Right now, everybody is legitimately afraid of encountering someone with the coronavirus. But long before that outbreak was making international headlines, there was a bizarre case of a “toxic woman” he sickened anyone who got near her.

On the evening of February 19, 1994, a 31-year-old woman named Gloria Ramirez, who had been battling cancer, suddenly saw her health take a turn for the worse.

Gloria’s blood pressure plummeted and she developed severe difficulty breathing and dizziness. As her family tried to comfort her she began vomiting profusely, and the decision was made to rush her to Riverside General Hospital’s emergency room at 8:14 p.m. Little did anyone know the series of strange events were about to unfold – becoming one of the most baffling medical mysteries of all time.

By the time she arrived, Gloria was described as completely incoherent, her heart was beating significantly faster than normal, and it was soon realized that she was in the midst of cardiac arrest. Medical staff immediately gave her drug treatment and put her on oxygen, but this seemed to do little to help her inexplicable condition, and nurses began removing her upper clothing in order to administer defibrillation. As Gloria was being prepped it was noticed that there was a strange, slick oily sheen on her skin, and the air became pervaded by an odd, fruity odor with an undertone of garlic, which was thought to be coming from her mouth. Others present would tell of also noticing a faint whiff of ammonia as well, but no one had any explanation for any of this.

The doctors decided to take a blood sample, and when a nurse inserted the syringe things got stranger still. The ammonia odor got much stronger, and they noticed what was described later as “white crystals” floating around in the sample.

As the main doctor in charge looked at the blood sample in bafflement, the ammonia stench grew even stronger and seemed to envelop the room, and it was then that attending nurse Susan Kane suddenly crumpled to the floor, complaining of a burning sensation in her face. As she was taken away, medical student Julie Gorchynski passed out, followed by respiratory specialist Maureen Welch, and before long people were dropping left and right like flies, eventually almost all in attendance also falling unconscious or experiencing sharp physical symptoms including lightheadedness, a burning sensation, nausea, dizziness, spasms, weakness of the limbs, and partial paralysis.

The emergency room was then ordered to totally evacuate all non-essential personnel, after which it was soon ascertained that a total of 23 people had fallen ill in Gloria’s presence, five of them severe enough to require hospitalization themselves, and no one had the slightest idea as to why.

Despite all attempts to help her, Gloria Ramirez would pass away just 35 minutes later, the official cause listed as kidney failure related to her cancer. As to why everyone who got near her seemed to faint or fall violently ill, no one knew, and the answers were never definitively found.

Technicians in full HAZMAT gear removed Gloria’s body and brought it to the morgue. Her autopsy was conducted under similar conditions.

What Turned Gloria Into a Toxic Terror?

Initially, the autopsy found nothing toxic in Gloria’s body, which only deepened the mystery. In the meantime, medical staff who had been affected and those who had been present during the initial incident were thoroughly interviewed, and all of them were convinced that there had been a toxic reaction, although all of their blood tests turned out completely normal.

The samples that had been taken from the ER similarly showed no trace of any contaminants in the vicinity, coming out completely clean. Considering that there was absolutely no physical evidence whatsoever of any contamination in either Gloria Ramirez, the room itself, or any who had gotten ill in her vicinity, Drs. Ana Maria Osorio and Kirsten Waller, of California’s Department of Health and Human Services, came to the conclusion that it was all the result of some sort of mass hysteria, a theory that was not readily accepted by those who had been there.

A Possible Explanation?

A second autopsy at the prestigious Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory revealed a possible explanation. During this second autopsy, it was found that her blood contained abnormal levels of dimethyl sulfone, which although naturally produced by the human body was found to be in concentrations three times higher than usual, which was a staggering amount.

It was, therefore, speculated that Gloria had been using a compound called dimethyl sulfoxide as a self-administered pain medication, which can be easily purchased at a hardware store and is usually used as a degreaser. It is also sometimes used as a misguided home remedy for pain, spread over the skin where it can leave an oily residue, and furthermore emanates a smell like garlic. According to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Gloria had likely used dimethyl sulfoxide to help deal with her pain from her cancer, after which it had, through some sort of little-understood chemical reaction, helped along by the electric shocks from the defibrillator, transformed into the highly toxic and carcinogenic dimethyl sulfate, which would have been released when her blood was taken.

As to the ammonia smell, it was surmised that the amounts of Tylenol, lidocaine, codeine, and an anti-nausea medication called Tigan found in Gloria’s blood could have formed a concoction that could have created amines in the body, which smell like ammonia.

It all seemed like a perfectly rational explanation, but upon closer examination, the theory did not hold up.

Gloria’s doctors accepted the findings of Livermore labs, but they said that while present, none of those chemical were in her blood in substantial enough amounts to cause the kinds of reactions that felled so many in the ER. And even if they had been, dimethyl sulfate, while a toxic carcinogen, is not known to produce the specific symptoms exhibited in those present, and with such frightening, decisive speed.

Throwing more shade on this theory, was that there was no dimethyl sulfoxide found among the dead woman’s belongings at home, as well as the fact that her family denied that she had ever used it.

To compound the mystery when Gloria’s family wanted to have an independent third autopsy done, they found that for some reason her body had been “stored improperly,” and had decomposed to state rendering another conclusive autopsy impossible and that her heart and original blood samples had gone missing!

A Cover-Up?

The missing blood and organs, and the state of the body would convince the Ramirez family that something sinister was going on and that there was a cover-up being enacted by the hospital, yet what they could be hiding is anyone’s guess.

Over the years ideas have been floated ranging from secret biological weapons to an accidental administration of chemicals used for making methamphetamines that got mixed up with the hospital’s intravenous bags.

Whatever the answers may be, Gloria Ramirez was buried along with a lot of unanswered questions, and it remains a bizarre medical mystery to this day.

What do you think? What was it about this woman that caused all near her to be sickened? Please reply using the comments below.

5 thoughts on “The Unsolved Mystery of the ‘Toxic Woman’”
  1. Well I have never heard that DMSO is a carcinogen. It is readily available over the counter and commonly used as as home remedy to combat arthritis. I have used it on horses and myself with positive results. It does easily penetrate the skin and like garlic it comes out with your breath.

  2. The coronavirus it is scaring me!!! Trump is doing a great job trying to help us tell him thank you for please!!!

  3. Even if it were methamphetamines…no one would pass out . when youre kidnappped and on tv you see a person holding a hankerchef pouring a liquid from a bottle civering the victims mouth. That makes you pass out fast. Whats that liquid called.
    Meth doesnt smell like amonia..but crack cocaine does.. Meth has an industrial smell. Different.
    I know that because my friend did both with her so-called friends. And when she did crack i could smell it on her breath. The meth i came to visit and they were upstairs i could snell an industry building smel
    I wondered where it was coming from. The next day when i cleaned up the boat my friend just lost her husband to brain cancer i found silver cellophane a drug burned onto it and a straw cigarettes a lighter booze bottles of vodka. I gave her shit about it. She said she didnt know what it was.. She was also an alcoholic. Her so-called friend said it would help her get off the booze.
    She was so depressed she would have taken anything.. We got her to a rehab they gave her librium thats like heroine to an alcoholic. So they avoid the shakes and withdrawal of coming down off of booze. But then another so-called friend would stop by and sooner than later she was all wacked out again. She died Suddenly one morning after an early trip to the beach. She flatlined in the back of a van before she got bk.. I dont know who what when or how that happened i wasnt around then..
    I agree with Burt above DMSO sounds more like it.
    But why the rest got so sick…is stupifying.

    The missing blood and organ sounds like a coverup.
    Who would want her dead? Unless she was so sick someone was after the heart organ for somebody else. .

  4. Heres the thing i was told about meth by a retired RN. It leaves your system in seconds after use leaving no trace of it in your blood. I wonder if crack dies the same? Was someone around her before she was brought in doing drugs and she was breathing it?

    But i hear Meth is hard to detect and most ingredients you can buy at the grocery store in the Cleaning Aisle.
    An article was printed in the paper. I couldn’t believe all the bad chemicals in it…

    Her partying scared the shit out of me.
    But the Booze led her down the drug path.
    She had a body and face like a barbie doll. 46 years old and she threw her life away..

    She was my friend for 28 years.
    I couldnt stop her or her so-called friends.
    And those so-called friends scared me too.
    She was Fearless. When they came on board the boat i left.
    I did not want to be a Witness to that.
    Or get involved. Watching her life roller coaster was enough.

    She was Beautiful abd had a beautiful soul when she was sane and sober. But her husband’s death messed her up. He died on her birthday her favorite day of the year with his eyeballs popping out of their sockets like cysts…

    She couldn’t get that vision out of her head.
    Her Heart went to siomebody.who needed it.
    She was an organ donor.

    Was it a vendetta in the family?
    That’s the Worst story I’ve ever heard of Gloria. And i thought that of my friend Tracy was bad enough.

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