole is back from our brief maternity leave break with the latest news stories! She discusses a mom charged in an alcohol-related death, a McDonald’s employee burned with hot oil, an update in the death of Ashlee Jenae, an upside-down heart valve, a vaginal pessary wrongly prescribed to a child, what to eat before anal sex, and a controversial Hello Fresh message.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Mother Knows Death starring Nicole and Jemmy and Maria qk Hi. Everyone.
Welcome to Mother Knows Death. You guys have me solo
today after our little maternity break. We plan on having
some guests fill in for Maria while she's taking care
of our perfect little man, so stay tuned for that.
(00:29):
We hope you enjoyed some classic Mother Knows Death episodes
while we were on break, and of course we missed
you guys. Don't forget We're also always having additional episodes
on in the Gross Room. Maria actually made an appearance
right after she had the baby in one of our
Grossroom episodes. She wanted to beat out Kylie Kelsey for
(00:52):
doing a podcast episode postpartum, and she was actually still
in the hospital when she made her appearance, so that
was really cool if you guys want to check that out.
So on today's episode, I'm going to talk about a
mom who has been charged with murder in connection with
the alcohol related death of our teenage daughter, a McDonald's
(01:13):
employee that was assaulted with hot oil. An update on
a story we brought to you a few months ago
involving an influencer who died on vacation with her new fiance,
and two medical malpractice cases involving children, specifically little girls.
Next after that, we're going to talk about the anal
sex diet and why it seems to be all over
(01:36):
the news this week, and then we'll finish up the
episode with your comments, questions, and emails. All that and
more on today's episode. So first, we're going to get
started with these alcohol charges with this Colorado mother. Her
name is Gretchen Leanne Ryan. She's a fifty five year
old woman who has now been arrested charged with second
(01:59):
degree and is being held on five hundred thousand dollars
cash only bond because her sixteen year old daughter named
Grace Ryan died. She was found unresponsive in their home
on March ninth and was pronounced dead at the scene.
(02:20):
So at first, obviously, any single time that you have
a child that is found dead at home, under any circumstances,
they're going to want to do an autopsy. Of course,
unless the child, it's not always done. So let's say,
for example, the child had a history of chronic health
(02:41):
problems and then you know, multiple heart surgeries. Let's say,
for example, if a doctor was able to say Okay,
this kid had open heart surgery twice and I've been
treating her for years, and I expected her to die
from this, then they wouldn't need to do an autopsy.
But when there's a child that's sixteen years old that
(03:02):
just dies, because kids don't just die for no reason,
there's always going to be an autopsy done in a
situation like that. So the autopsy's done and the medical
examiner finds some very unusual finding to find in a
sixteen year old kid, noting that her liver seemed to
(03:23):
be abnormally fatty for a child of her age. So
you can get a fatty liver for multiple reasons. You
can get it with obesity, you can get it with
some autoimmune conditions. You also can get it from using alcohol.
And what happens is the heavy alcohol use damages the
(03:48):
liver cells and causes fat to accumulate in the cells,
and that's called, uh, you know, that's a fatty liver
steato happatitis. And what happens is that that's considered damage
to the liver, but it's not permanent damage. So, for example,
if you're someone right now that drinks a lot, and
then you've gone to the doctor and they tell you
(04:10):
that you have fatty liver. You can stop drinking and
it will reverse itself. It's not too far gone, but
it's also enough damage that you're seeing that the alcohol
is actually starting to take an effect on your body.
This is not something that happens overnight. This is a
chronic process. So it's very, very unusual to see in
(04:34):
a child at sixteen years old, especially if they don't
have a history of any kind of underlying liver disease,
a natural liver disease, or if the child's been having
obesity for their entire life. So that was something that
was noted at autopsy, and then other things that were
noted at autopsy were actually what her cause of death was.
(04:56):
So she had something called aspiration pneumonia. So we did
talk about that a little bit. I don't know if
it was on mother Nose Death or in the gross
room or one of our lectures, but with Matthew Perry,
because they saw signs of aspiration pneumonia with Matthew Perry
as well at autopsy. And if you remember, Matthew Perry
(05:19):
also had a history of being an alcoholic. So this
is a common thing that could happen with people who
are abusing alcohol chronically. So heavy alcohol use increases the
risk of aspiration pneumonia because it suppresses the gag reflex
and cough reflexes, and drinking a lot just also impairs
(05:40):
your immune immune function. It makes it easier. You know,
when your immune system isn't working great, you're just at
an increased risk of getting all kinds of weird infections.
So think about this like you're an alcoholic, you're drinking
a lot. Sometimes you're drinking so much that it's making
you vomit. So contents that are coming from your stomach
(06:00):
and are coming from your mouth are now getting breathed
back into the lungs, and that's exactly what happens. It
could cause bacteria from the mouth to get into the lungs.
And in Matthew Perry's case, they actually saw plant material
within his lungs, so it means that he at some
point vomited and then inhaled something out of his stomach contents.
(06:24):
And it is kind of it's I mean, it's cool scientifically,
obviously it's not cool when anybody's going through this, But
when you see aspiration pneumonia, you under the microscope of
the lungs. So you look and you see the normal
lung tissue, and then all of a sudden, you're going
to see all of this inflammation around plant cells, which
(06:46):
should never be inside of the body because we're not
We don't have plant cells in our body. We have
you know, animal human cells in our body. So that
means like let's say you eat a cheese steak with
onions and you vomit it up and you end up
aspiating it. You could actually see skeletal muscle cells from
the meat under the microscope, and you could see plant
(07:08):
cells from the onions under the microscope. So it's super
like a cool finding to see microscopically at autopsy, but
again a very very unusual thing to see it, especially
in a child. Now that being said, if the child
is born with some kind of a neurological defect or
some kind of problem with their gi system or their
(07:31):
throat in general, it's not impossible for a kid to
have this, but it's totally abnormal to see this in
a child that doesn't have any underlying health conditions. So
because of this finding at autopsy, her manner of death
was considered to be natural. That's what the medical examiner
ruled it. And the reason that it was ruled natural
(07:54):
is because it wasn't because of an accident. It wasn't
a suicide, it wasn't a homicide. So and pneumonia is
a natural medical process, so that doesn't necessarily mean that
a parent can't get in trouble for how this child died.
(08:15):
I'm going to give you an example. Actually, when I
was rotating at the medical Examiner's office, we had an
autopsy on this little two year old girl who ended
up dying from pneumonia, and she the reason that she
died from the pneumonia after the investigation went through, is
because they found out that her family was some kind
(08:35):
of weird religion that didn't believe in giving children medication.
So the medical examiner really believed that the only reason
that this child died was because she had some kind
of a lung infection that just never got treated with
antibiotics or anything, which allowed her to get so sick.
She was never brought to the hospital even when she
(08:56):
was sick and ended up dying at home from it.
So even though that's technically a natural death from the pneumonia,
the parents still got charged with it because it was
their fault that she died, and this is exactly what
happened in this particular case. So once they did so,
they see all this stuff at autopsy, and of course
(09:17):
they're going to do an investigation anyway, just because there
shouldn't be a sixteen year old child just being dead.
At the house, they found one hundred and seventy three
empty liquor bottles underneath of her bed and in her
closet that they found out that the mother was regularly
getting for her one hundred and seventy three empty bottles.
(09:40):
So I don't know if they were normal sized bottles
or little bottle, it doesn't matter. That's absolutely ridiculous. So
that was one thing that they saw. Another point that
I want to bring out when I was talking about
the autopsy and the when I said that she had
this chronic liver disease. Most of the time, when you
(10:02):
have a child who's sixteen years old that dies of
an alcohol related death, it's usually acute, meaning they drank
a bit. They did like a binge drinking thing. They
drank a bunch of alcohol and had acute alcohol poisoning,
and that's how they died. So this one is more
disturbing because it shows a very long pattern of what
(10:24):
was happening, and we'll talk about that a little bit
more with some of the investigation. So, in addition to
the one hundred and seventy three empty liquor bot bottles
that were found under her bed, they also did searches
of her devices and saw that she was regularly consuming
alcohol and marijuana with her mother. She was hiding the
(10:47):
drinking from her father. Her symptoms were getting worse, and
the mother was not doing anything about it. So there
were text message exchanges back and forth describing these worsening
symptoms that she was having, including vomiting, difficulty walking, and
she needed to use diapers because she couldn't hold in
(11:08):
her poop. She literally was wearing diapers, and in these
text messages she was expressing to her mother that she
thought that she was going to die and was asking
her mother for help. I mean, this is just so awful.
This is such a such a bizarre case of abuse,
but it's clear, it's clear abuse. Another interesting part of
(11:31):
this story was that she was being isolated. So apparently
she was in ninth grade and her mother took her
out of school and enrolled her in online classes, so
she only ended up completing one semester of ninth grade.
She wasn't participatating in any outdoor activities like sports or
(11:52):
art class or anything like that, so essentially you're just
thinking about what's happening in this house. It's like you
have this fifty five year old woman who's not with
the father, living with the sixteen year old child that's
not really leaving the house and is just getting high
and drunk with her all the time, to the point
(12:13):
where this child develops alcoholism. I mean, it's affecting her
body so bad. She these findings that you're seeing at
autopsy are something that you would find in an alcoholic
at sixteen years old, which is so disturbing. So I
am happy, obviously that she's getting charged with second degree murder,
(12:34):
although I mean, like, I understand that the legal system
is definitely different than what all of us think in
our heads, and one thing that just annoys the shit
out of me with cases like this is that she's
being held on a five hundred thousand dollars cash bond.
I know that given this situation, it's unlikely that she's
(12:55):
going to be able to come up with this bond.
But I just think that there's a absolutely no reason
that this person needs to see society again, So like
why even give her the option. I always get scared
because there's always these weird groups that have a lot
of money that want to give money to causes for
certain things that just make no sense to most people.
(13:18):
So so anyway, we'll keep an eye on that and
see what happens. As of right now, she's only been charged,
so she hasn't been convicted, but I think that evidence
is pretty strong and hopefully this daughter definitely gets justice.
This woman's disgusting. This week's episodes are brought to you
(13:48):
by The Grocer, and for this week's high profile death
dis section, we talked about Kimberly Chippewa. You might remember
she was the twelve year old girl that was involved
in a bully in stead at school a few months
ago and was involved in a fight. She was trying
to actually stand up for her sister and was hit
on the head with a metal water bottle and she
(14:11):
died a few days later. So we talked about how
there was a homicide investigation underway and then this shocking
information came out within the past couple of weeks that
the autopsy was ruled a natural death. So we really
go through that whole case in the grossroom and try
to figure out how exactly the medical examiner rules a
(14:34):
case where there was a girl who had a traumatic
blunt force injury and somehow her death was ruled a
natural manner of death. And then so we go through
like what we're going to look through at the autopsy,
and honestly, after doing the whole entire post, I agree
(14:54):
with the medical examiner, so you might want to read
that and check out why I say that. And then
we have a couple really disturbing videos in the gross room.
One involves a snake that ate a person, and this
week's Forensic Friday was on a five thousand year old
autopsy and how that information is being used to help
(15:16):
solve cold cases today. We also had a couple interesting
requests from members in the gross room this week, going
over some scenes that happened in pulp fiction and if
they could be medically real, if they're fiction, or if
they're things that could actually happen. So we go through
those scenes in the movie and then talk about exactly
(15:38):
what or what would not happen in real life. Head
over to the grossroom dot com. Now, next story, we're
going to talk about an incident that happened at McDonald's
in Yuba City, California. This is a twenty year old
(16:00):
guy who was the shift manager. His name is Jacob Smith.
He was apparently just sitting at his desk getting ready
to do some kind of paperwork and he turns out
of the corner of his eye and one of his
coworkers threw hot oil on him. They still don't understand
why this guy did it. He's twenty three years old.
(16:23):
He fled the scene and was later arrested on multiple
felony charges, including assault. They still just say like they
have no idea why he did it. Now assuming, I mean,
I'm pretty sure that we could all say I never
worked at McDonald's exactly, but I worked at Boston Market,
so it's equally as a shitty job right when I
(16:43):
was a teenager, and I feel like, I mean, this
was back in the nineties. Of course, I got paid
like four twenty four an hour for twenty five an hour,
whatever it was, and I feel like they didn't treat
me very nice, and it was a shitty it was
just shitty fast food job, right, so you could see.
(17:03):
I mean, I think I ended up like walking out
of there and quitting because I was like, f this, right,
So you could see that people get heated at jobs
like this, and this guy was his boss, So I
understand you getting mad at your boss or whatever like that,
but crossing the line of doing something like that is
just really bizarre, especially because it didn't seem like it
was it was in the moment. It's not like they
(17:27):
were having an argument and the guy just kind of
reached over and grabbed this oil and maybe they were
fistfighting or something like that. Like the guy was sitting
at his desk, So whatever had happened wasn't exactly right
in the moment. So when you actually see the pictures
from the articles of this guy's injuries, it just looks awful,
(17:50):
Like his face is just completely blistered and it just
looks so painful. Anybody that's ever been burned knows that
that burns hurt so bad. And one thing I always
joke about is that, you know, back in the day,
when I used to do my hair all the time
and curl it and things like that, with the crawling iron.
I always used to say that getting burned with the
(18:12):
crawling iron is like one of the worst pains in
the world. I mean, I've had natural childbirth three times,
and just if you send your neck like that, it's
just like some it's almost like a tooth pain or something.
It's just constantly burning because it's just enough to be
in that sweet spot where it hasn't done enough nerve
damage and it's just making all of your nerves really angry.
(18:34):
And we'll talk about all the different kinds of degrees
of burns and how they're diagnosed, but as far as
his injuries go, he was diagnosed with second degree burns
to his face, neck, arm, and back, affecting a large
portion of his body. The doctors say they're trying to
reduce the burn area and avoid skin grafting, so that's
(18:57):
something that might still have to be talked about this point,
but it seems like he probably has more superficial burns
than deeper burns that would definitely require skin graphing, but
those that actually might be worse. We're gonna talk about
the levels of the burns because those actually end up
being the most painful type. So first let's talk about
(19:21):
how how they determine a degree burn anyway, So you
always hear about first degree, second degree, third degree, fourth degree,
like what does that mean? So a first degree burn
I would describe as sunburn, like a normal sunburn, not
not when you have blisters and things like that, just
like a normal sunburn, which also can be super super
(19:43):
painful too. Then you have second degree burns, So this
is what this guy was diagnosed with. So you have
different layers to your body. The outermost layer is called
the epidermis. That's the outermost layer of skin. Beneath that
is the dermis beneath that is subcut taneous tissue, which
is like fat and stuff, and then you have muscle bone.
(20:04):
So it goes in layers like that, and that's how
they determine the degree burns based upon what layer gets
burned through. So when you have a second degree burn,
it means that it went through the entire epidermis or
the top layer of skin. And I'm sure everyone listening
to me right now has had a second degree burn
at some point. You could get it from cooking oil
(20:26):
splashing on your hand. Speaking of working at Boston Market,
I had multiple ones on my arms from just reaching
in and touching something and having the hot oven or
the hot display case burn the top of my arm,
curling iron, some people have suburn that bed, boiling water anything, right,
(20:49):
So you guys have all experienced like a blister from
getting burnt. It's completely awful. So you could have a
superficial part. They're also called partial thickness burns, So it
could go through some of that dermos layer, or it
could go through more of that dermis layer. And actually
the unfortunate part is when it goes deeper. That's when
(21:12):
you're at this risk now to having to get skin grafts.
But the benefit to that burn is that it burns
through the nerve endings and it's not as painful, whereas
when you have a more superficial burn, second degree burn
like that, you might be able to heal, but your
nerves are feeling it like really really strong. So either
(21:38):
way and obviously when you get burned, it's not even
So one of my lectures I show the different degrees
of burns, and a lot of people have multiple degrees
of burns on one arm or something like that because
it goes thicker on one area than the other. So
this guy is just in extreme pain and it's just
really terrible, like when you look at it, you could
(21:59):
tell well. So then a third degree burn is when
it goes through all of the layers, so it goes
through the epidermis and the dormist completely and starts going
into the underlying subcutaneous or fat tissue. And then a
fourth degree burn is when it goes all the way
through all of the layers of skin, subcutaneous tissue, into
the muscle, and into the bone. So we said that
(22:23):
he had a large portion of his body burned face, neck, arms, back.
So typically when a patient goes to the hospital and
has these large burns on their body, they give a percentage.
So sometimes you'll hear like thirty percent of his body
was burned or something like that. So when they do percentages,
(22:43):
the general rule of thumb is if it's ten percent
or more of the body that's burned, you're going to
at least be going to some kind of burn center
or getting a consultation by a burn center. Because the
thing is is it's not just the pain with your skin.
Your skin is your largest organ of your body and
it functions. It has a lot of functions for fluid regulation,
(23:07):
and also just for keeping your body temperature normal, which
is really important because if your body temperature doesn't stay
it around ninety eight point six degrees, your organs aren't
going to function properly and it could actually end up
killing you. So they want to make sure that you
have enough skin that is left over and is untouched
(23:30):
that's functioning properly so your body can still continue to
work properly. But they say that once you have twenty
percent or more of your body burned, then you could
have massive fluid loss, shock, hypothermia, and you're at an
increased risk of infections because that's that layer of skin
(23:53):
is our barrier against the rest of the world, along
with multiple other barriers, but it's our biggest one. The
skin is considered our largest organ. So you're gonna get
a consultation and be in a burn center if more
than twenty percent of your body is burned, so you know,
they look at your whole body as one hundred percent,
and then they determine based upon when where your burns
(24:15):
are located. And another thing is the location is really
important because especially in this guy, I can't exactly see
what his damages are, but it looks like the guy
poured the oil on the top of his head and
it kind of dripped down his face. So now you
have to take into consideration other organs that you have
(24:39):
that can get affected, like your eyes, which you don't
need your eyes to live, but you kind of need
your eyes to live right like they're really important. So
that's something that you always want to take into consideration
with these cases. But another thing is your mouth and
your airway. So if any reason that this oil somehow
got into his mouth and his airway it caused such
(25:01):
extreme swelling that that could have really been a risk
to his life too. So that's another thing to take
into consideration. And then the other thing is is this
talk about just different kinds of burns and they affected
body differently. So I don't know if you guys remember
we did talk about it. I believe we talked about
(25:22):
it on this show, but we definitely did a post
on it in the Grosser Room within the past couple
of weeks about that woman who fell into the manhole
in New York City a couple weeks ago. So she
died from a scalding burn, which is just boiling hot
water essentially, but you can get burned in all different
kinds of ways. You could get burned with hot water,
(25:44):
You could get burned with steam, you could get burned
with flames, you could get burned with chemicals. In this case,
he got burned with hot oil, which could be extra
nasty because the hot oil doesn't slip off the skin
like hot water does, so it just kind of sits
there and coats the skin and just remains hot and
(26:06):
just essentially keeps cooking the skin while it's sitting there.
It's just awful. So depending on how you obtain the
burn also depends on how what your treatment is and
what your outcome is. So well, we'll stay updated with
this story and see what happens. Hopefully, this guy, I mean,
(26:27):
he's twenty three years old, the suspect, so it's it
could be possible that he has some kind of an
underlying psychiatric condition. You would you would actually hope, I
hope in cases like this that they say, oh, this
guy has schizophrenia. It just would It would just make
me so much happier to hear that rather than just oh,
(26:47):
he's just a psychopath and doing something like that. Okay,
our next story is we have an update on Ashley Janey.
She is a thirty one year old lifestyle influencer that
had over eighty thousand Instagram followers. If you remember, we
(27:07):
talked about this case on Mother Nose Death End in
the Gross Room within the past couple of months. What
happened was, so she she's one of these influencers that
was like super beautiful and taking like really pretty photos
all the time of these trips that she was doing
things like that. She so she goes on this trip
(27:28):
with her fiance or her boyfriend at the time, I
should say, to Zanzibar, and it looked like a really
fancy expensive vacation, like a Safari kind of thing, and
just like villas and just really really nice trip that
you know, you go out on your balcony, you could
like feed a draffe and shit like it just was.
(27:51):
It looked really really nice. So she goes on this
trip with her boyfriend named Joe McCann and you know,
they're they're influencers, so they're posting all the time about
they're doing this and they're doing that, and this is
just like another case to just say just stop looking
at influencers and thinking that their lives are so great
(28:11):
because everybody's just going to post the best part of
everything and not what else is going on. So they're
on this trip and apparently her and the so the
boyfriend does propose to her during this trip, and there's
a post of like, oh my god, we got engaged
and blah blah blah. So everything seems to be going fine.
(28:32):
At some point, they got in an argument that was
so bad that the hotel staff had to come and
handle it and say, we're separating you guys in completely
different villas because you guys can't be in the same
room together. So to me, that seems like it was
pretty significant. It was either like a lot of screaming,
(28:53):
possibly hitting, like whatever that guests were complaining and the
hotel had to take action. I mean, really think about that,
because that's kind of a lot. So they get separated
and she calls her mom and says that they got
in an argument, but the mom just that's all the
mom really knows about it. She doesn't even know really
(29:14):
any more details about it. So now the couple is
in separate rooms and around nine o'clock at night, the
hotel staff was doing their normal evening duties, which include
pest control, which I guess that happens in that part
of the world, and just check in the room, you know,
they do that at hotels all the time, just make
(29:36):
sure the beds cleaned or whatever. And the room was dark,
so this staff member knocked and got no response. They
finally used the key, turned on the lights, and they
ended up hearing a loud thump and they found her
unresponsive and she was suspended from a clothing rail with
a garment belt provided in the hotel room. So I
(30:00):
I'm assuming that that's you know, when you go to
like a fancy or hotel and they give you robes.
I'm assuming it was like one of the belts from
a robe or something like that. So she was found
hanging there, and initially to everyone involved, the investigators, police,
they thought that it looked even hotel staff. Everybody thought
(30:20):
that it looked like a suicide attempt. And I say
attempted because she was still alive. So probably when that
hotel staff member heard that thump, it was like something
that she was actively in the middle of doing. And
they found her with a ligature around her neck. But
she had had oxygen cut off for long enough to
(30:42):
be unconscious but not long enough to be dead. So
she's brought to the hospital still alive, and the fiance
calls the mom and says, hey, like something happened and
she went to the hospital. I think, and like, I
just feel so bad for her parents, because I think, like,
you know, I'm American, I'm here. I don't really even
(31:05):
like never really traveled outside of the country. I don't
really you know, like some of that would make me
very nervous for my kid to just be going over
there and then like something happening to them medically over
there and just not knowing, Like if my kid was
in London or Italy or something, I wouldn't worry because
I just I know a lot of people from there,
and I know their healthcare is kind of the same
(31:26):
as ours, and like, but there's all these other trips
that you want to take to these different areas of
the world, and you really don't know how things are.
So just to get a call and say that your
child's going to the hospital in another country is just
really must have been very terrifying for her, and just
feeling out of control and not being able to talk
to them and stuff, and just having to rely on
the person that they were with. So anyway, they end
(31:51):
up the mom ends up talking to him and that's it.
She doesn't really hear from him again. So she starts
calling the hotel and saying like, hi, like I haven't
heard from him. My daughter's in the hospital. And the
hotel tells the mother like, yes, she's dead, Like what,
Oh my god, I can't even imagine this poor mom
(32:14):
going through this. So then it gets like, I guess
this is why there started being a lot of public
speculation and like this story went completely viral of like
attacking this fiance and stuff because he kind of, like
you would think in a normal situation that he would
have been like on the phone with the mom the
entire time and called her right away when this happened,
(32:35):
and like he didn't, and they had to hear it
from the hotel, which was just super weird. So anyway,
once they did the investigation, they they determined, so they
just came out with recently that they determined that her
even though they initially thought that her manner of death
was suicide, they say, Okay, our final determination is like yes,
(32:57):
after the whole investigation, the autopsy, she did die by suicide,
she killed herself. So first at the autopsy. So when
you are looking at a person that has a ligature
around their neck, there's general rules for people who kill themselves,
(33:18):
and then people who have a homicidal strangulation, they look different.
Usually at autopsy. You always say usually because there's always
exceptions to every single rule, but in general, if a
person is hanging from above and their body is suspended,
the ligature mark is going to be more of a
V shape because it's going to start around the neck
(33:42):
and then it's going to go up around the ears
where the body is lying on that the weight of
the body is on that ligature, right, it's going to
give a very specific look. Whereas think about if you
a homicidal strangulation, that would be if you go behind
a person and put let's say we use the same
(34:03):
item the belt from the from the robe around their neck,
it would be more horizontal across their neck. So that's
one thing that you look at it and say like, Okay,
this looks like this person did it themselves, and this
is this ligature mark is consistent with what we see
in suicidal hanging deaths. Right, So that was number one.
(34:26):
Number two they're in a super fancy hotel, they have cameras,
they have this, they have that. And then number three,
one of the biggest things was the digital investigation. So
initially her fiance obviously because he was just with her
before and they were in a fight, he wasn't a suspect.
He was always treated as a witness. But they did
(34:48):
say like, we're just gonna kind of hold onto your
passport until this investigation is done, just to make sure
that you're a cleared kind of thing, which I think
was smart in this case. And just because he didn't
call the mom and he didn't issue a statement for
a couple days, people were like, oh my god, this
(35:08):
guy did it, even though the family. The family didn't.
It was I guess it was weird for the family
because you know, you always have that person in your
life that's dating a complete douchebag that you wouldn't be
surprised if they did something like this, And I don't
think that the parents had that kind of feeling about
(35:29):
the guy. So but like, what else made sense? Right,
So I think that they were kind of didn't really understand,
But I never got the vibe that they were like, oh,
he was so bad. We never wanted them to be together.
I don't know, I didn't get that vibe from them.
But really, once they started looking into her phone and
(35:49):
her digital stuff, it was like, once again, we have
She was looking on an AI chatbot asking about how
lethal valume was, She had Farewell messages on her phone,
and they definitely think that by everything that they found
on her phone, that she had been struggling with depression.
(36:10):
And this is a really good reminder too, like her
mom and dad when they were interviewed and everything, and
her family just are you know, she's so happy, she's
doing these trips, she's got this fiance, blah blah blah,
like all this stuff, and you always don't know what's
going on behind the scenes in someone's life, maybe even
(36:30):
with your child. There are people that have depression that
are highly functioning and they go on and do their
social media videos and look one hundred percent healthy and fine,
and then they go in a hole when they're done,
like it's it's just nothing that you could you could
always see in a person. So unfortunately that's how that
(36:52):
went down. And I don't think that there's going to
be any further investigation into her death. All right, So
(37:14):
now we have two different back to back stories involving
medical malpractice with little girls. And since I own little girls,
it is upsetting because you just put yourself in these parents' situation,
in these children's situation. So the first one is coming
out of Oregon Health and Science University. So there was
(37:37):
a girl I guess she was because now she's thirteen,
and I guess at the time she was probably twelve. Like,
let's just say, like a twelve thirteen year old kid
had to get open heart surgery to get a valve replacement.
So I couldn't find why she needed a valve replacement
of her heart, but it's probably something congenital, like something
(37:59):
that she was born with. Her valve didn't work properly,
and they decided, okay, you're gonna have to get a
new valve on your heart. Which people get valve replacements
all the time, and of course it's there's complications with
every single surgery, but when you're doing a heart valve
replacement in a twelve year old who's otherwise healthy, you
(38:20):
should pretty much expect that they're going to recover from
this surgery if they have no underlying things, no other
problems with the heart, like young healthy people really should
just like bounce back from something like this fairly quickly.
So the initial procedure is done at this Oregon Health
and Science University, and sometimes when you're getting heart surgery,
(38:46):
they have to put you on something called a cardiac
bypass machine, and that is basically like they're pumping the
blood into this machine outside of the heart that is
putting oxygen and it's putting oxygenated blood like back into
your body and circulating, so it's just working as your heart,
(39:07):
but outside of your body while the doctors are working
on your heart. And then after the surgery's done, you
switch them back over to their real heart and take
them off this machine. It's just kind of like a
temporary heart while they're doing the surgery, so they can,
you know, they could stop the heart if they need
to or whatever they need to do in order to
(39:27):
replace this valve or do whatever. So this is a
normal thing that they do with open heart surgery. And
after the surgery, the doctors told the parents that the
procedure went well, but she wasn't able to be taken
off of this heart machine, which is called Ekmo. They
weren't able to take off of it because they were
(39:50):
just saying, like, oh, maybe she's in shock from the surgery. Now,
this was atypical because usually once it's done in a
child this age with no complications, it's like they usually
could get them off of it pretty fast. So they
were reassuring the parents though, like, eh, it's fine. You know,
we're just going to give her body a rest and
(40:10):
let her get over the shock of the surgery and
and you know it'll start her harder, start beating normally,
and then we'll get her off of it. So the
next day it didn't happen. Next day, it didn't happen.
So finally they were like, okay, we need to go
in and see what the problem is and why her
heart isn't starting. So they went in for a second
(40:31):
surgery and said that there was no explanation as to
what was happening. And then they told the parents like,
she can't be on this machine forever, like she's got
a couple days on it, but if she doesn't get
off of it, like we need to start discussing end
of life decisions. They started talking to the parents about
(40:54):
donating her organs to other patients and like basically telling
these parents that their daughter was about to die. So
she had a third surgery done, and they they finally
told her like she was going to need a permanent
artificial heart or a heart transplant to survive, like that
(41:17):
was the only way that she was going to live. Now,
this is another stressful situation for a family because you know,
people don't tend to live like full lives, like into
old age with a heart transplant. Sometimes they have to
have multiple transplants throughout their life. I mean, it's a lot,
(41:38):
but at least your child will be alive, so whatever.
But another thing is just you're saying that this kid's
going to die and she needs a heart transplant, Like
what if you can't get a heart in time. That's
another thing that's stressful. So like all of it, like
this is what the parents are going through. And they said,
we can't do those surgeries here anyway, so she's going
(42:01):
to have to get transferred to another hospital because we
don't have the capability of giving her an artificial heart
or heart transplant or anything like that. So then they
say to the parents, like, when we transfer her to
this other hospital, there's a high probability that she might
not even make it because she's so fragile right now,
and just moving her to another hospital might not be good,
(42:24):
so you might want to just keep her here and
hope that she comes out of this. And the parents
were like, yeah, no, I don't want her to be
here anymore, which thank god, because like something in their
instincts was telling them that something wasn't right, so they
took the risk had her transported to Seattle's Children's Hospital.
(42:46):
She was quoted as being like near death. Multiple procedures
done to remove blood clots. Finally, at this hospital they
do a scan on her and see that the new
valve that was put in not positioned properly. That's what
they said. With the skin, it didn't look like it
was in right, so they had to do another surgery
(43:09):
to figure out what was going on. And when those
surgeons went in, they saw that, yeah, the valve was
implanted upside down, like literally it was upside down. So
that was what the problem was. It was implanted upside down.
So they took out the upside down one, replaced it
(43:31):
with a new one in the proper position, and guess
what happened. Her heart started working immediately. She was taken
off the cardiac bypass no longer required the ACMO. She
was in critical condition, but was able to go home
to her parents. So she's home, healthy alive. Yes, her parents'
medical bills are totaling more than three point three five
(43:54):
million dollars and they are suing the hospital for seventeen
million dollars in DAMA, I am one hundred percent for
this lawsuit. I don't think it's nearly enough. This is
such bullshit and it's actually alarming to me that there's
a certain because like, if this kid died, I don't know,
(44:18):
I mean, the she wouldn't necessary if I don't know.
It's hard to say, because if you do die of
complications from a surgery, it is considered a report reportable
case to the medical examiner. But if the medical examiner
felt that this was a known complication of the surgery,
like they might not do the autopsy. And honestly, like
(44:40):
when we do autopsies on people that have certain surgical
procedures done, like I'm pretty sure if I was looking
at a heart and the artificial valve was was sewn
in upside down, I would notice it and be like, Yeah,
this doesn't look right. But we also aren't surgeons, so
we don't one hundred percent know like this exactly right,
(45:01):
Like we could just document it and take pictures of
it and stuff, but there's a chance that this little
girl could have died and nobody would have known about this,
And it just scares you because you're just like, well,
how many times has this happened before, and not just
with children, but with adults too, that you just like
wouldn't even know that something like this happened, and and like,
(45:23):
and I say it that they should get more than
seventeen million dollars because I don't know, Like this kid's
my kid's age, she's thirteen years old, she has a long,
long life ahead of her, and like that was a
lot of strain on her little body that she likely
will have complications from for the rest of her life.
I don't know how bad it's gonna be. I don't
(45:45):
know if she's gonna have to get more surgeries in
the future whatever, But like she needs a shit ton
of money for this, and her parents do too, for
just going through this, because it's just awful, and these
hospitals really just need to get hit hard too. The
doctor needs to never be able to pra this again.
I'm assuming and hoping that he was the one that
went in to check it to make sure that it
(46:06):
was Like, remember I said that they went in again
to see why her heart wasn't starting, Like, I hope
it was him, because if it was another doctor that
didn't notice it either, that's like really alarming. So all right,
so we're going to talk about this next case of
another child, and this time this happened in the UK
(46:30):
with a five year old girl. Another freaking awful story.
So her mom brings her to the doctor because she
has vaginal itching and discharge. And anybody that's had a
little girl knows, like sometimes they're like, oh my weavy
barns or something. You know, it happens, and most of
the time, I would say, actually all the time, when
it happens in a child, it's not the same as
(46:52):
when it happens in an adult. So an adult woman
gets vag itch and it's like immediately like okay, I
have a yeast infection, right, that's like the top of
your differential. But little kids don't get yeast infections because
they have low estrogen. The vaginal lining is thinner, there's
less glycagen available for the yeast to feed on, and
(47:13):
the vaginal pH is more neutral, so it's not an
environment that the yeast like to grow in. So it's
never something that should be in the differential. When a
five year old has an itch evolvave, right, it's just
it doesn't make any sense. So this kid, and like,
you're a mom, you're bringing your kid. So the mom
goes brings the kid to the doctor and they say, oh, yeah,
(47:36):
the kid has a yeast infection misdiagnosed as a yeast infection.
So they say, okay, we're gonna give her this suppository
to put inside of her vagina that dissolves and treats
the infection. And the mom's like, so the mom sees
this thing. I'm sure that you guys have seen things
(47:56):
like this. I think like Monostat makes a product that's
like a like a pearl or so, I don't know
what they're called, but it's a suppository and you put
it up inside your vage with like this tampon like
applicator thing, and it pushes it all the way up
like towards your cervix, and the medicine kind of like
leaks out inside and it treats a yeast infection. It's
(48:18):
great for adults. It works great for adults, but like
for a child. So the mom's just kind of like,
you're gonna stick this thing up inside of my daughter's vagina,
Like is that normal? Like the mom's questioning it because
she thinks that it's a little unusual, but she was
reassured that it was okay. So they put this suppository
(48:38):
into this five year old's vagina, and the little kid
within a couple minutes starts screaming in pain and starts
bleeding out of her vagina. The cream that came out
was like burning her her vaginal lining and her skin
as it was coming out. So okay, So if that
wasn't bad enough, now the child is like, so this
(49:03):
child screaming, freaking out, and the kids obviously like kicking,
not letting doctors like look down there, obviously that's what's
going to happen, and not allowing doctors to give an
internal exam to see what's going on and stuff. So
then all of a sudden, all of these safeguards started
(49:25):
getting raised. Because I don't know what the protocols are
in the UK, but I guess when there's a child
that has concerning genital symptoms of any kind, they automatically
start investigating the parents, right, I'm serious, right now, So
they decide that they're going to start questioning the parents
(49:48):
about possible sexual abuse of the child. So on top
of the mother just going through all this and seeing
her child in pain, now she's getting accused of being
involved in sexually abusing her child because they're ch child's
bleeding from her vagina when we know her child's bleeding
from her vagina because they gave her adult medication. So
(50:23):
I don't know what's exactly going to come of this case.
But again, this is just this is just like it's
scary to think that in twenty twenty six that this
kind of stuff is still happening. And when I guess
the biggest thing is is that when you're especially when
you're a mother or a father or any kind of
(50:45):
caregiver of a child, like if something doesn't seem right,
you really do have to question it. And maybe even
in that case, especially a second opinion, I mean the
first case, I don't even know what to say because
I'm assuming that I don't know, like, this is a
twelve year old girl that had a heart valve replaced.
(51:09):
I'm just assuming that. I I mean, it wasn't done
at a children's hospital. And I don't really know why,
because I certainly like our Children's hospital in Philadelphia is
just like the best place ever. I wouldn't take my
child anywhere else. I just really wouldn't. I mean, I'm
lucky to be in proximity to it obviously too, But yeah,
(51:30):
I mean, I just I just want a surgeon that's
always operating on children, Like that's just that's just what
I would say as advice. But in a situation like
this with this other child, like the mom, and I'm
not blaming the mom at all, trust me, because this
is all like why would the mom ever think that
this would happen? But like, if you're ever in this
situation with your child, like you could just be like,
(51:52):
you know what, let me go, let me go, like
find another doctor and ask them if that's okay too,
because I just think you need to take into consideration
just like putting like a device up inside a child's vagina,
is it up inside anybody's Vagina's traumatizing? Like think about
the first time you went to the gyn doctor it
(52:13):
was like freaking traumatizing, you know, like it's weird, it's awkward,
and like it's just nothing that you need to introduce
to a child unless it's completely necessary. So and then
obviously the pain and the burning and bleeding it came
with it, like you've now fucked this child up. Like,
let's just say that, like she's gonna have some kind
(52:33):
of emotional issues from that whole entire thing. It's not
something that she's gonna forget. It's gonna be like, you know,
it's just something that's not gonna go away. All right,
let's lighten things up a little bit, because I'm mad
about this situation with these kids. Okay, So I had
(52:55):
the story set aside for you guys before before this
started kind of going viral this week on social media.
The Huffington posted an article about what you should be
eating before anal and it was I like how the
article was written actually, because there were a lot of
different doctors getting interviewed that were just like, listen, this
(53:19):
is your gi track. It is meant for poop to
be coming out of it, and there's no way that
you can guarantee that that wouldn't happen. And if you're
having anal sex like that, that should just be like
an expectation that something might slip out at some point.
And I like that because that is realistic advice. Your
(53:43):
ractum actually isn't a holding container for poop. It usually
is like it's in there when it's ready to come out.
So I would say that it's probably like if you
want to make sure that that's all cleaned out, you'd
probably do better off, like doing an enema or something
prior HND. But like you just you can't say, because
(54:04):
different foods affect people in a different way. But they
they were saying of avoiding foods that trigger gas, bloating, diarrhea, urgency,
stomach upset. I mean, there's some people that like have
any kind of dairy ice cream, milk that that causes
like major bloating and farting. They're saying foods like spicy foods,
(54:26):
greasy foods, heavy dairy, alcohol, which is interesting because alcohol
would sometimes be involved with sexual acts like that, going
on dates and stuff like that. Caffeine and they say
suddenly eating a lot of fiber, and then they say
fiber is healthy, but increasing it too quickly can cause
(54:49):
gas bloating and cramps. So that's where we come into
this next story, which is with Hello Fresh, the food
delivery company. So I'm sure you guys have all seen this.
So for Pride Month this month, they made a post
that said, quote, we know eating isn't always a top
(55:11):
priority this month, but for those of you who are prepping,
we have an extensive lineup of high fiber recipes available
Happy Pride, and their discount code was bottoms up. So
I don't know when I first read this, I never
(55:34):
get I never got Hello Fresh. I usually get another
one of these sometimes, but when I read it, I
was just kind of like, ew, I don't want to
think about getting food from your company and butt sex
like and poop and like like I don't want food
and poop to be together. Like, I don't know, it
just kind of grossed me out. I just I just
(55:54):
was like, I don't really understand who thought that this
was a good idea. I mean, I get it from
a marketing standpoint, because the thing went viral, and I
guess that's what they want and all press is good
press and all that stuff. I don't know, So I
mean some people are like, oh, I'm canceling and blah blah,
(56:15):
like I don't know, it's just whatever. I don't I
personally don't think it's canceled worthy. I just like I
don't know that I would want to use their service
now because I just think, like, I don't know, I
just I don't want to think about poop when I'm
thinking about food and cooking. But whatever. So, but it's
interesting because they're saying they have an extensive lineup of
(56:37):
high fiber recipes, but this Huffington Post article from the
sex experts are saying, like, you might not want to
have a high fiber thing because it could cause a
sudden increase in gas, bloating and cramps. So I guess
you're just gonna have to do whatever you're gonna do.
Curious to know what you guys think about this, all right,
(57:00):
before we finish up, I'm just gonna get into some
of your comments and questions. Interestingly enough, so we haven't
been on Live in a couple of weeks either, So
these are from the May twentieth episode, and both comments
are for the same event that are the same you
(57:21):
know news story that we talked about, which was when
that guy was on the escalator and got caught in
the escalator and nobody helped him. So this first one
is from Tia. She says, I was listening to your
episode from May twentieth when you talked about the man
on the escalator in Massachusetts who was basically strangled to
death by his clothes that got caught up in the mechanisms. This,
(57:42):
amongst other stories you've covered where by standards don't bother
to help in a crisis or danger, reminds me of
a phenomenon I learned about. It's like one oh one
back in two thousand and nine. This is called the
bystandard effect. This happens when something happens when there's a
lot of people around and everyone just assumes that someone
else will handle it, but no one does. You know what,
I actually feel like I've heard this before, So thanks
(58:04):
for writing in because this is really interesting, so she says,
But of course, hearing about this situation, everyone is like,
why didn't anybody call for help or why didn't anybody
hit the emergency shut off? But as a society, no
one wants to be burdened or get involved, so they
all ignore it, assuming someone else will come do it,
and do what's right, And that's true. I've heard my
(58:25):
husband actually we had a situation once where we were
driving and we got out of the car and then
my husband the first thing that my husband did was
like did someone call nine one one? Did someone call
nine one one? And then the people are like no,
And then like it's just like really interesting because I
was like, that was your first question to ask that
(58:46):
rather than just like go in there. You know, I
don't know. I just thought it was ir He's like, Nicole,
no one will call nine one one. They'll be He's like,
he's like, you know how many times we just like
so happened to drive up and we walk into and
acci that's sitting there on the Admiral Wilson Boulevard because
nobody called nine one one, and we're like, did anyone
call this in? Like you guys have to call this
(59:07):
in so people could come out and help you. So
it is true. It's definitely a thing. Okay. This one
is from an anonymous listener. I grew up close to Somerville,
and I'm not surprised no one called when someone was
stuck on the escalator. It's basically in Boston, mass And
although it has been really gentrified in the last few years.
It's always been a grifty part of the city. Most
(59:28):
of the people riding the train keep their head down
and don't make eye contact unless it's after a Bruins
game and they're all lubricated and happy if they won.
That's funny, all right. Our final question is from Timika Nicole.
How was it experiencing Maria's birth. Well, I'm gonna leave
(59:48):
a lot of that until when Maria comes back, so
she could fully describe the whole experience, and then I
could describe the whole experience from my perspective. I you
have to say that when I walked in, I was
ignorantly excited about watching childbirth because I never got to
(01:00:10):
watch it from like obviously it was happening to me,
and they would be like, do you want a mirror?
Do you want to look? And I'm like, fuck, no,
I don't want to look. Thank God I didn't look,
because if I ever saw my vagina looking like that,
I'd be traumatized for life. But I wanted. I just
wanted to see it. I never you know, like we're
working in pathology, you don't get to work with live patients.
(01:00:31):
I never just got to go on the floor and
like see a baby be born and stuff, and especially
since it was going to be my grandchild, I thought
it was going to be cool, and I didn't really
like mentally prepare for like my child Maria being my
child being in pain like that and like not being
able to help her and stuff was just fucking awful.
(01:00:53):
So and just like the whole it was just like
a very high stress situation for for multiple days in
a row. So I'm glad it's over. But one fun
fact is is that I ended up getting shingles right
after that, so I'll talk to you guys about that
more later too. But it just was proof that my
(01:01:14):
body went through like a shit ton of extreme stress
and like just couldn't handle it. I mean, like, I'm
forty six years old and have shingles, so which sucks
because I can't hold the baby right now. But we'll
talk about that a little bit more. I might do
a post on it in the grocer room or something
like that. But yeah, it was it was traumatizing, and
(01:01:36):
obviously it was traumatizing for her, but like it's her story,
so I'm sure she'll want to talk. We'll probably just
do like a whole episode on it, honestly, when when
she's when she's feeling better and getting back to work
and stuff like that. All right, guys, well, thank you
so much. Sorry you had to listen to me rant
the whole entire episode. We will have a special guest
(01:01:58):
on later in the week and and hopefully in the
coming weeks until Maria gets back. We'll see you guys tomorrow.
Thank you for listening to Mother Knows Death. As a reminder,
my training is as a pathologist's assistant. I have a
master's level education and specialize in anatomy and pathology education.
(01:02:19):
I am not a doctor, and I have not diagnosed
or treated anyone dead or alive without the assistance of
a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website, and social
media accounts are designed to educate and inform people based
on my experience working in pathology, so they can make
healthier decisions regarding their life and well being. Always remember
(01:02:43):
that science is changing every day and the opinions expressed
in this episode are based on my knowledge of those
subjects at the time of publication. If you are having
a medical problem, have a medical question, or having a
medical emergency, please contact your physician, or visit an urgent
care center, emergency room, or hospital. Please rate, review, and
(01:03:06):
subscribe to Mother Knows Death on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or
anywhere you get podcasts. Thanks
Mother Knows Death starring Nicole and Jemmy and Maria qk Hi. Everyone.
Welcome to Mother Knows Death. You guys have me solo
today after our little maternity break. We plan on having
some guests fill in for Maria while she's taking care
of our perfect little man, so stay tuned for that.
(00:29):
We hope you enjoyed some classic Mother Knows Death episodes
while we were on break, and of course we missed
you guys. Don't forget We're also always having additional episodes
on in the Gross Room. Maria actually made an appearance
right after she had the baby in one of our
Grossroom episodes. She wanted to beat out Kylie Kelsey for
(00:52):
doing a podcast episode postpartum, and she was actually still
in the hospital when she made her appearance, so that
was really cool if you guys want to check that out.
So on today's episode, I'm going to talk about a
mom who has been charged with murder in connection with
the alcohol related death of our teenage daughter, a McDonald's
(01:13):
employee that was assaulted with hot oil. An update on
a story we brought to you a few months ago
involving an influencer who died on vacation with her new fiance,
and two medical malpractice cases involving children, specifically little girls.
Next after that, we're going to talk about the anal
sex diet and why it seems to be all over
(01:36):
the news this week, and then we'll finish up the
episode with your comments, questions, and emails. All that and
more on today's episode. So first, we're going to get
started with these alcohol charges with this Colorado mother. Her
name is Gretchen Leanne Ryan. She's a fifty five year
old woman who has now been arrested charged with second
(01:59):
degree and is being held on five hundred thousand dollars
cash only bond because her sixteen year old daughter named
Grace Ryan died. She was found unresponsive in their home
on March ninth and was pronounced dead at the scene.
(02:20):
So at first, obviously, any single time that you have
a child that is found dead at home, under any circumstances,
they're going to want to do an autopsy. Of course,
unless the child, it's not always done. So let's say,
for example, the child had a history of chronic health
(02:41):
problems and then you know, multiple heart surgeries. Let's say,
for example, if a doctor was able to say Okay,
this kid had open heart surgery twice and I've been
treating her for years, and I expected her to die
from this, then they wouldn't need to do an autopsy.
But when there's a child that's sixteen years old that
(03:02):
just dies, because kids don't just die for no reason,
there's always going to be an autopsy done in a
situation like that. So the autopsy's done and the medical
examiner finds some very unusual finding to find in a
sixteen year old kid, noting that her liver seemed to
(03:23):
be abnormally fatty for a child of her age. So
you can get a fatty liver for multiple reasons. You
can get it with obesity, you can get it with
some autoimmune conditions. You also can get it from using alcohol.
And what happens is the heavy alcohol use damages the
(03:48):
liver cells and causes fat to accumulate in the cells,
and that's called, uh, you know, that's a fatty liver
steato happatitis. And what happens is that that's considered damage
to the liver, but it's not permanent damage. So, for example,
if you're someone right now that drinks a lot, and
then you've gone to the doctor and they tell you
(04:10):
that you have fatty liver. You can stop drinking and
it will reverse itself. It's not too far gone, but
it's also enough damage that you're seeing that the alcohol
is actually starting to take an effect on your body.
This is not something that happens overnight. This is a
chronic process. So it's very, very unusual to see in
(04:34):
a child at sixteen years old, especially if they don't
have a history of any kind of underlying liver disease,
a natural liver disease, or if the child's been having
obesity for their entire life. So that was something that
was noted at autopsy, and then other things that were
noted at autopsy were actually what her cause of death was.
(04:56):
So she had something called aspiration pneumonia. So we did
talk about that a little bit. I don't know if
it was on mother Nose Death or in the gross
room or one of our lectures, but with Matthew Perry,
because they saw signs of aspiration pneumonia with Matthew Perry
as well at autopsy. And if you remember, Matthew Perry
(05:19):
also had a history of being an alcoholic. So this
is a common thing that could happen with people who
are abusing alcohol chronically. So heavy alcohol use increases the
risk of aspiration pneumonia because it suppresses the gag reflex
and cough reflexes, and drinking a lot just also impairs
(05:40):
your immune immune function. It makes it easier. You know,
when your immune system isn't working great, you're just at
an increased risk of getting all kinds of weird infections.
So think about this like you're an alcoholic, you're drinking
a lot. Sometimes you're drinking so much that it's making
you vomit. So contents that are coming from your stomach
(06:00):
and are coming from your mouth are now getting breathed
back into the lungs, and that's exactly what happens. It
could cause bacteria from the mouth to get into the lungs.
And in Matthew Perry's case, they actually saw plant material
within his lungs, so it means that he at some
point vomited and then inhaled something out of his stomach contents.
(06:24):
And it is kind of it's I mean, it's cool scientifically,
obviously it's not cool when anybody's going through this, But
when you see aspiration pneumonia, you under the microscope of
the lungs. So you look and you see the normal
lung tissue, and then all of a sudden, you're going
to see all of this inflammation around plant cells, which
(06:46):
should never be inside of the body because we're not
We don't have plant cells in our body. We have
you know, animal human cells in our body. So that
means like let's say you eat a cheese steak with
onions and you vomit it up and you end up
aspiating it. You could actually see skeletal muscle cells from
the meat under the microscope, and you could see plant
(07:08):
cells from the onions under the microscope. So it's super
like a cool finding to see microscopically at autopsy, but
again a very very unusual thing to see it, especially
in a child. Now that being said, if the child
is born with some kind of a neurological defect or
some kind of problem with their gi system or their
(07:31):
throat in general, it's not impossible for a kid to
have this, but it's totally abnormal to see this in
a child that doesn't have any underlying health conditions. So
because of this finding at autopsy, her manner of death
was considered to be natural. That's what the medical examiner
ruled it. And the reason that it was ruled natural
(07:54):
is because it wasn't because of an accident. It wasn't
a suicide, it wasn't a homicide. So and pneumonia is
a natural medical process, so that doesn't necessarily mean that
a parent can't get in trouble for how this child died.
(08:15):
I'm going to give you an example. Actually, when I
was rotating at the medical Examiner's office, we had an
autopsy on this little two year old girl who ended
up dying from pneumonia, and she the reason that she
died from the pneumonia after the investigation went through, is
because they found out that her family was some kind
(08:35):
of weird religion that didn't believe in giving children medication.
So the medical examiner really believed that the only reason
that this child died was because she had some kind
of a lung infection that just never got treated with
antibiotics or anything, which allowed her to get so sick.
She was never brought to the hospital even when she
(08:56):
was sick and ended up dying at home from it.
So even though that's technically a natural death from the pneumonia,
the parents still got charged with it because it was
their fault that she died, and this is exactly what
happened in this particular case. So once they did so,
they see all this stuff at autopsy, and of course
(09:17):
they're going to do an investigation anyway, just because there
shouldn't be a sixteen year old child just being dead.
At the house, they found one hundred and seventy three
empty liquor bottles underneath of her bed and in her
closet that they found out that the mother was regularly
getting for her one hundred and seventy three empty bottles.
(09:40):
So I don't know if they were normal sized bottles
or little bottle, it doesn't matter. That's absolutely ridiculous. So
that was one thing that they saw. Another point that
I want to bring out when I was talking about
the autopsy and the when I said that she had
this chronic liver disease. Most of the time, when you
(10:02):
have a child who's sixteen years old that dies of
an alcohol related death, it's usually acute, meaning they drank
a bit. They did like a binge drinking thing. They
drank a bunch of alcohol and had acute alcohol poisoning,
and that's how they died. So this one is more
disturbing because it shows a very long pattern of what
(10:24):
was happening, and we'll talk about that a little bit
more with some of the investigation. So, in addition to
the one hundred and seventy three empty liquor bot bottles
that were found under her bed, they also did searches
of her devices and saw that she was regularly consuming
alcohol and marijuana with her mother. She was hiding the
(10:47):
drinking from her father. Her symptoms were getting worse, and
the mother was not doing anything about it. So there
were text message exchanges back and forth describing these worsening
symptoms that she was having, including vomiting, difficulty walking, and
she needed to use diapers because she couldn't hold in
(11:08):
her poop. She literally was wearing diapers, and in these
text messages she was expressing to her mother that she
thought that she was going to die and was asking
her mother for help. I mean, this is just so awful.
This is such a such a bizarre case of abuse,
but it's clear, it's clear abuse. Another interesting part of
(11:31):
this story was that she was being isolated. So apparently
she was in ninth grade and her mother took her
out of school and enrolled her in online classes, so
she only ended up completing one semester of ninth grade.
She wasn't participatating in any outdoor activities like sports or
(11:52):
art class or anything like that, so essentially you're just
thinking about what's happening in this house. It's like you
have this fifty five year old woman who's not with
the father, living with the sixteen year old child that's
not really leaving the house and is just getting high
and drunk with her all the time, to the point
(12:13):
where this child develops alcoholism. I mean, it's affecting her
body so bad. She these findings that you're seeing at
autopsy are something that you would find in an alcoholic
at sixteen years old, which is so disturbing. So I
am happy, obviously that she's getting charged with second degree murder,
(12:34):
although I mean, like, I understand that the legal system
is definitely different than what all of us think in
our heads, and one thing that just annoys the shit
out of me with cases like this is that she's
being held on a five hundred thousand dollars cash bond.
I know that given this situation, it's unlikely that she's
(12:55):
going to be able to come up with this bond.
But I just think that there's a absolutely no reason
that this person needs to see society again, So like
why even give her the option. I always get scared
because there's always these weird groups that have a lot
of money that want to give money to causes for
certain things that just make no sense to most people.
(13:18):
So so anyway, we'll keep an eye on that and
see what happens. As of right now, she's only been charged,
so she hasn't been convicted, but I think that evidence
is pretty strong and hopefully this daughter definitely gets justice.
This woman's disgusting. This week's episodes are brought to you
(13:48):
by The Grocer, and for this week's high profile death
dis section, we talked about Kimberly Chippewa. You might remember
she was the twelve year old girl that was involved
in a bully in stead at school a few months
ago and was involved in a fight. She was trying
to actually stand up for her sister and was hit
on the head with a metal water bottle and she
(14:11):
died a few days later. So we talked about how
there was a homicide investigation underway and then this shocking
information came out within the past couple of weeks that
the autopsy was ruled a natural death. So we really
go through that whole case in the grossroom and try
to figure out how exactly the medical examiner rules a
(14:34):
case where there was a girl who had a traumatic
blunt force injury and somehow her death was ruled a
natural manner of death. And then so we go through
like what we're going to look through at the autopsy,
and honestly, after doing the whole entire post, I agree
(14:54):
with the medical examiner, so you might want to read
that and check out why I say that. And then
we have a couple really disturbing videos in the gross room.
One involves a snake that ate a person, and this
week's Forensic Friday was on a five thousand year old
autopsy and how that information is being used to help
(15:16):
solve cold cases today. We also had a couple interesting
requests from members in the gross room this week, going
over some scenes that happened in pulp fiction and if
they could be medically real, if they're fiction, or if
they're things that could actually happen. So we go through
those scenes in the movie and then talk about exactly
(15:38):
what or what would not happen in real life. Head
over to the grossroom dot com. Now, next story, we're
going to talk about an incident that happened at McDonald's
in Yuba City, California. This is a twenty year old
(16:00):
guy who was the shift manager. His name is Jacob Smith.
He was apparently just sitting at his desk getting ready
to do some kind of paperwork and he turns out
of the corner of his eye and one of his
coworkers threw hot oil on him. They still don't understand
why this guy did it. He's twenty three years old.
(16:23):
He fled the scene and was later arrested on multiple
felony charges, including assault. They still just say like they
have no idea why he did it. Now assuming, I mean,
I'm pretty sure that we could all say I never
worked at McDonald's exactly, but I worked at Boston Market,
so it's equally as a shitty job right when I
(16:43):
was a teenager, and I feel like, I mean, this
was back in the nineties. Of course, I got paid
like four twenty four an hour for twenty five an hour,
whatever it was, and I feel like they didn't treat
me very nice, and it was a shitty it was
just shitty fast food job, right, so you could see.
(17:03):
I mean, I think I ended up like walking out
of there and quitting because I was like, f this, right,
So you could see that people get heated at jobs
like this, and this guy was his boss, So I
understand you getting mad at your boss or whatever like that,
but crossing the line of doing something like that is
just really bizarre, especially because it didn't seem like it
was it was in the moment. It's not like they
(17:27):
were having an argument and the guy just kind of
reached over and grabbed this oil and maybe they were
fistfighting or something like that. Like the guy was sitting
at his desk, So whatever had happened wasn't exactly right
in the moment. So when you actually see the pictures
from the articles of this guy's injuries, it just looks awful,
(17:50):
Like his face is just completely blistered and it just
looks so painful. Anybody that's ever been burned knows that
that burns hurt so bad. And one thing I always
joke about is that, you know, back in the day,
when I used to do my hair all the time
and curl it and things like that, with the crawling iron.
I always used to say that getting burned with the
(18:12):
crawling iron is like one of the worst pains in
the world. I mean, I've had natural childbirth three times,
and just if you send your neck like that, it's
just like some it's almost like a tooth pain or something.
It's just constantly burning because it's just enough to be
in that sweet spot where it hasn't done enough nerve
damage and it's just making all of your nerves really angry.
(18:34):
And we'll talk about all the different kinds of degrees
of burns and how they're diagnosed, but as far as
his injuries go, he was diagnosed with second degree burns
to his face, neck, arm, and back, affecting a large
portion of his body. The doctors say they're trying to
reduce the burn area and avoid skin grafting, so that's
(18:57):
something that might still have to be talked about this point,
but it seems like he probably has more superficial burns
than deeper burns that would definitely require skin graphing, but
those that actually might be worse. We're gonna talk about
the levels of the burns because those actually end up
being the most painful type. So first let's talk about
(19:21):
how how they determine a degree burn anyway, So you
always hear about first degree, second degree, third degree, fourth degree,
like what does that mean? So a first degree burn
I would describe as sunburn, like a normal sunburn, not
not when you have blisters and things like that, just
like a normal sunburn, which also can be super super
(19:43):
painful too. Then you have second degree burns, So this
is what this guy was diagnosed with. So you have
different layers to your body. The outermost layer is called
the epidermis. That's the outermost layer of skin. Beneath that
is the dermis beneath that is subcut taneous tissue, which
is like fat and stuff, and then you have muscle bone.
(20:04):
So it goes in layers like that, and that's how
they determine the degree burns based upon what layer gets
burned through. So when you have a second degree burn,
it means that it went through the entire epidermis or
the top layer of skin. And I'm sure everyone listening
to me right now has had a second degree burn
at some point. You could get it from cooking oil
(20:26):
splashing on your hand. Speaking of working at Boston Market,
I had multiple ones on my arms from just reaching
in and touching something and having the hot oven or
the hot display case burn the top of my arm,
curling iron, some people have suburn that bed, boiling water anything, right,
(20:49):
So you guys have all experienced like a blister from
getting burnt. It's completely awful. So you could have a
superficial part. They're also called partial thickness burns, So it
could go through some of that dermos layer, or it
could go through more of that dermis layer. And actually
the unfortunate part is when it goes deeper. That's when
(21:12):
you're at this risk now to having to get skin grafts.
But the benefit to that burn is that it burns
through the nerve endings and it's not as painful, whereas
when you have a more superficial burn, second degree burn
like that, you might be able to heal, but your
nerves are feeling it like really really strong. So either
(21:38):
way and obviously when you get burned, it's not even
So one of my lectures I show the different degrees
of burns, and a lot of people have multiple degrees
of burns on one arm or something like that because
it goes thicker on one area than the other. So
this guy is just in extreme pain and it's just
really terrible, like when you look at it, you could
(21:59):
tell well. So then a third degree burn is when
it goes through all of the layers, so it goes
through the epidermis and the dormist completely and starts going
into the underlying subcutaneous or fat tissue. And then a
fourth degree burn is when it goes all the way
through all of the layers of skin, subcutaneous tissue, into
the muscle, and into the bone. So we said that
(22:23):
he had a large portion of his body burned face, neck, arms, back.
So typically when a patient goes to the hospital and
has these large burns on their body, they give a percentage.
So sometimes you'll hear like thirty percent of his body
was burned or something like that. So when they do percentages,
(22:43):
the general rule of thumb is if it's ten percent
or more of the body that's burned, you're going to
at least be going to some kind of burn center
or getting a consultation by a burn center. Because the
thing is is it's not just the pain with your skin.
Your skin is your largest organ of your body and
it functions. It has a lot of functions for fluid regulation,
(23:07):
and also just for keeping your body temperature normal, which
is really important because if your body temperature doesn't stay
it around ninety eight point six degrees, your organs aren't
going to function properly and it could actually end up
killing you. So they want to make sure that you
have enough skin that is left over and is untouched
(23:30):
that's functioning properly so your body can still continue to
work properly. But they say that once you have twenty
percent or more of your body burned, then you could
have massive fluid loss, shock, hypothermia, and you're at an
increased risk of infections because that's that layer of skin
(23:53):
is our barrier against the rest of the world, along
with multiple other barriers, but it's our biggest one. The
skin is considered our largest organ. So you're gonna get
a consultation and be in a burn center if more
than twenty percent of your body is burned, so you know,
they look at your whole body as one hundred percent,
and then they determine based upon when where your burns
(24:15):
are located. And another thing is the location is really
important because especially in this guy, I can't exactly see
what his damages are, but it looks like the guy
poured the oil on the top of his head and
it kind of dripped down his face. So now you
have to take into consideration other organs that you have
(24:39):
that can get affected, like your eyes, which you don't
need your eyes to live, but you kind of need
your eyes to live right like they're really important. So
that's something that you always want to take into consideration
with these cases. But another thing is your mouth and
your airway. So if any reason that this oil somehow
got into his mouth and his airway it caused such
(25:01):
extreme swelling that that could have really been a risk
to his life too. So that's another thing to take
into consideration. And then the other thing is is this
talk about just different kinds of burns and they affected
body differently. So I don't know if you guys remember
we did talk about it. I believe we talked about
(25:22):
it on this show, but we definitely did a post
on it in the Grosser Room within the past couple
of weeks about that woman who fell into the manhole
in New York City a couple weeks ago. So she
died from a scalding burn, which is just boiling hot
water essentially, but you can get burned in all different
kinds of ways. You could get burned with hot water,
(25:44):
You could get burned with steam, you could get burned
with flames, you could get burned with chemicals. In this case,
he got burned with hot oil, which could be extra
nasty because the hot oil doesn't slip off the skin
like hot water does, so it just kind of sits
there and coats the skin and just remains hot and
(26:06):
just essentially keeps cooking the skin while it's sitting there.
It's just awful. So depending on how you obtain the
burn also depends on how what your treatment is and
what your outcome is. So well, we'll stay updated with
this story and see what happens. Hopefully, this guy, I mean,
(26:27):
he's twenty three years old, the suspect, so it's it
could be possible that he has some kind of an
underlying psychiatric condition. You would you would actually hope, I
hope in cases like this that they say, oh, this
guy has schizophrenia. It just would It would just make
me so much happier to hear that rather than just oh,
(26:47):
he's just a psychopath and doing something like that. Okay,
our next story is we have an update on Ashley Janey.
She is a thirty one year old lifestyle influencer that
had over eighty thousand Instagram followers. If you remember, we
(27:07):
talked about this case on Mother Nose Death End in
the Gross Room within the past couple of months. What
happened was, so she she's one of these influencers that
was like super beautiful and taking like really pretty photos
all the time of these trips that she was doing
things like that. She so she goes on this trip
(27:28):
with her fiance or her boyfriend at the time, I
should say, to Zanzibar, and it looked like a really
fancy expensive vacation, like a Safari kind of thing, and
just like villas and just really really nice trip that
you know, you go out on your balcony, you could
like feed a draffe and shit like it just was.
(27:51):
It looked really really nice. So she goes on this
trip with her boyfriend named Joe McCann and you know,
they're they're influencers, so they're posting all the time about
they're doing this and they're doing that, and this is
just like another case to just say just stop looking
at influencers and thinking that their lives are so great
(28:11):
because everybody's just going to post the best part of
everything and not what else is going on. So they're
on this trip and apparently her and the so the
boyfriend does propose to her during this trip, and there's
a post of like, oh my god, we got engaged
and blah blah blah. So everything seems to be going fine.
(28:32):
At some point, they got in an argument that was
so bad that the hotel staff had to come and
handle it and say, we're separating you guys in completely
different villas because you guys can't be in the same
room together. So to me, that seems like it was
pretty significant. It was either like a lot of screaming,
(28:53):
possibly hitting, like whatever that guests were complaining and the
hotel had to take action. I mean, really think about that,
because that's kind of a lot. So they get separated
and she calls her mom and says that they got
in an argument, but the mom just that's all the
mom really knows about it. She doesn't even know really
(29:14):
any more details about it. So now the couple is
in separate rooms and around nine o'clock at night, the
hotel staff was doing their normal evening duties, which include
pest control, which I guess that happens in that part
of the world, and just check in the room, you know,
they do that at hotels all the time, just make
(29:36):
sure the beds cleaned or whatever. And the room was dark,
so this staff member knocked and got no response. They
finally used the key, turned on the lights, and they
ended up hearing a loud thump and they found her
unresponsive and she was suspended from a clothing rail with
a garment belt provided in the hotel room. So I
(30:00):
I'm assuming that that's you know, when you go to
like a fancy or hotel and they give you robes.
I'm assuming it was like one of the belts from
a robe or something like that. So she was found
hanging there, and initially to everyone involved, the investigators, police,
they thought that it looked even hotel staff. Everybody thought
(30:20):
that it looked like a suicide attempt. And I say
attempted because she was still alive. So probably when that
hotel staff member heard that thump, it was like something
that she was actively in the middle of doing. And
they found her with a ligature around her neck. But
she had had oxygen cut off for long enough to
(30:42):
be unconscious but not long enough to be dead. So
she's brought to the hospital still alive, and the fiance
calls the mom and says, hey, like something happened and
she went to the hospital. I think, and like, I
just feel so bad for her parents, because I think, like,
you know, I'm American, I'm here. I don't really even
(31:05):
like never really traveled outside of the country. I don't
really you know, like some of that would make me
very nervous for my kid to just be going over
there and then like something happening to them medically over
there and just not knowing, Like if my kid was
in London or Italy or something, I wouldn't worry because
I just I know a lot of people from there,
and I know their healthcare is kind of the same
(31:26):
as ours, and like, but there's all these other trips
that you want to take to these different areas of
the world, and you really don't know how things are.
So just to get a call and say that your
child's going to the hospital in another country is just
really must have been very terrifying for her, and just
feeling out of control and not being able to talk
to them and stuff, and just having to rely on
the person that they were with. So anyway, they end
(31:51):
up the mom ends up talking to him and that's it.
She doesn't really hear from him again. So she starts
calling the hotel and saying like, hi, like I haven't
heard from him. My daughter's in the hospital. And the
hotel tells the mother like, yes, she's dead, Like what,
Oh my god, I can't even imagine this poor mom
(32:14):
going through this. So then it gets like, I guess
this is why there started being a lot of public
speculation and like this story went completely viral of like
attacking this fiance and stuff because he kind of, like
you would think in a normal situation that he would
have been like on the phone with the mom the
entire time and called her right away when this happened,
(32:35):
and like he didn't, and they had to hear it
from the hotel, which was just super weird. So anyway,
once they did the investigation, they they determined, so they
just came out with recently that they determined that her
even though they initially thought that her manner of death
was suicide, they say, Okay, our final determination is like yes,
(32:57):
after the whole investigation, the autopsy, she did die by suicide,
she killed herself. So first at the autopsy. So when
you are looking at a person that has a ligature
around their neck, there's general rules for people who kill themselves,
(33:18):
and then people who have a homicidal strangulation, they look different.
Usually at autopsy. You always say usually because there's always
exceptions to every single rule, but in general, if a
person is hanging from above and their body is suspended,
the ligature mark is going to be more of a
V shape because it's going to start around the neck
(33:42):
and then it's going to go up around the ears
where the body is lying on that the weight of
the body is on that ligature, right, it's going to
give a very specific look. Whereas think about if you
a homicidal strangulation, that would be if you go behind
a person and put let's say we use the same
(34:03):
item the belt from the from the robe around their neck,
it would be more horizontal across their neck. So that's
one thing that you look at it and say like, Okay,
this looks like this person did it themselves, and this
is this ligature mark is consistent with what we see
in suicidal hanging deaths. Right, So that was number one.
(34:26):
Number two they're in a super fancy hotel, they have cameras,
they have this, they have that. And then number three,
one of the biggest things was the digital investigation. So
initially her fiance obviously because he was just with her
before and they were in a fight, he wasn't a suspect.
He was always treated as a witness. But they did
(34:48):
say like, we're just gonna kind of hold onto your
passport until this investigation is done, just to make sure
that you're a cleared kind of thing, which I think
was smart in this case. And just because he didn't
call the mom and he didn't issue a statement for
a couple days, people were like, oh my god, this
(35:08):
guy did it, even though the family. The family didn't.
It was I guess it was weird for the family
because you know, you always have that person in your
life that's dating a complete douchebag that you wouldn't be
surprised if they did something like this, And I don't
think that the parents had that kind of feeling about
(35:29):
the guy. So but like, what else made sense? Right,
So I think that they were kind of didn't really understand,
But I never got the vibe that they were like, oh,
he was so bad. We never wanted them to be together.
I don't know, I didn't get that vibe from them.
But really, once they started looking into her phone and
(35:49):
her digital stuff, it was like, once again, we have
She was looking on an AI chatbot asking about how
lethal valume was, She had Farewell messages on her phone,
and they definitely think that by everything that they found
on her phone, that she had been struggling with depression.
(36:10):
And this is a really good reminder too, like her
mom and dad when they were interviewed and everything, and
her family just are you know, she's so happy, she's
doing these trips, she's got this fiance, blah blah blah,
like all this stuff, and you always don't know what's
going on behind the scenes in someone's life, maybe even
(36:30):
with your child. There are people that have depression that
are highly functioning and they go on and do their
social media videos and look one hundred percent healthy and fine,
and then they go in a hole when they're done,
like it's it's just nothing that you could you could
always see in a person. So unfortunately that's how that
(36:52):
went down. And I don't think that there's going to
be any further investigation into her death. All right, So
(37:14):
now we have two different back to back stories involving
medical malpractice with little girls. And since I own little girls,
it is upsetting because you just put yourself in these parents' situation,
in these children's situation. So the first one is coming
out of Oregon Health and Science University. So there was
(37:37):
a girl I guess she was because now she's thirteen,
and I guess at the time she was probably twelve. Like,
let's just say, like a twelve thirteen year old kid
had to get open heart surgery to get a valve replacement.
So I couldn't find why she needed a valve replacement
of her heart, but it's probably something congenital, like something
(37:59):
that she was born with. Her valve didn't work properly,
and they decided, okay, you're gonna have to get a
new valve on your heart. Which people get valve replacements
all the time, and of course it's there's complications with
every single surgery, but when you're doing a heart valve
replacement in a twelve year old who's otherwise healthy, you
(38:20):
should pretty much expect that they're going to recover from
this surgery if they have no underlying things, no other
problems with the heart, like young healthy people really should
just like bounce back from something like this fairly quickly.
So the initial procedure is done at this Oregon Health
and Science University, and sometimes when you're getting heart surgery,
(38:46):
they have to put you on something called a cardiac
bypass machine, and that is basically like they're pumping the
blood into this machine outside of the heart that is
putting oxygen and it's putting oxygenated blood like back into
your body and circulating, so it's just working as your heart,
(39:07):
but outside of your body while the doctors are working
on your heart. And then after the surgery's done, you
switch them back over to their real heart and take
them off this machine. It's just kind of like a
temporary heart while they're doing the surgery, so they can,
you know, they could stop the heart if they need
to or whatever they need to do in order to
(39:27):
replace this valve or do whatever. So this is a
normal thing that they do with open heart surgery. And
after the surgery, the doctors told the parents that the
procedure went well, but she wasn't able to be taken
off of this heart machine, which is called Ekmo. They
weren't able to take off of it because they were
(39:50):
just saying, like, oh, maybe she's in shock from the surgery. Now,
this was atypical because usually once it's done in a
child this age with no complications, it's like they usually
could get them off of it pretty fast. So they
were reassuring the parents though, like, eh, it's fine. You know,
we're just going to give her body a rest and
(40:10):
let her get over the shock of the surgery and
and you know it'll start her harder, start beating normally,
and then we'll get her off of it. So the
next day it didn't happen. Next day, it didn't happen.
So finally they were like, okay, we need to go
in and see what the problem is and why her
heart isn't starting. So they went in for a second
(40:31):
surgery and said that there was no explanation as to
what was happening. And then they told the parents like,
she can't be on this machine forever, like she's got
a couple days on it, but if she doesn't get
off of it, like we need to start discussing end
of life decisions. They started talking to the parents about
(40:54):
donating her organs to other patients and like basically telling
these parents that their daughter was about to die. So
she had a third surgery done, and they they finally
told her like she was going to need a permanent
artificial heart or a heart transplant to survive, like that
(41:17):
was the only way that she was going to live. Now,
this is another stressful situation for a family because you know,
people don't tend to live like full lives, like into
old age with a heart transplant. Sometimes they have to
have multiple transplants throughout their life. I mean, it's a lot,
(41:38):
but at least your child will be alive, so whatever.
But another thing is just you're saying that this kid's
going to die and she needs a heart transplant, Like
what if you can't get a heart in time. That's
another thing that's stressful. So like all of it, like
this is what the parents are going through. And they said,
we can't do those surgeries here anyway, so she's going
(42:01):
to have to get transferred to another hospital because we
don't have the capability of giving her an artificial heart
or heart transplant or anything like that. So then they
say to the parents, like, when we transfer her to
this other hospital, there's a high probability that she might
not even make it because she's so fragile right now,
and just moving her to another hospital might not be good,
(42:24):
so you might want to just keep her here and
hope that she comes out of this. And the parents
were like, yeah, no, I don't want her to be
here anymore, which thank god, because like something in their
instincts was telling them that something wasn't right, so they
took the risk had her transported to Seattle's Children's Hospital.
(42:46):
She was quoted as being like near death. Multiple procedures
done to remove blood clots. Finally, at this hospital they
do a scan on her and see that the new
valve that was put in not positioned properly. That's what
they said. With the skin, it didn't look like it
was in right, so they had to do another surgery
(43:09):
to figure out what was going on. And when those
surgeons went in, they saw that, yeah, the valve was
implanted upside down, like literally it was upside down. So
that was what the problem was. It was implanted upside down.
So they took out the upside down one, replaced it
(43:31):
with a new one in the proper position, and guess
what happened. Her heart started working immediately. She was taken
off the cardiac bypass no longer required the ACMO. She
was in critical condition, but was able to go home
to her parents. So she's home, healthy alive. Yes, her parents'
medical bills are totaling more than three point three five
(43:54):
million dollars and they are suing the hospital for seventeen
million dollars in DAMA, I am one hundred percent for
this lawsuit. I don't think it's nearly enough. This is
such bullshit and it's actually alarming to me that there's
a certain because like, if this kid died, I don't know,
(44:18):
I mean, the she wouldn't necessary if I don't know.
It's hard to say, because if you do die of
complications from a surgery, it is considered a report reportable
case to the medical examiner. But if the medical examiner
felt that this was a known complication of the surgery,
like they might not do the autopsy. And honestly, like
(44:40):
when we do autopsies on people that have certain surgical
procedures done, like I'm pretty sure if I was looking
at a heart and the artificial valve was was sewn
in upside down, I would notice it and be like, Yeah,
this doesn't look right. But we also aren't surgeons, so
we don't one hundred percent know like this exactly right,
(45:01):
Like we could just document it and take pictures of
it and stuff, but there's a chance that this little
girl could have died and nobody would have known about this,
And it just scares you because you're just like, well,
how many times has this happened before, and not just
with children, but with adults too, that you just like
wouldn't even know that something like this happened, and and like,
(45:23):
and I say it that they should get more than
seventeen million dollars because I don't know, Like this kid's
my kid's age, she's thirteen years old, she has a long,
long life ahead of her, and like that was a
lot of strain on her little body that she likely
will have complications from for the rest of her life.
I don't know how bad it's gonna be. I don't
(45:45):
know if she's gonna have to get more surgeries in
the future whatever, But like she needs a shit ton
of money for this, and her parents do too, for
just going through this, because it's just awful, and these
hospitals really just need to get hit hard too. The
doctor needs to never be able to pra this again.
I'm assuming and hoping that he was the one that
went in to check it to make sure that it
(46:06):
was Like, remember I said that they went in again
to see why her heart wasn't starting, Like, I hope
it was him, because if it was another doctor that
didn't notice it either, that's like really alarming. So all right,
so we're going to talk about this next case of
another child, and this time this happened in the UK
(46:30):
with a five year old girl. Another freaking awful story.
So her mom brings her to the doctor because she
has vaginal itching and discharge. And anybody that's had a
little girl knows, like sometimes they're like, oh my weavy
barns or something. You know, it happens, and most of
the time, I would say, actually all the time, when
it happens in a child, it's not the same as
(46:52):
when it happens in an adult. So an adult woman
gets vag itch and it's like immediately like okay, I
have a yeast infection, right, that's like the top of
your differential. But little kids don't get yeast infections because
they have low estrogen. The vaginal lining is thinner, there's
less glycagen available for the yeast to feed on, and
(47:13):
the vaginal pH is more neutral, so it's not an
environment that the yeast like to grow in. So it's
never something that should be in the differential. When a
five year old has an itch evolvave, right, it's just
it doesn't make any sense. So this kid, and like,
you're a mom, you're bringing your kid. So the mom
goes brings the kid to the doctor and they say, oh, yeah,
(47:36):
the kid has a yeast infection misdiagnosed as a yeast infection.
So they say, okay, we're gonna give her this suppository
to put inside of her vagina that dissolves and treats
the infection. And the mom's like, so the mom sees
this thing. I'm sure that you guys have seen things
(47:56):
like this. I think like Monostat makes a product that's
like a like a pearl or so, I don't know
what they're called, but it's a suppository and you put
it up inside your vage with like this tampon like
applicator thing, and it pushes it all the way up
like towards your cervix, and the medicine kind of like
leaks out inside and it treats a yeast infection. It's
(48:18):
great for adults. It works great for adults, but like
for a child. So the mom's just kind of like,
you're gonna stick this thing up inside of my daughter's vagina,
Like is that normal? Like the mom's questioning it because
she thinks that it's a little unusual, but she was
reassured that it was okay. So they put this suppository
(48:38):
into this five year old's vagina, and the little kid
within a couple minutes starts screaming in pain and starts
bleeding out of her vagina. The cream that came out
was like burning her her vaginal lining and her skin
as it was coming out. So okay, So if that
wasn't bad enough, now the child is like, so this
(49:03):
child screaming, freaking out, and the kids obviously like kicking,
not letting doctors like look down there, obviously that's what's
going to happen, and not allowing doctors to give an
internal exam to see what's going on and stuff. So
then all of a sudden, all of these safeguards started
(49:25):
getting raised. Because I don't know what the protocols are
in the UK, but I guess when there's a child
that has concerning genital symptoms of any kind, they automatically
start investigating the parents, right, I'm serious, right now, So
they decide that they're going to start questioning the parents
(49:48):
about possible sexual abuse of the child. So on top
of the mother just going through all this and seeing
her child in pain, now she's getting accused of being
involved in sexually abusing her child because they're ch child's
bleeding from her vagina when we know her child's bleeding
from her vagina because they gave her adult medication. So
(50:23):
I don't know what's exactly going to come of this case.
But again, this is just this is just like it's
scary to think that in twenty twenty six that this
kind of stuff is still happening. And when I guess
the biggest thing is is that when you're especially when
you're a mother or a father or any kind of
(50:45):
caregiver of a child, like if something doesn't seem right,
you really do have to question it. And maybe even
in that case, especially a second opinion, I mean the
first case, I don't even know what to say because
I'm assuming that I don't know, like, this is a
twelve year old girl that had a heart valve replaced.
(51:09):
I'm just assuming that. I I mean, it wasn't done
at a children's hospital. And I don't really know why,
because I certainly like our Children's hospital in Philadelphia is
just like the best place ever. I wouldn't take my
child anywhere else. I just really wouldn't. I mean, I'm
lucky to be in proximity to it obviously too, But yeah,
(51:30):
I mean, I just I just want a surgeon that's
always operating on children, Like that's just that's just what
I would say as advice. But in a situation like
this with this other child, like the mom, and I'm
not blaming the mom at all, trust me, because this
is all like why would the mom ever think that
this would happen? But like, if you're ever in this
situation with your child, like you could just be like,
(51:52):
you know what, let me go, let me go, like
find another doctor and ask them if that's okay too,
because I just think you need to take into consideration
just like putting like a device up inside a child's vagina,
is it up inside anybody's Vagina's traumatizing? Like think about
the first time you went to the gyn doctor it
(52:13):
was like freaking traumatizing, you know, like it's weird, it's awkward,
and like it's just nothing that you need to introduce
to a child unless it's completely necessary. So and then
obviously the pain and the burning and bleeding it came
with it, like you've now fucked this child up. Like,
let's just say that, like she's gonna have some kind
(52:33):
of emotional issues from that whole entire thing. It's not
something that she's gonna forget. It's gonna be like, you know,
it's just something that's not gonna go away. All right,
let's lighten things up a little bit, because I'm mad
about this situation with these kids. Okay, So I had
(52:55):
the story set aside for you guys before before this
started kind of going viral this week on social media.
The Huffington posted an article about what you should be
eating before anal and it was I like how the
article was written actually, because there were a lot of
different doctors getting interviewed that were just like, listen, this
(53:19):
is your gi track. It is meant for poop to
be coming out of it, and there's no way that
you can guarantee that that wouldn't happen. And if you're
having anal sex like that, that should just be like
an expectation that something might slip out at some point.
And I like that because that is realistic advice. Your
(53:43):
ractum actually isn't a holding container for poop. It usually
is like it's in there when it's ready to come out.
So I would say that it's probably like if you
want to make sure that that's all cleaned out, you'd
probably do better off, like doing an enema or something
prior HND. But like you just you can't say, because
(54:04):
different foods affect people in a different way. But they
they were saying of avoiding foods that trigger gas, bloating, diarrhea, urgency,
stomach upset. I mean, there's some people that like have
any kind of dairy ice cream, milk that that causes
like major bloating and farting. They're saying foods like spicy foods,
(54:26):
greasy foods, heavy dairy, alcohol, which is interesting because alcohol
would sometimes be involved with sexual acts like that, going
on dates and stuff like that. Caffeine and they say
suddenly eating a lot of fiber, and then they say
fiber is healthy, but increasing it too quickly can cause
(54:49):
gas bloating and cramps. So that's where we come into
this next story, which is with Hello Fresh, the food
delivery company. So I'm sure you guys have all seen this.
So for Pride Month this month, they made a post
that said, quote, we know eating isn't always a top
(55:11):
priority this month, but for those of you who are prepping,
we have an extensive lineup of high fiber recipes available
Happy Pride, and their discount code was bottoms up. So
I don't know when I first read this, I never
(55:34):
get I never got Hello Fresh. I usually get another
one of these sometimes, but when I read it, I
was just kind of like, ew, I don't want to
think about getting food from your company and butt sex
like and poop and like like I don't want food
and poop to be together. Like, I don't know, it
just kind of grossed me out. I just I just
(55:54):
was like, I don't really understand who thought that this
was a good idea. I mean, I get it from
a marketing standpoint, because the thing went viral, and I
guess that's what they want and all press is good
press and all that stuff. I don't know, So I
mean some people are like, oh, I'm canceling and blah blah,
(56:15):
like I don't know, it's just whatever. I don't I
personally don't think it's canceled worthy. I just like I
don't know that I would want to use their service
now because I just think, like, I don't know, I
just I don't want to think about poop when I'm
thinking about food and cooking. But whatever. So, but it's
interesting because they're saying they have an extensive lineup of
(56:37):
high fiber recipes, but this Huffington Post article from the
sex experts are saying, like, you might not want to
have a high fiber thing because it could cause a
sudden increase in gas, bloating and cramps. So I guess
you're just gonna have to do whatever you're gonna do.
Curious to know what you guys think about this, all right,
(57:00):
before we finish up, I'm just gonna get into some
of your comments and questions. Interestingly enough, so we haven't
been on Live in a couple of weeks either, So
these are from the May twentieth episode, and both comments
are for the same event that are the same you
(57:21):
know news story that we talked about, which was when
that guy was on the escalator and got caught in
the escalator and nobody helped him. So this first one
is from Tia. She says, I was listening to your
episode from May twentieth when you talked about the man
on the escalator in Massachusetts who was basically strangled to
death by his clothes that got caught up in the mechanisms. This,
(57:42):
amongst other stories you've covered where by standards don't bother
to help in a crisis or danger, reminds me of
a phenomenon I learned about. It's like one oh one
back in two thousand and nine. This is called the
bystandard effect. This happens when something happens when there's a
lot of people around and everyone just assumes that someone
else will handle it, but no one does. You know what,
I actually feel like I've heard this before, So thanks
(58:04):
for writing in because this is really interesting, so she says,
But of course, hearing about this situation, everyone is like,
why didn't anybody call for help or why didn't anybody
hit the emergency shut off? But as a society, no
one wants to be burdened or get involved, so they
all ignore it, assuming someone else will come do it,
and do what's right, And that's true. I've heard my
(58:25):
husband actually we had a situation once where we were
driving and we got out of the car and then
my husband the first thing that my husband did was
like did someone call nine one one? Did someone call
nine one one? And then the people are like no,
And then like it's just like really interesting because I
was like, that was your first question to ask that
(58:46):
rather than just like go in there. You know, I
don't know. I just thought it was ir He's like, Nicole,
no one will call nine one one. They'll be He's like,
he's like, you know how many times we just like
so happened to drive up and we walk into and
acci that's sitting there on the Admiral Wilson Boulevard because
nobody called nine one one, and we're like, did anyone
call this in? Like you guys have to call this
(59:07):
in so people could come out and help you. So
it is true. It's definitely a thing. Okay. This one
is from an anonymous listener. I grew up close to Somerville,
and I'm not surprised no one called when someone was
stuck on the escalator. It's basically in Boston, mass And
although it has been really gentrified in the last few years.
It's always been a grifty part of the city. Most
(59:28):
of the people riding the train keep their head down
and don't make eye contact unless it's after a Bruins
game and they're all lubricated and happy if they won.
That's funny, all right. Our final question is from Timika Nicole.
How was it experiencing Maria's birth. Well, I'm gonna leave
(59:48):
a lot of that until when Maria comes back, so
she could fully describe the whole experience, and then I
could describe the whole experience from my perspective. I you
have to say that when I walked in, I was
ignorantly excited about watching childbirth because I never got to
(01:00:10):
watch it from like obviously it was happening to me,
and they would be like, do you want a mirror?
Do you want to look? And I'm like, fuck, no,
I don't want to look. Thank God I didn't look,
because if I ever saw my vagina looking like that,
I'd be traumatized for life. But I wanted. I just
wanted to see it. I never you know, like we're
working in pathology, you don't get to work with live patients.
(01:00:31):
I never just got to go on the floor and
like see a baby be born and stuff, and especially
since it was going to be my grandchild, I thought
it was going to be cool, and I didn't really
like mentally prepare for like my child Maria being my
child being in pain like that and like not being
able to help her and stuff was just fucking awful.
(01:00:53):
So and just like the whole it was just like
a very high stress situation for for multiple days in
a row. So I'm glad it's over. But one fun
fact is is that I ended up getting shingles right
after that, so I'll talk to you guys about that
more later too. But it just was proof that my
(01:01:14):
body went through like a shit ton of extreme stress
and like just couldn't handle it. I mean, like, I'm
forty six years old and have shingles, so which sucks
because I can't hold the baby right now. But we'll
talk about that a little bit more. I might do
a post on it in the grocer room or something
like that. But yeah, it was it was traumatizing, and
(01:01:36):
obviously it was traumatizing for her, but like it's her story,
so I'm sure she'll want to talk. We'll probably just
do like a whole episode on it, honestly, when when
she's when she's feeling better and getting back to work
and stuff like that. All right, guys, well, thank you
so much. Sorry you had to listen to me rant
the whole entire episode. We will have a special guest
(01:01:58):
on later in the week and and hopefully in the
coming weeks until Maria gets back. We'll see you guys tomorrow.
Thank you for listening to Mother Knows Death. As a reminder,
my training is as a pathologist's assistant. I have a
master's level education and specialize in anatomy and pathology education.
(01:02:19):
I am not a doctor, and I have not diagnosed
or treated anyone dead or alive without the assistance of
a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website, and social
media accounts are designed to educate and inform people based
on my experience working in pathology, so they can make
healthier decisions regarding their life and well being. Always remember
(01:02:43):
that science is changing every day and the opinions expressed
in this episode are based on my knowledge of those
subjects at the time of publication. If you are having
a medical problem, have a medical question, or having a
medical emergency, please contact your physician, or visit an urgent
care center, emergency room, or hospital. Please rate, review, and
(01:03:06):
subscribe to Mother Knows Death on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or
anywhere you get podcasts. Thanks
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