Sisters Found Alive Decades After Going Missing, Subway Surfing Deaths, All-Fruit Diet Death, and More with The Good Nurse, Amy Loughren!

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Mother Knows Death starring Nicole and Jemmy and Maria qk.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hi, Everyone, Welcome The Mother Knows Death. On today's episode,
we have a special guest joining us for some news stories,
Amy Lochran, better known as The Good Nurse. We have
had Amy on Mother Knows Death back in November of
twenty twenty three, but for those of you who are unfamiliar,
Amy is a former registered nurse turned whistleblower and is

(00:42):
best known for her role in exposing one of the
most prolific serial killers in American medical history, Charles Cullen.
While working alongside him in the ICU, Amy discovered that
he was killing their patients. Then she teamed up with
law enforcement to help and his killing spray. Her story
was later portrayed in the Netflix film The Good Nurse,

(01:05):
where she was played by Jessica Chestain. I highly suggest
you going back to that episode and listening to her story. Hi, Amy,
Welcome The Mother Knows Death.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
My favorite podcast is my favorite podcast. I listen to
you guy, Oh my God, like I just laugh and
laugh and laugh, and I know that it's gallows humor.
But you know, with my story, I have to have
gallows humor.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
I know, I love you. We couldn't wait to have
you back either. Yeah, I know we were thinking that.
I was just like, we're gonna try to keep We
always try to find stories, especially if we have guests
that are a little bit lighter, because we do love
to laugh on this show. But unfortunately, it's just there's
a lot of other stuff going on too, So yeah,
you're going to keep it light though.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Yeah, I definitely like creepy shit, but it's like you
have to laugh at the absurdities that are happening out there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Really, And this first case that we're going to talk
about it, I mean, you have kids, so you could
totally relate to this story. So let's have Maria talk
about it and then we'll get into it.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
All right, So to introduce this first case, this twelve
year old had snuck out of her house in the
middle of the night to meet her thirteen year old
friend to go subway surfing. And the most outrageous part
of this story is the next morning, her mother is
cooking or cooking breakfast, I guess, with her younger sister
and they're watching news coverage about two teens that had
died while subway surfing, and in the news coverage, the

(02:42):
other daughter sees her sister's purse and her skateboard and
says to her mother, I think that's my sister's and
they couldn't believe it at first, but it ended up
being coverage of the daughter's death.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
What is happening now? I guess kids have done this
because Gabe tells me that this that he used to say,
sneak out in the after his mom went to bed.
It's just nothing I ever did.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Well at twelve years old. I mean, there has to
be something else going on, you know, when you're sneaking
out at twelve. I mean, my gosh, at twelve years old.
I you know, I had a very dysfunctional upbringing. I
didn't have to sneak out at twelve because I had

(03:26):
very little parenting. But my gut reaction when I read
this was, if she's doing this at twelve, there's some there.
There were already some serious things happening in her life.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
That's an interesting take because I was thinking about that too,
And the mom waking up and not I don't know
something about it to me, doesn't seem right that she
woke up and didn't realize she wasn't in the house.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
I thought she was staying at her dad's. No. Oh,
I don't think I read that.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
I didn't. I didn't read that either, And just the
way that even if she was staying at the dad's house,
it's still like why, I don't know it just there
was something so off about the parenting aspect of it.

(04:21):
And the the other challenge I when I was reading
this was they they tried to make this out to
be something that was like a TikTok challenge or a
you know, something that they're seeing on social media. Definitely

(04:43):
not on TikTok. Like I actually tried to search it
after I read about it, and it won't even come up.
Like a subway saying we're train surfing, it won't come up.
It just comes up with a warning. So I don't
know if it was because of this case that that

(05:04):
has has happened, but subway surfing has always kind of
been a thing. It just seems to have gained popularity recently.
But with someone so young, you know, a twelve and
thirteen year old going out at three o'clock in the
morning to get on a subway, to get on top

(05:28):
of a train. Because what they do is climb up
and get on top of the train. Usually they would
be lying down and just looking at things passing by.
But the way that I read this is they actually
fell off and both of them had serious head injuries

(05:53):
that it was lenthorse drama to and so they had
irreversible brain damage. And that's that's really how how they died,
is that they must have been going so fast on
the train and they both slid off.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
That was gonna be my question too, is how are
they even getting up there without other people noticing them?
Because we've been I feel like recently we covered a
story about adults that had done something like this, but to.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
See more people died from it this year. Yeah, and
that's just people that other people aside from this, Like
it's a problem. Do you think it has to because
I feel like there's just this habitual one upping, you
know that kids just have to. Gabe and I always
talk about this, like when we were teenagers, it was

(06:45):
just like the most punk rock person like had all
these studs on their jacket and they had a mohawk
that was blue, and and now it's just like that
that's that's like normal now, right, so it's just like
pushing it and one upping it. So when Gabe was
a teenager in skateboard and it would be like, oh,
they would go into a park that was banned, that
was like the bad thing they were doing, you know.

(07:07):
And now it's like that's you're allowed to skateboard everywhere now,
so like this is the next one up thing, right.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
Oh yeah, totally. I mean I was thinking, I guess
I can't believe this, but I was in high school
fifteen years ago at this point.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
But even back.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
Back in my day, like our our franks were planking,
which is you would just lay as straight as you
could on any surface, or you would go to McDonald's
and grab the ice cream cone upside down. You weren't
doing these weird dangerous things. I was.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah, like I said, I had, I had a I
definitely had like kind of I mean, my parents probably
would have noticed that I snuck out, but I didn't
really have to. I was like already drinking alcohol at
like twelve and thirteen, so we were going out. I

(08:01):
can't even remember. I must have had some kind of
a curfew, but I don't remember having to worry about
it that much. So we were drinking at that time,
and I wonder, you know, toxicologically, what's going to come
through in the autopsy.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah, that's actually an interesting point too. One other thing
is is that I believe that this girl that she
met up with she met on social media, so it
wasn't even a friend in real life. It was yeah,
which you're also just like, this is the thing, like
my twelve year old couldn't even at least I mean

(08:44):
she could totally leave in the middle of the night,
I suppose, but she couldn't even communicate with anyone overnight
because I have her iPad turns off at nine o'clock.
So because there's no reason that a child needs to
be on social media or a in the middle of
the night talking to people. It's just nothing good's gonna
come of it, right, So that's a huge part of it.

(09:07):
Is just like kids are on social media too young
and stuff too. But I mean this could have happened
with a real life friend too, I guess, yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
And I we always kind of go back to when
kids are this young, the parenting. I you know, I wonder,
just even from the way that the sister made this
statement that she's probably better off with God. God needed

(09:39):
her more. I don't remember how she phrased it, but
it was very much like something like, oh, well, you know,
this was kind of meant to be. And so I
just wonder, like culturally what was going on in the house,
and maybe they just we're not literate in what kids

(10:05):
are capable of accets saying on these devices. I you know,
it seemed like there may have been at least a
little bit of just them being very naive about what

(10:26):
a twelve year old can get into.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, and that's I mean, I see that because my
kid is literally twelve years old right now. So it's
you know, I see everything that's going on, and the kids,
some kids have a lot of access to everything. Ohthers,
don't you know. It's just and each kid could handle
everything different. And I don't really care what people do
with their kids. I'm just not doing it with mine.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
You know.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
It's just sad because kids just don't They just don't
realize it, and you think that. I mean a lot
of times kids want to do things, even if they
are dangerous, just to be the one that because I'm
sure lots of people do subbly surfing and survive it.
And they you know, that's what's risky about it. It's
like riding a motorcycle without your helmet or any you know.

(11:16):
There's just like all things that people do to be
a little bit on the edge.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Like that drugs, you know.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yeah, I mean exactly, because.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
You can die from these drugs. So I guess it's
their way of having that intense high of being scared.
And yeah, it's it's like a drug, all right.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
So let's get get let's get into this next case
because this is such a cool story.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
It is, and I have a lot of questions too,
So okay, Back in December of nineteen eighty nine, a
woman was found stabbed to death in an Arizona desert.
Two days later, these two baby girls, who were two
months old and fourteen months old, were found abandoned in
a park bathroom and put in foster care. So I
guess for years they had no idea these two cases

(12:11):
were connected at all. They weren't sure of the identity
of the woman for a while, they weren't sure of
the identity of the children. They kind of just showed up.
So all these years later, they ended up identifying the
mother through fingerprints because she had an arrest for shoplifting
back in the eighties, and then they ran further DNA
and ended up connecting the two because they found that

(12:31):
these two girls put in foster care were her daughters.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
It's it's really it's really amazing. I guess my first
question was why did it take until twenty twenty two
for them to identify her fingerprint went with an arrest
from nineteen eighty nine, because that technology has been around
for a while. But that was a case that I
actually had. I wanted to ask one of my friends

(12:57):
in law enforcement, like, if there's a cold case, is
there any kind of system that's just constantly running prints
through to see if there's matches or does someone physically
have to go in the case and run it Because obviously,
if you have a bunch of cold cases, like you'll
work on it for a while and then you'll say, okay,
we have no additional leads, and then you put it
away for years and then pull it back out, whereas

(13:19):
if there was a system that was constantly trying to
make matches, that might be more helpful.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
Well, remember at the Cheryl's Winding crime on Friday, when
Joe was going over his lecture. He was saying there
just in more recent years combining databases. I think it
was they ran it in a more local database and
now over time they've kind of become wider nets. So
if they rerun it, they are more likely to have

(13:45):
a hit.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
And is it like on television where someone ends up
being part of a task force of looking into these
cold cases, Like they just kind of sit on a
shelf and then the cold case comes up on someone's

(14:08):
desk that is part of that that task force. So,
you know, it's it's hard to say because there's so
many active investigations that going back to a cold case,
I think that it would have to be distinctly someone

(14:31):
being assigned to it.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah, And I mean, this is happening all over the place,
and this is what was really cool about. So we
went to this lecture last weekend and it was our
friend Cheryl McCollums. She actually has a cold case institute
that she works on cold cases all the time. There
and Cool Joe, who we love him and he's going

(14:55):
to be on our show soon within the next couple
of weeks. He was talking about how he had this
really cool lecture of how regular people who aren't in
law enforcement could help solve cold cases and just giving
advice about like how you could I mean, and sometimes
if you have a lot like an old school library

(15:15):
that doesn't have all of their files uploaded to a website,
like you actually have to go to the library, which
is just crazy to think that you have, you know
what I mean, like old school when we were kids,
even you Maria, when you were a kid, right, Like,
there wasn't there wasn't a ton of stuff online. So
but it's really interesting how this stuff all comes out.

(15:39):
And the girls knew that they were abandoned in a
rest stop or what was it a National Park restroom
or something.

Speaker 3 (15:48):
It was that park bathroom. But I guess my question
here is that after this woman was identified her family,
the way the news article made a team was like
her family said, oh, yeah, she was last seen with
the two girls. For the two girls and this woman
not reported missing, and they did it put two and
two together. I'm just kind of confused about that part
about it.

Speaker 1 (16:07):
I was so confused as well, like Okay, yes, this
one man goes missing, but the woman goes missing with
two children, Like yeah, why wasn't and yes, there wasn't
a connection between the two cases. However, where was this

(16:30):
woman's family, like this woman's friends, Like, why don't they
have been saying to law enforcement or saying, I don't know,
maybe she was just one of those people that would
just up and leave or but it's still was super

(16:50):
sketch thinking exactly this woman was missing for all this
time and then kind of like people said, oh, yeah,
she had two girls, like almost like it was an
off mean comment, Oh yeah, she did have two girls.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
Well that's happened sometimes, Like even that recent case of
that Emmanuel Harrow baby that was missing. I don't know
if you heard about that, Remember the mom said that
it was kidnapped. Suck. You're just like then they're saying, oh,
the baby might have been killed months ago, and you're
just you think about your own life and you're just like,
you know, all these people that have babies and children,

(17:31):
who who is associating with people that are not reporting
if a child isn't seen for a long period of time,
it's just so it's just really something I can't even fathom,
just because of my particular life.

Speaker 3 (17:47):
I guess when you just reel it back, you look
at this case as two missing babies were found thirty
six years later alive. This is a story we don't
ever hear. But were they ever really reported missing?

Speaker 2 (18:01):
So technically they're missing, right, But are they considering missing persons?
I don't think so because it looks like they found
the kids, but they they didn't say that it was
connected to a missing children case. They just I mean,
this is nineteen eighty six in Arizona desert. Might have
been a little bit different as far as they're just like, well,

(18:23):
we found them for them, so you know they're good.

Speaker 3 (18:26):
Well I assumed it was gonna be a Maricopa county
where seemingly all the weirdest crimes happened in the country,
but I don't think it was there. But anything we
cover in Arizona is typically the most bizarre crime we've
ever heard about.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
Because I mean, that.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
Says what about the women? Now they know they were
part of all of this. There wasn't like a follow
up about the actual women, like aren't they wanting to
talk about what? It just sort of like left off.

(19:04):
It was like, oh, yeah, we found out who they are.
I think it only gave that The one article I
read read about this, it only I think gave the
name of one of the women. But I just thought

(19:26):
perhaps that there would be more curiosity with this of
you know, how did they grow up? Who actually adopted them?
Like there it just felt like it just cut off like,
oh yeah, we found them.

Speaker 3 (19:43):
Oh absolutely, and it just ended with basically, they grew
up in a loving home and their case is a
cold case too, like nobody wants to know where these
these two kids came from.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
It's it's so bizarre.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
They're happy, they're good, they have they have their.

Speaker 3 (20:01):
Because it wasn't like they were dropped off at the
fire station, like don't ask, don't tell type of thing,
you know that we're always talking about. They were left
in a woman's bathroom in a park. And then as
far as the case goes with their mom that was murdered.
They said this was a huge advancement in the case,
but they still have no idea who killed her, so
they still need to find that too.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
Yeah, only one.

Speaker 3 (20:24):
Witness has come forward to say they saw the mother
with two men in the park. I guess the day
of her disappearance.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
So I'm too. Wasn't there a woman too? Yeah? Okay, so.

Speaker 3 (20:37):
That's interesting because I was gonna say the men intentionally
put the babies in a women's bathroom knowing they would
be found there eventually.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
Yeah, I think there was that there was she was
seeing with a woman. Interesting.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah, that's just it's it is just like such, it's
such a bizarre case because all of us are just like,
how did you girls grow up? They clearly witness the murder.
Likely there's a there's a murder in a town, and
so it's like dead lady two days later. Kids never
put two and two together that they could have been.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
Like, that's what I'm wondering. I just feel like I'm
leaving this.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
With a lot of questions, like the dead ladies, like whatever.
There's dead people all the time, but it's not very
common to find two children that just like came from nowhere, right.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
It just seems like it would have been like this
huge story, like national story. Again, that's something that I
feel was and maybe because of where they found them
that it was kind of like, you know, all right, like.

Speaker 3 (21:46):
This is every day here.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
Yay.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
Well I imagine that just being I mean, this is
back in the eighties, but just being closer to the border,
there are situations where they find dead bodies, right, and
just out there of people crossing over, so that's that's
not always. It's more common there, Like we're not used
to that in New Jersey, but like over there, that's

(22:13):
more common. So maybe they thought it was a situation
like that that just people put she was naked and
stabbed to death. No, not the woman was one thing.
I mean the children just in general.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
Yeah, but there could have been someone who crossed the
border and then just left the children to have a
better light. Yeah, you know, that would make sense, That
would make sense. Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
All right, let's let's lighten this up a little bit.
Although this has to do with the death a woman
this moment, with another death in this field. In this field,
you have to be able to laugh a lot. I
mean we we just talk about horrible stuff. We never

(23:01):
talk about good stuff like ever. I mean this, I
guess the story we just talked about has Oh cool.
At last these girls could finally figure out what happened
to them. Although it's terrible for them to know that
their mother was murdered and they were somehow like missing
for two days. Who knows what happened to them during
those two days, But we just never talk about like

(23:21):
good stuff, so you have to you have to laugh
a little bit sometimes.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
All Right, about ten years ago, this girl from Poland
moved to the UK for college and there she learned
all about yoga, veganism and clean eating. So she took
it to the extreme and adopted an all fruit diet,
which ultimately led to her death a couple of years later.
It's kind of cool that she was able to live
a couple of years on like aas Yeah, I mean

(23:49):
she probably had severe she did have severe malnutrition.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
Yeah, she also had a severe eating disorder prior to this,
so I think, you know, the idea of the malnutrition
piece of it is interesting because if you look up
fruititarians and people who are on these diets, and I

(24:19):
actually met a fruititarian when I was in Costa Rica
one year, and she was posting all of the time
on Instagram what she ate in a day. And it
isn't what we think about as just fruit. It's anything

(24:39):
with a seed, so tomatoes and avocados and squash and
like there's other things that they do eat. So it's
more like an extreme veganism. But some of these these
fruititarians are extremely healthy However, every fruititarian that I was

(25:04):
able to find on TikTok and on Instagram, all of
them had some type of like uh, energy work or
uh they were yoga instructors. There were you know, like
it's in that extreme and some health space. Uh. There

(25:31):
aren't like people out there advertising advertising that they're fruitarians
that are just like you know, regular people like you
and me, like I, you know, I'm a vegetarian. I've
been a vegan before. It wasn't for losing weight. And
I think with this particular case, she already had an

(25:55):
eating disorder, so she wasn't looking to be healthy bear.
I think that it was really associated with her severe anorexia,
and she just used that as a way to have

(26:16):
just more control over her body and weight loss. And
people do use the fruitarian diet for weight loss, but
it was Yeah, she was able to live on it
for I think a couple of years, right. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
It seems like she started it when she was nineteen
and she died at twenty seven, so she was only
eating this way. I think eight.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
Years is crazy long. Yeah, Yeah, she wasn't doing it.
It's important to note though, that she wasn't doing it right, right,
like you were saying, you can get protein from certain
vegetables and fruits, and especially if you're doing seeds and
nuts even you can that work. But she was eating

(27:03):
I mean, if you eat watermelon every day, you're not
getting anywhere near that. You're getting no protein, you're not
getting any of the nutrition you need, and high sugar
diet on top of that. Yeah, I do think that
you're right and you're onto something though, because in my
personal life, I feel like throughout my life, I've met

(27:24):
a couple people that put these severe restrictions on what
they eat, to the point where I'm just like, this
is this is a sickness rather than a lifestyle, because
you're just like I can't eat anything. Yeah, there's nothing
you could eat. So then you know, it's it almost
feels that way to me sometimes with people.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
Yeah, and I wonder in this particular, like in the
health space, like a lot of veguns that are very
much into fitness and yogun, like they or they're selling
supplements or like a lot of these these influencers, these

(28:11):
now frugitarians that I was looking up, all of them
have like this. I don't know, like there is it's
definitely a type. Let's just say, like, and it's very stereotypical.
You know, they're all very very thin, they you know, dreadlocks.

(28:32):
They're like, yeah, they're They're quintessential in the health space
that you would think about. And I think she was
in that space and used that as a way to
just be anorexic.

Speaker 2 (28:53):
She's an influencer though, correct she was. I mean, that's
that's an important discussion to have. I mean, I guess
it could be same again set about the subway story
too of people. I mean, the subway thing is a
little bit more obviously dangerous. But there's one girl, you know,

(29:13):
that one girl that we talked about once. I feel
like her name's Eugene.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
Something, Eugenia Clooney.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
Yeah, she's visibly anorexic and and has gotten blocked off
social media, but now she's back on. I just saw
video of her recently, and a lot of people are
not okay with it because she's got a lot of
followers and people look at that and want to emulate that.

(29:41):
You know.

Speaker 3 (29:42):
Yeah, I guess when we talked about her case before, though,
it was a lot of people were bringing up the
argument that how are you going to ban her? On
social media for showing unhealthy lifestyle when you're also like,
if you're gonna do that, you should also ban morbidly
obese people were also promoting an unhealthy lifestyle, and obviously,

(30:04):
like I don't care about what your body looks like
or whatever, but that was a big point people were
bringing up because it's like, where do you draw the
line at what you define as unhealthy?

Speaker 1 (30:13):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (30:15):
Well yeah, and who who makes that decision is more
important because obviously that would be whoever owns social media,
and then that's not fair for them to be the gate.
I mean, that could be said about all everything that's
talked about, I guess on there, but certainly as far
as health goes, I mean, there's just lots of different
things that people We talk about this at least once

(30:38):
a month of TikTok, challenges of the choking game, and
this and that, and just it's just kind of amazing
to me that there that their technology and algorithm can't
pick up any of this stuff.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
You know, well, it is very much, very much linked
to body dys worthy because if you talk about people
that are more bid the obese, it's you talk about
people that are to the other extreme of anorexia. It's
all about body dysmorphia. I know that I have. I

(31:13):
have definitely realized I have somebody dysmorphia. And really it's
been recent I I recently gained a lot of weight,
and I was looking back at pictures of me, like
from when I was on press tour and hanging out

(31:35):
with teeny tiny Jessica Chastain, who is you know, all
of like one hundred pounds and like two and here
I am, you know, in this this bigger body. But
I look back at that and I was like, holy shit,
Like I thought that I was really happy, Like I

(31:57):
genuinely thought that I was is like embarrassingly heavy, and
I was. I was really really down on myself, and
like you know, I would change my outfit like twenty times,
like just because I felt I felt so big. And

(32:18):
I look back and I'm like, oh my god, like
I looked amazing, Like I looked amazing, but in my mind.

Speaker 2 (32:26):
She still look amazing. Stop it.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
It's so sweet. But in my mind this body dysmorphia,
Like I had no comprehension. And I look at this
frugitarian and she even you know, obviously she was making
videos she had to have seen, but what she actually
looked like, she just had no conception that she was that.

(32:55):
I'm sure that she felt like she was looking healthy.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
Yeah, And I think it's interesting because her family really
brought up the point that after she learned about this
culture and then going to social media to look for
it more, it just really brainwashed and implemented the idea
in her brain that this was okay because you're seeing
a whole pocket of the internet doing it too, so
you're able to justify it.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
Yes, you know.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
It was really cool when I went to doctor Miami
and got my tummy tuck done like five years ago.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
Now you'm tuk I want one.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Oh yeah, you have to go to him. It was
like eight years ago. No, it was twenty nineteen.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
Oh my god, I want to do that. It's so bad.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
No, go to him that. I love them there, They're
so good. It was so such a good experience. But
so I went and right before I went in for
the surgery, they gave me this piece of paper with
like ten different body types and it said what do
you think your body looks like? Circle one? And then
underneath it said what do you want your body to

(33:58):
look like circle one, and I thought that that was
so interesting because I'm wondering. I didn't really get to
talk to him about it, but I'm like, I'm wondering
if if I pick that, I'm like this supid, morbid,
obese person. I'm just like, like over, you know, if
you pick something outrageous and then you have like unrealistic expectations,

(34:20):
I wonder how they go about counseling for that, because.

Speaker 1 (34:23):
It's interesting, Yes, yes, yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
Because like what you're looking at might not be what
you think you're looking at, you know.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
What I mean, it just worth it is real.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
And this girl was forty nine pounds when she died.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (34:40):
She was staying in a hotel in Bali. They said
she wasn't even able to walk to her room half
the time. She couldn't turn over in bed herself. I
can't imagine feeling this way. My daughter Lilian is one
hundred pounds and she is very thin. She's twelve, so
I mean that's fine for her, but she's thin, she's

(35:01):
on the thinner side. She doesn't she doesn't eat it
like my other one's more like of a normal like
a more normal build, like a thicker a little bit
of a thicker build, but she's when I look at
her and say she's one hundred pounds at five to
two or whatever she is, I'm like, she's she's so thin.

(35:22):
What is it like for a person of her height
to be half of that weight. It's it's so disturbing,
very very very disturbing.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
This episode is brought to you by the Gross Room guys.
So we have another great high profile death disseection this
week on Halloween that we've been talking about that is
kind of setting the mood for our Halloween themed death
dissections this month. We also have a bunch of obviously
every week we have some kind of posts of a

(35:58):
person that swallowed un to weird stuff, and every single
time it's something different, so that's really interesting. And we
also have this really crazy video that someone set me
of someone that is vomiting all of this thick blood,
so we go through all of the different things that
could be happening in that case. So it's pretty cool.
So check that out for only five ninety nine a month.

Speaker 3 (36:19):
Head over to the Grossroom dot com now to sign up.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
So the next two stories that we're going to talk
about for those of you that didn't, like I said
in the beginning of the intro, for them to go
back and listen to your interview that we did a
couple of years. It's god, it's almost been two years
now and.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
I never believe that.

Speaker 2 (36:38):
I know, right, We've been friends for such a long time.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
It's one of our very first episodes. I know you
were episode number four.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
Yeah, and they need yeah, well, they really need to
listen to it though, because that was you'll go into
your whole story. I did a little bit in the intro,
but it's it's really good. But you also talked about
being an emergency room nurse, and so these two stories
are I thought would be interesting to talk with you about.

(37:08):
All right, So do the first one ray, all right?

Speaker 3 (37:11):
A British woman was shocked when she thought she had
appendicitis and ended up delivering a baby boy in the
back of an ambulance. So as two mothers, can you
I just can never imagine when we covered these, like,
I didn't know it was pregnant stories. If this happens
to peopul No didn't you both Did you both know
you were pregnant? I just feel like it's so obvious.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
Well, a cryptic pregnancy is are a real thing. I
don't understand how the body works and these cryptic pregnancies
that they are, and and I think because of social
media we're hearing about them more. They've always happened, but

(37:54):
I think it's it's something that we think is less
rare than it is. Usually it's young people. I used
to believe these cryptic pregnancies were like obese, like women

(38:14):
who did not see a change in their body. And
that's not what this is. These are younger women with
flat tummies, almost completely flat tummies, coming to the er
with abdominal pain, and they have a fully formed fetus

(38:39):
that they're giving birth to, and they will show and
you know, there's multiple people now on TikTok and Instagram
showing their cryptic pregnancies and you cannot tell, You cannot tell.
And everyone that is saying, oh, she knew, she absolutely new.

(39:01):
They are no possible way she could have known. There's
just there. They continued with their periods that they they
continue to you know, they didn't have any symptoms. There
wasn't any nausea. For some reason, the hormones did. It's

(39:21):
it is so bizarre, but the female body is so
just amazing and miraculous that it could hide a pregnancy,
Like talk about knowing that I was pregnant, Are you
kidding me? I look like the cow that swallowed can't.

(39:44):
Like my belis so big, like there's no freaking way
of course. But I mean, really, I I really did
not understand cryptic pregnancies, and until I saw one on
on social media, I did deal with a crypto pregnant
pregnancy and the er and I didn't believe it. Like

(40:08):
I I absolutely did not believe it. And she was
she was heavy, and I was like, no, she was
just you know, she just didn't want anyone to know.
But now I look back, I was like, oh my god,
it was so judgy. I was so judgy. I feel
really bad woman.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
Yeah, I mean to your defense though, it's like when
you're a mom that's gone through pregnancy, you're just like,
this is why Maria is in that, Like I don't
see it's possible, because you know, she just has seen
she saw me be pregnant, right, and it's just like
I just can't imagine.

Speaker 3 (40:44):
I just can't wrap my head around because I saw
you and a couple of my friends that they just
had so many symptoms that it was just so obvious.
I can't wrap my head around your body not giving
you any signs. Should we quote quote Bryce Haer's nice quote?
This morning, one of our star baseball players on the

(41:04):
Phillies did a press conference. He just had a baby
last week, and he said about.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
His wife, what a breed.

Speaker 3 (41:10):
Really nice way to explain your wife giving birth.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
Are you shitting man?

Speaker 2 (41:16):
He also referred to his baby as an it.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
No wait, I'm gonna read the exact or something. Shit,
it was so unbelievable. He said, I've got an incredible wife.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
Man.

Speaker 3 (41:26):
She pushed that thing out in three pushes in thirty seconds.
She's an absolute monster doing it women. Man, what a breed?

Speaker 1 (41:33):
All right? Who hin's this? Dip shit?

Speaker 3 (41:37):
He's our star baseball player.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
Don't attack him until like three days from now when
we know that they won the playoffs.

Speaker 3 (41:43):
Oh, he's listen, he's fine, but he's kind of a
douche And like, I just feel like that's sealed the deal.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
Yes, but listen, I think as Amy does. I think
that it's possible too, not just because and those videos
that you're talking about on Instagram and TikTok they're very
they're very striking. I can't believe it. Did you see them? Maria,
Like a woman will say she's like nine months pregnant

(42:08):
and you look at her and her belly looks like
mine after a tomy talk like you know what I mean,
Like I like, in my family, we just have genetics that,
like our bellies stick out. It's just my Grandma, my mom, Maria,
my little ones. And then there's other I've seen, you know,
I've been in multiple pelvic cavities throughout my career, and

(42:31):
there's some people that they're just so tucked back that
they could grow a whole pregnancy and you wouldn't see it.
It's just the way that their pelvis is formed. It's
really cool.

Speaker 3 (42:44):
Did you think it was weird that they brought her
to a hospital, she starts gushing blood and the doctors
then realize she's giving birth, So then at that moment
they decide to transfer her to another hospital, and that's
when she ended up giving birth in the back of
an ambulance.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:58):
I thought that was weird.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
Yeah, there was also like something weird that she said,
all of a sudden, there were like seventeen doctors around her.
And I'm thinking, babe, if you think there are seventeen
doctors in a hospital at one time, like.

Speaker 4 (43:22):
In the whole hospital, that was one doctor, and especially
if that was like a smaller hospital, that was one
doctor and all those other people were nurses.

Speaker 1 (43:34):
Like you know, there's I'm just I that always gets me, like,
oh yeah, when when people are are sick and in
the hospital, they'll be like, uh, get a doctor, you know,
their friend, you know, if something's going on, they yell
out into the hallway like call a doctor.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
Oh do you actually that's the last person you want
to hear.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
No, there's twenty nurses that you're becking call and we
are going to save your life. Like, yeah, better hope
that this first year resident doesn't show up. So probably
the worst, yes, yeah, it probably was this little community
hospital and they had no fucking clue how to deal

(44:23):
with premature birth, Like they just they get They were like, Okay,
you're going to die here, or you're going to die
on the way there, so let's put an ambulance. Get
her in an ambulance, hurry up so she doesn't die here.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
You know what, I used to work at a very
a very very good hospital one of the top hospitals
I would say in the country. Definitely in Philadelphia, and
I always thought the surgeons were so awesome there because
they would come down to pathology and they would look
for the PAS before they would look for any of
the doctors. Always it's her dumb yeah, and I was like,

(45:01):
they know what's up. They know what's up, like they
know that we're the ones that look at it every day,
and they would be like, you know, and then we
would call the doctors into but they were like wanted
us to look at stuff first, and that was I
thought that that was cool. Yeah, So this particular case
is weird because they said that she was vomiting. She
said she was vomiting blood. I don't know if you

(45:23):
caught that, which I was just kind of like, that's weird.
And then she said that her and her son had
both had sepsis and then he was released. So there
is a picture of her on there sixteen days postpartum,
and she doesn't look sixteen days postpartum, so I believe
that her belly was not big.

Speaker 1 (45:43):
Now she looks like she just went to a yoga weekend. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
So I'm curious what you think though, I mean, do
you think where did the sepsis come from? That both
her and the baby have it, so she had to
pass it to the baby at some point. I'm just curious, like.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
Her water could have broken, like she she could easily
have been on the toilet. Water breaks, you just think
that it's a gush of pea, and especially when you
don't have any other symptom, your initial thought is, Okay,
I'm keeeing a lot. Wow, that was a lot. That

(46:28):
was crazy.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
But it's you know, like whoa that I bust to
drink a lot?

Speaker 1 (46:35):
Like yeah, yeah, yeah, like that was all.

Speaker 2 (46:37):
It dribbles for me. It dribbled two times. I never
had the gush, so yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
And so if that membrane was broken, it's all bacteria
that goes up into.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
There, so that so that would be like coreo amneitis
and premature rupture of membranes. Okay, yes, I was just
curious about that. And then I guess if you form
stepsish you can get ulcers and bleed or also in pregnancy.
I guess because I'm assuming that this didn't happen, that
she wasn't nauseous and wasn't throwing up a lot, because

(47:10):
sometimes if you throw up a lot over a period
of time, you could get these tears in youu esophagus.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
I was just gonna say that I couldn't remember the
name of those terrors.

Speaker 2 (47:20):
Oh, Mallory Whiste's terrs.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
Yes, Mallorie Weiss, that was Yes, that is very, very possible.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
But she, I mean, in theory, she wasn't vomiting like
that and not going and getting checked out to see
why she was vomiting so much, you know.

Speaker 1 (47:37):
What I mean, Like I had, I was under the
impression when I read through that she was not on
the bright side.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
Oh okay, so yeah, she was kind of ignoring stuff.

Speaker 1 (47:49):
And yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
I think that's a whole other thing with pregnancy too,
Like just aside from the anatomical part of it, a
lot of it is like when you're pregnant, you're just constantly,
like very in tune with your body to be like
did I feel a twitch? Did I feel it? Did I?

Speaker 1 (48:06):
You know?

Speaker 2 (48:07):
But like if you there's also times, like within the
past couple of years, like I'll be laying in bed
and I'll get this like gas bubble through my bows
and I'm like, oh, that felt like a baby moving.
You know, it's like that same kind of and I know,
so you're just like you could just ignore, like your
mind is really could do amazing things like that and

(48:27):
totally and and we've had that case that we've been
talking about with that Lake in Snelling girl who the cheerleader,
who she looked obviously pregnant to her friends and to
anybody looking at pictures of her, and then she gave
birth and killed the baby. But did she did she
like really not know that that she was pregnant the

(48:50):
whole time? You know, she might have known once she
was in labor, but like up until that point, was
she in denial?

Speaker 1 (48:56):
Yeah? And like I'm kind of psychotic break that that
that type of denial is so it's just so strong,
and you know, if there was a type of psychosis
that went along with that, yeah, I could believe. I'd

(49:17):
like she didn't know.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
That could be a dysmorphia thing too, like just looking
in the mirror and seeing your body change, but you're
you're just in denial about.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
It, you know. Yeah?

Speaker 2 (49:31):
Yes, all right, So wrap it up with this last
one because this is an interesting thing to talk about
to this case.

Speaker 3 (49:39):
Okay, back in twenty twenty three, this college student was
going to a soccer game at Yankee Stadium. He told
his friends he wasn't feeling well and the next day
ends up going to the er with headache and chills,
but was sent home. The next day he was feeling
even worse. He went back again and again was discharged
in what they called a cute viral syndrome. But a
couple of days later he was found dead in his

(50:00):
dorm room.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
Yes, so explain to people, Amy, what because I feel
like I'm explaining this to people in my life a lot,
like reasons to go to the emergency room. And then
when you go to the emergency room, what is their purpose?

Speaker 1 (50:18):
The way people use the emergency room is is something
that you would normally go to, like an urgent care
instead of the er, but it's off hours, so you
go to the emergency room. Also, because of our extremely

(50:42):
fucked up healthcare system, so many people do not have
primary care coverage. They don't or they don't establish I
was he was he a citizen? I don't I know.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
That you couldn't tell because he his parents were I
believe he was, but he was at school? Yeah, I think,
don't you have to have insurance when you're in college.

Speaker 1 (51:11):
Wasn't that the thing you do? And especially if you're
there on visa, you can't come over without any type
of like you have to have insurance. So however, in eers,
people are coming in with cold, sniffles, stub my toe,

(51:33):
I have to fart, sunburns, and we can get a
full array from you know, literally a kid had vomited
once and now they're in the pediatric er or or
a gunshot, so you're like or you know, extreme trauma.

(51:57):
The challenge is that these docs, these er docs and
er nurses are really trained to focus on those people
who don't really have a chance, like they're actively having
a heart attack, they are actively in trauma, they actively

(52:21):
have a bleed or you know, their lung has collapsed,
or we are trained to focus on those things. However,
you become a clinic and those clinic patients are not
well cared for because you can push them into the back,

(52:43):
put them on a stretcher. This was Sam. His name
was Sam, right, They from the description they put him
in the back of the er on a stretcher, young,
strapping man. He's you know, he's probably got a cold,
he's not with mommy and daddy, and you're you know,

(53:06):
that judgment, that triage type judgment kicks in because they
aren't the primary patient in the er, and this happens
all the time. The er docs then are focused not

(53:27):
on treating these clinic patients, like the nurses are really
the ones treating these clinic patients, and then you say
to the doc, uh, this is what I'm ordering. So
when I was reading this, I was very much like,
where was the nurse. There was their resident, Yes, there

(53:53):
there was a resident that spoke to a doctor his
uh the er doctor, and then they also spoke with
i think a chief resident about this particular case. And
so he was just kind of overlooked even though he

(54:14):
had come in twice. He was sent home viral come
back in definitely showing symptoms as some type of sepsis.
But the lawsuit is really focused on why did the
doctor not do a chest X right because on autopsy

(54:36):
he had a lung filled with blood, his heart was enlarged,
his liver was enlarged. So this was something that happened
like as you know, you don't all of a sudden
have an enlarged liver like there was something else going

(54:57):
on with him for a while, and then he was
having symptoms. But it's really the nurses who are dealing
with those clinic patients, and they're focused so much on
the doctors. I would have been really focused on why
were the nurses not? Like we have n eers. We

(55:19):
have a checklist for sepsis. We have to do it
on people who have a fever where their heart rate
is high with the fever. It's a checklist that we do.
It's an algorithm and it then inspires a lab, a

(55:40):
chest x ray, an EKG, lactic acid labs, and blook
cultures and all of those things are are kicked in
once you recognize that this patient has some type of

(56:01):
of an infection that could be septic. And they it
did actually inspire those those labs and the x ray
to be to have been done, but no one did them.

(56:22):
No one like they were trying to order them. The
resident didn't know how to order it because they wanted
to pull some things off of the protocol. They only
wanted certain things done, which you really should not be
doing in any case. But when you are so busy

(56:46):
and your er is filled with people that are probably dying,
or coding, or you've got six ambulances coming in. You
don't want them to be waiting for an X ray,
don't want them to be having a cat stand. You
want them to be a virus. So they are more

(57:09):
looking for a way to discharge you. That is their
primary goal. Their primary goal is not to treat you.
Their primary goal with these low level patients is to
get you the fuck out of the er so that
they can take care of the patients that are, you know,
actual emergencies. And that's the way every er works. Every

(57:35):
single er works this way. And his death this is
not a rare case. This is not rare. This is
something I am certain that happens all the time. We
just don't hear about it because people don't usually sue.

Speaker 2 (57:55):
His y his parents, and his parents are the reason
that we're hearing about it because yes.

Speaker 3 (58:00):
Well, in the research too, his dad said he found
that more than two hundred thousand people will die each
year from preventable medical errors. And for my purpose, they
had estimated it to the amount of at least one
fatal bowing crash a week.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
Yes, think about that.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
Yes, and that is that is exactly what is happening.
In our ers because we're not equipped to be clinics.
We're just not. And some ers are doing better by
having like an urgent care area so that they are

(58:39):
connected to a clinic and then the actual emergent cases
are in the ers. But for the most part, and
it's going to get worse. It's going to get much
worse because if we start losing medicage. People do not
understand that when people come to the er to receive

(59:04):
treatment and they do not have insurance, it's the hospital
reaching for those Medicaid dollars. It's not necessarily that that
patient is covered under medicaing. It's that there's a certain
amount of Medicaid dollars that the er can pull from
so that we can take care of the emergencies even

(59:25):
if they don't have insurance. Pretty soon, those Medicaid dollars
are not going to be there, and ers are the
place that they're going to suffer because there's going to
be more people without insurance, more people without primary care,
and the ers are already flooded. It's going to be

(59:47):
an epidemic.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
See this is an interesting thing because I talk about
this with other things, just like you hear me on
every episode bitching about my car and just like all
this progress that we're having and I just don't think
things are getting better. And it's like I think about
when I was a kid. There was no such thing
as urgent care when I was a kid, so it
was like you either went to your doctor or you
went to the emergency room. Yes, so they have urgent

(01:00:11):
cares on every corner now, at least around here, And
You're like, why are the er so flooded still if
they have all this this like a triage centers that
are supposed to be taking care of all of these
low level emergencies, you know, like, why are it? Like,
what's happening? What's the problem?

Speaker 3 (01:00:30):
Do you think obviously healthcare is the number one contributing
factor to this, But do you think people also having
access to the internet and googling their symptoms and going
on web md and possibly seeing something horrible that that's
triggering more people to go than normal to I.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
Don't think so, because I mean I've been a nurse
for thirty seven years now, so I have seen the
full arc of it, you know, working trauma back in
the eighties and then working trauma in the twenty twenties.

(01:01:09):
It's I think that what it has done more than
anything is and bold and people to advocate incorrectly for
themselves and for their loved ones. I support advocacy for

(01:01:34):
your loved one, for yourself, however, it's it's also they're
advocating for things that are just not even like they're
you know, web MD is. I think it can be
a contributing factor for more people coming in because they

(01:01:56):
think they're dying rather than or they have cancer or
but I just think that the whole system is so
broken at this time that we see everything as an emergency,
and we also see that we have this immediate gratification

(01:02:24):
society that we don't want to wait to go to
our own primary care. We don't want to wait for
the urgent care to wait to open up tomorrow. So
I think people end up going to emergency. A lot
of people, I think also think that if they go

(01:02:46):
to the emergency room, then they're going to have access
to more high level of care like MRIs and cts.
And but I think it's a healthy point that yes,
they're all web mdying themselves, but the level of influence

(01:03:13):
that it has on people coming to the er I
think is smaller than you may think.

Speaker 2 (01:03:21):
You know what else I think is a problem. For example,
like remember Ray you were having she was having like
some severe probably it was gastritis in the end a
couple of years ago. And it's like you call, you're
having and and it's it's not an emergency, but it's
highly uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
Well, I had also gone to the doctor five times before,
but this is.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
The family doctor. This is the family doctor, right, So
so then the next thing is, Okay, you're gonna have
to see a specialist. Will you make the appointment for
the gi doctor? And they I mean sometimes I call specialists,
especially from my daughter, Yeah that my little one, you know,
and they're like, oh, there's an appointment in eight months.
Yeah yeah, And just like people are like, okay, I'm

(01:04:08):
not going to feel like this for eight months, so
like I'm going to go to the emergency room and
maybe they'll give me something.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:14):
Well that was one of those I had gone to
my family I lost like thirty pounds in a month
or something. I was so sick. Anything I ate was
making me sick. Couldn't figure it out. It hit very suddenly.
I went to my primary care doctor. They were doing
everything they could possibly do. They giving me all these
different meds. Nothing was helping. And one night I was
just throwing up so bad my stomach. I felt like

(01:04:36):
like death right, And that was why I went. And
it ended up long term being a glute anallergy that
I was unaware of.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
But at the time and ask me sometimes like you can't.
If you can't give yourself one like you got it,
you gotta go to the hospital because.

Speaker 3 (01:04:54):
Yeah, and I couldn't get into the gi doctor like
you're saying, for months. So that's why I went, because
I'm like, I was convinced I had ulcers or stomach
cancer or something that is.

Speaker 2 (01:05:04):
How badly it hurts.

Speaker 3 (01:05:06):
Yeah, And I have no interest in going. I hate
the doctor. I hate being there. It makes me sweaty.
I have no interest in going there. I only go
to the hospital if it's like an absolute dire situation.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
And that's the other challenge is you're coming in. You
look like a young, healthy adult with abdominal paint. Abdominal
pains are probably the number one reason people go to
the er. So all ready there's a judgment in triage already,

(01:05:45):
Oh geez, your belly hurts, probably have to poop, you
probably have gas or take it pregnant like this, there's yeah,
like you kind of like do the eye roll because
you would us tree understand forty people with a bembo
pain and that's I, you know, I it just becomes

(01:06:11):
really dangerous because healthcare is so overwhelmed right now. Ers
are so overwhelmed that they they're missing things because they
have to do leap frog over these patients that look

(01:06:33):
young and healthy.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
So in this particular case, like I don't know if
you have any advice for this, but this kid was
texting his family and saying, oh, I can't believe it's
still a virus. I thought I was dying because that's
how shitty he felt. And I can imagine that the
amount of pulmonary hemorrhage that he had at autopsy, he
did feel shitty. Like I'm telling you right now, I

(01:06:58):
can't even relieve that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:59):
I'm telling you, if that patient had been mine in
the er with the with the vital signs that he had,
he would not have left. I would not have discharged him.
And that's why I really talk about this about the nurses,

(01:07:22):
because the doctors are not discharging him. The doctors are
not doing these labs. The doctors are not figuring out
whether they're going to go for a chest decks ray.
This is a nurse going in assessing this patient and
he's triaged by a nurse. His his vital signs were

(01:07:45):
off and he definitely was showing sepsis. Most likely if
they had done a chest des ray, his life would
have been you know, and maybe he would have died anyway,
because the autopsy, I think you read, they didn't really
have a reason why his lung was filled with blood.

Speaker 2 (01:08:09):
So I think just from what I read from it,
it's that he was showing some signs of sepsis, but
all of the things weren't glowing up, which is why
I think that they were like, we're going to try
to bypass some of this stuff because his I think
his blood cultures were negative, which even when they checked them. Yeah,

(01:08:30):
so when they did the autopsy, they said his blood
cultures on the second visit were negative. Took so they're saying,
like he's he this is the thing, like he's a
weird case. He's an atypical presentation of he probably has
like evasculatus or a clotting disorder or something right that's

(01:08:52):
causing him to bleed like that. But the bottom line
is is that he had all of this stuff that
should have been looked into. And if they did just
simply do a chest X right, if his heart was
enlarged at autopsy, it would have looked enlarged on the
imaging at least like a basic X ray. And they
also would have sold that he had consolidation in his lungs.

(01:09:16):
And yes, I don't know how they didn't hear that.
I don't know what that would sound like.

Speaker 1 (01:09:21):
They don't actually listen to their lungs. That's the other
part of this is that the doctors come in, they
do it once over. They read the nurse's note, they
read the triage note, they look at the Bible signs,
and should they do their little YadA YadA, I've seen you.

(01:09:43):
Now I'm going back to my coupy uh to write
on my computer. That's the problem that that right there.

Speaker 2 (01:09:55):
So when so I'm curious about this, So when the
so when the doctor walked let's say this was your patient.
If the doctor walked in and you said, yeah, he's
got a virus, is that what you would do? You
would be like, yeah, this is what I think it is,
so yes.

Speaker 1 (01:10:12):
And no, I I it's it's really a keen eye
and er nurses are amazing at picking up on these things.
But when you're really really busy, like there's no you
don't have a maximum assignment in the ER. So like

(01:10:37):
if you're in the ICU, you know you max out
on patients. You get three patients. Most mostly it's one
nurse to three phacians if they're really sick, one to one.
Uh usually one to two. But in the ear, I
could already have three critical basis that I'm taking care of,

(01:11:02):
and then I still have these clinic patients that I
need to take care of. So where is the focus.
The focus is going to be on these critical patients? Now,
am I saying that nurses or doctors aren't doing their job? I? Yes,

(01:11:23):
actually I am, because there are physicians that go in
that don't actually do an assessment. They click, lungs are clear.
He was complaining of shortness of breath at rest. He
was complaining of shortness like he was having a hard
time even getting over to the bathroom. He was really

(01:11:46):
really short of breath. No one in that age group
should have been short of breath, so that would have
inspired me to say, get this kid in X ray,
you know, definitely get this kid on some type of oxygen.
I cannot believe that his oxygen saturation was was accurate

(01:12:09):
because if his lung was actually filled with blood or
he you know, it just doesn't make sense. It just
doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 2 (01:12:19):
Well, I get mine. I mean, I know that I'm
different because I wear acrylic nails, but they take mine
all the time, and just like it doesn't work the socks.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
Yeah, and oh I got to.

Speaker 2 (01:12:29):
I gotta put in something, you know, and it's just like, well,
that's not accurate because it doesn't work at all. Yeah,
whenever you're putting it isn't isn't right. And I get that.
I see that the check boxes are good to not
have you guys miss stuff, but then that they would
also hold you back if you're busy and you're just

(01:12:50):
trying to get around it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:51):
No, you click those boxes. Just you're going down and
clicking those boxes. Like, I think that was the worst
thing that could have happen band to nursing. I think
it's the worst thing.

Speaker 2 (01:13:05):
Well, yeah, because you're not thinking, no, you're just quick
and that's yeah. And I was just curious because when
we at least in the jobs I've worked at, either
in surgical pathology or autopsy, the pas really are the
ones that are like, this is what we think it is,
and then you know, I'll do a whole autopsy this
is what I think it is, and have the pathologist

(01:13:25):
come in at the very end and be like I
found this, this and this, and and like usually they
agree with you. You know, yes, some of it's like
a psychology thing, because we talk about that the case
of Karen Reid. I don't know if you were following
that trial, but like when you go in and tell
somebody that this is a homicide or this is a

(01:13:49):
this is an accident, and they go in with that
preconceived notion in their head already when it sometimes it
trips people out instead looking at it objectly.

Speaker 1 (01:13:59):
You know, it's I see what you're saying, and you're right,
it's very very possible that the nurse who did the
triage probably like did the rolling the eyes, saying like
we've already seen him. He's just being a baby. He
doesn't have mommy and daddy, Like I can see that
happening and of course I'm being judgmental, but I was

(01:14:25):
very concerned about the fact that they were only focused
on the doctors for that suit. Not that I want
any of my nurses to be sued, but the reality
is those doctors see those patients for like thirty seconds,
and there's not that it's right, but it's the nurses

(01:14:50):
who are actually bedside. It's the nurses who are They
are not supposed to be giving any kind of diagnosis,
but A, of course we are.

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
Of course we are, exactly. The whole thing is just
I don't know, it's just it's really scary. From a
patient's perspective.

Speaker 1 (01:15:13):
It is very, very scary. And I think that this
kid was just too shy to be an advocate for himself,
Like he could have easily put his foot down and said,
I really want a chest sticks right, like I cannot breathe.
I can't freaking breathe. And maybe if he had done that,

(01:15:40):
we would be, you know, we wouldn't even be having
this conversation. However, if he was already that far gone
with some type of weird vascular disease or you know,
it's hard to say. It's hard to say whether he'd
still be alive or not.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
It's interesting because we really don't know the true number
of how many times this happens, Like Maria was saying
that crazy statistic, because these people didn't even know that
this kid died until this lawsuit hit them. Yeah, and
how many times. I mean as the nurse is really
never going to the nurses or the doctors are never
really going to learn because they're not getting a call

(01:16:23):
the next day like yo, that guy that you released
is dead. They how would they know? And most of
the time they don't know because people aren't suing.

Speaker 1 (01:16:33):
We would only find out about those cases if they're
you know, obviously in the newspaper, you know, back in
the day where they made it to social media and
someone actually saw the name and recognized it. But there's

(01:16:53):
like thousands and thousands of patients that go through these ers,
and you can't like there's you're you're not going to
be able to be like, oh my gosh, that kid.
I can't believe it unless someone truly points it out
to you, and yeah, so I I it is not.

(01:17:16):
I do not believe that it's a rare thing that
people are being misdiagnosed in the er and sent home
and they die. I think that it's way common as well.

Speaker 2 (01:17:31):
Thanks for that, Amy, because you really you're supposed to
bring cheer and now you're like, everyone is going to die.
I know, I can't.

Speaker 1 (01:17:40):
I feel so bad about saying too.

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
Oh, it's it's true though, like, and that's it's important
for us to talk about this, because I personally didn't know,
like if they said to me, like, you're cool, you
could go. I didn't really know that I could be like, no,
I can't breathe and I really want a chest to excit.
I ain't leave in this place until you X ray.

Speaker 1 (01:17:59):
My Oh yeah, yeah yeah. Advocate for yourself, Advocate for
your left one. I remember when my oldest daughter, I
think she was nineteen twenty at the time and twenty
and I happened to be visiting her down here. She

(01:18:20):
was already living in Florida and I happened to be
visiting and she had such severe abdominal pain and her
boyfriend now husband at the time said called me at
like four o'clock in the morning and said that Alex
is in severe bean I'm taking her to the er.

(01:18:43):
And I was like, what, Like, Alex would never do
that like what you would literally have to drag her
because she passes out to even saying the word blood.
We got we got to the er. I show up.
The nurses are nasty, mean, just mean, And of course

(01:19:09):
Mommy then shows up for this twenty year old and
they like, they did an assessment on her. I did
my own assessment on her, and I'm like, she has pencitis.
She absolutely has a pendicitis. So they came in and
they're like, we're gonna give her some you know, anti gas,

(01:19:32):
and I'm like, she needs cat scan and she needs
to be npo and we need a cat scan. And
the doctor rolled his eyes and he's like, oh my god,
you know, And I said, I'm an e R nurse.
I I need her to have a cat scam. So

(01:19:56):
he yells out from the room to the nurs is.
Mom wants a cat scan, So go little girls getting
a cat scan. Well, guess what her appendix had wrapped
around her colon, was cutting off her colon and was
about and had already started to leak out. So of

(01:20:23):
course they like whisker away. No one ever apologized to me,
but they whisker away into emergency surgery and luckily she
you know, they got it in time. But that is
the way that they treat people. And I'm I'm not
afraid to be an advocate. I'm also not afraid to

(01:20:45):
be wrong. I'm not afraid to be like, oh good, okay,
we had the cat scan. It's fine, good, I'm glad.
I don't I don't care whether I look like an idiot.
But most people, I think, you know, they don't want
to be that, like just assert it and they need to.

Speaker 2 (01:21:11):
Well, on that note, we're it's it's good that you're
saying that though, for sure, But what do you are
you working on anything else? Like, what's what's going on
in Amy's life right now? I know that you were
just on some ridiculous trip. Yes, it was so awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:21:27):
So I live in France part time now, Oh yeah,
that's so. That is Yeah, that is just my life.
And now I am kind of working on a project
with Charles Graper, which we've been working on for a
couple of years, but we both keep getting distracted. But

(01:21:51):
for the most part, I am just pretty much retired,
like doing not a lot of anything, like really hanging
out with my granddaughters and reading and watching a lot
of love is blind. I love that.

Speaker 2 (01:22:14):
I love that too, well. Thanks so much for being here.
That's I mean, there's there's absolutely that's the best life, right,
just enjoying life. You've been through a lot, guys. Listen
to her last thing and you'll know why she just
like should be chilling right now because you live through
more than the normal person lives through. So thanks for

(01:22:36):
being here, and thanks for all of your info. For
the er visits. It's going to be helpful to a
lot of people.

Speaker 1 (01:22:42):
It might piss off a few nurses.

Speaker 2 (01:22:45):
Oh, they know it's true.

Speaker 3 (01:22:47):
People want to get angry at anything. A sorry, thank
you and come back.

Speaker 2 (01:22:56):
Please absolutely 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. I am not a doctor, and I

(01:23:16):
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.

(01:23:38):
Always Remember 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,

(01:24:01):
and subscribe to Mother Knows Death on Apple, Spotify, YouTube,
or anywhere you get podcasts. Thanks

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