Transcript of Vital Signs

Today's podcast will feature two medical horror stories. The audio from both of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description. The first story you'll hear is called Injection Site, about a man whose life spirals into a nightmare after a sharp pain in his shoulder marks the beginning of something far worse. And the second and final story you'll hear is called Clocked Out, and it's about a man who gets sick at work, which leads doctors to discover that medical condition is so rare, it's only ever been documented three times in the previous century. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the Strange, dark, and mysterious Delivered in story format, then you've come to the right show because that's all we do. So if that's of interest to you, please ask the like button to walk your pet for you while you're on vacation. But don't tell them your pet is actually a hungry Komodo dragon. Okay, let's get into our first story called Injection Site. On the afternoon of January 22nd, 2024, an elderly woman named Janet Lee sat in front of her computer in an office on the second floor of her home in New Castle, She was going over some recent bank statements, but it was hard.

She was distracted because all she could hear was her boyfriend downstairs talking to someone. Janet's boyfriend was a guy named Richard O'Neill, and he and Janet had been together for about 20 years. Now, despite not officially being married, they functioned like a married couple. They lived together, they shared everything. In fact, Janet had even written Richard into her will. Janet thought her and Richard would be together forever. I mean, clearly, if you're writing him into your will, and she assumed that that feeling was reciprocated, that Richard also felt like they were together forever. But lately, their relationship had gotten pretty rocky, and in fact, both of them had begun openly talking about the possibility that they might need to break up. Now, nothing was set in stone, and by no means were they destined for a breakup, but it was suddenly a possibility, and that was really hard for Janet to deal with. As Janet sat upstairs trying to do these bank statements, but getting completely sidetracked just by the sound of Richard's voice, voice. Part of the reason that was so distracting is Richard was all she could think about. What would happen if they broke up?

What would her life look like? Before long, her mind was wandering and no longer was at the bank statements. It was, What does the future hold for me? It seems so uncertain. And so as Janet is having this moment upstairs, she suddenly hears Richard start yelling downstairs. And at first, it sounded like maybe he was yelling at the person he had been talking to. But the more Janet listened, she could tell it really wasn't that he was yelling as much as he was screaming, like he was screaming out in pain or something. And so Janet got out of her chair and ran downstairs to see what was going on. And when she did, she looked towards the front door and she saw there was this man who she didn't recognize, but he looked weirdly familiar to her. He was wearing a white lab coat, his back was to her, and he was walking out the front door. And before she could even begin to process who this guy was and what he was doing here, she heard the sound of Richard, again, calling out in pain, less loudly this time, but definitely in real pain.

Pain. Then she turned and sure enough, there was Richard in the living room, clutching his shoulder and grimacing like something was really hurting him. And so Janet, she walked over to him and she's like, What's going on? What's wrong with you? And who was that guy? Tell me, what's happening here? And so Richard, through gritted teeth, would tell her that he had just gotten a COVID vaccine shot and it really hurt. And that guy who had just given it to him was a guy from NHS, the National Health Service, and he just came by to administer the shot. And so Janet heard what he said, but it wasn't really computing. Why aren't you getting the shot done at the doctor's office? Why are you having somebody come here to administer it? That's unusual. But as she was thinking about this, she could clearly see that what was really important right now was that Richard was in agonizing He was in pain. I mean, he was holding his arm and rocking back and forth, moaning. Clearly, he was having some reaction to the shot. And so she forgot about the weirdness around why he got the shot and how he got the shot and said to him like, Hey, do you want to go to the hospital?

I can drive you. And at this, Richard sat up straight and took a deep breath, clearly trying to calm himself down. And even though, obviously, his shoulder still hurt from the shot, he said to Janet that the guy from the NHS told me this was normal. There's pain associated with this particular shot, and it would just go away on its own. And so I'm just going to wait and let this thing fade. At this point, Janet was still worried about Richard, but he seemed pretty confident that this was not a big deal. And so she decided she would simply follow his lead. And she said, Okay, if that's what you want to do. And then she turned and she went upstairs and continued trying to do her bank statements. But two days later, Janet did end up driving Richard to the hospital because over those 48 hours since Richard got that COVID shot, the spot on his arm, the injection site, had turned red and began to blister and bleed, and then eventually it turned black. So at that point, they went to the ER. Hospital doctors would diagnose Richard with something called necrotizing fasciitis, which is a bacterial infection more commonly known as flesh-eating disease.

Basically, the skin and muscle of Richard's arm was dying and rotting, but from the inside out. The doctors told Richard he would have to have emergency surgery to remove the rotting flesh to stop the spread of this infection. But before they could even do that, they needed to figure out how this infection had even begun. And so at this point, Richard began telling the doctors all about how two days earlier, he'd gotten his COVID shot, and pretty much right away, it had been so painful, and then it blistered and bled and turned black. And then also, over the course of this discussion that Janet is listening to as well, Richard began describing the NHS guy who would actually come to his house. Now, remember, Janet had only seen this guy for a brief second when she had run downstairs. She had seen him walking out the front door. She just saw the white lab coat, but something about him seemed weirdly familiar, but she put that thought out of her mind. But now, as she's listening to Richard describe this NHS guy with a little more detail this time, suddenly something clicked. She realized she knew why this guy seemed so familiar, and this realization filled her with horror.

It would turn out that NHS nurse was not really an NHS nurse. Instead, they were a man that both Janet and Richard knew very well. However, they were extremely well disguised, and so Janet and Richard did not recognize them. This man's his name was Thomas Kwan, and Thomas, after coming inside their home, did not inject Richard with COVID-19 vaccine. Instead, he injected Richard with a deadly pesticide called Iodomethane. That pesticide immediately caused that excruciating pain that Richard was feeling that caused him to scream out and ultimately killed and began to rot away the flesh in his arm. It would turn out Thomas Kwan was Janet's son, and he was furious at her for putting Richard in her will and allowing Richard to get her house when she died. And so he decided he would basically inject poison into Richard, killing Richard to secure the house for himself. But Richard would survive the ordeal. He would have to undergo several pretty intense surgeries, but he ended up being okay. As for Thomas, he was arrested and convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 31 years in prison. The next and final story of today's episode is called, Clocked Out.

On the afternoon of July 29th, 2016, a 23-year-old college student named Felix, stood in the break room of the industrial manufacturing company where he worked in Northwestern Germany. He poured some cereal into a bowl, and then he took his carton of milk out of the communal fridge, and then with the cereal and his milk, he sat down at a table with two of his coworkers. Felix was studying to become an engineer, and that was his primary focus. On his breaks from school, he would work here as a machine mechanic. But as a result of that, basically just being a college kid looking for a side gig, it made him one of the youngest people at this company community. And so oftentimes, Felix had a hard time relating to his coworkers who were all basically a lot older than him. And in fact, now, as he sat down to eat his cereal, the two coworkers that were sitting there already, these two men named Otto and Klaus, who were in their 50s, it's like they didn't even look up and acknowledge him. They just continued silently eating their sandwiches as if Felix wasn't even there. At first, Felix put up with the fact that this lunch break so far was pretty awkward.

There was no conversation happening here. He definitely felt like he did not belong here. But eventually, the silence was deafening at this table, and Felix just couldn't stand it. So he said to his coworkers, Klaus and Otto, Hey, guys, how's the day going? Klaus looked up and stared at Felix, and he just shrugged, said nothing, and went back to eating his food. Now, Klaus, admittedly, was known as a loner employee who kept to himself. So this behavior was somewhat normal, although somewhat off-putting to Felix, who's trying to obviously start a conversation here. But then Otto, he looked up and he looked at Felix and he was about to say something, but then paused, and this grimace came over his face and he just said to Felix, You know what? I'm not having a good day. My head hurts, my stomach hurts. I feel tired. I feel awful. And so now Felix is like, Okay, sorry, Otto. I don't know what to tell you. That's tough. Now, Felix didn't know how to make this any less awkward, and so he just went back to eating his cereal in silence. And then when he was done, he got up and left the awkward break room.

But Felix had only been back to his job for a couple minutes when suddenly he felt this intense stomach cramp that made him double over in pain. Now, Felix actually was somewhat accustomed to getting crampss like this one because he was lactose-intolerant. Typically, if he consumed dairy, shortly thereafter, he would get these stabbing pains in his stomach. That's actually why he kept a carton of his own milk in the communal fridge that was lactose-free. And so suddenly, Felix wondered if maybe he had accidentally grabbed the wrong milk when he had poured his cereal just now. Had he grabbed milk, causing this pain? And so as a wave of nausea came over him, Felix sprinted back into the break room, opened up the communal fridge to see if he had grabbed the wrong milk, but he saw there was actually only one container of milk in the fridge, and it was his, the lactose toaster-toast free kind. And so he had no idea what was actually causing these cramps because it couldn't have been dairy. But at this point, Felix was just so nauseous that all he could think about now was the fact that he could no longer work today.

He had to go home. Felix told his supervisor he had to go, and then he rushed out to his car, he sped home, and barely made it into his bathroom in time in order to vomit into the toilet. And after he vomited, he felt a little bit better. And so he wiped his mouth and he stood up straight, took a deep breath. Then he went to the sink and he splashed some water on his face, and he grabbed the towel and he went to dry his face. As he did, he noticed something. He noticed the tips of his fingers were now tingling, like his hands were going numb. So reflexively, he put down the hand towel and began flexing and opening and closing his hands over and over again to increase the circulation to his fingers to maybe get the feeling back, but nothing he did seemed to help. At this point, Felix couldn't help but feel a little bit scared. Now, stomach cramps and nausea were somewhat normal symptoms for him, considering, again, he was lactose-intolerant. Those were normal symptoms of illness. But losing circulation in your hands was not something he was used to.

This was something else. Even though Felix was an adult, he was 23 years old, his first thought was, I got to call my mom. And so that's what he did. Two weeks later, Felix was still sick. On his mother's advice, he had gone to see his doctor, and his doctor had told him that he was very likely just overworked, and he prescribed Felix some vitamins and rest. But those two things had not helped Felix. In fact, really, his symptoms had only gotten worse. He was still nauseous, and that tingling feeling he had felt in his hands had now extended all the way into his forearms. As a result of this mystery illness afflicting Felix, he had not been able to go back to work, and he had spent the better part of the last two weeks just lying miserably in bed. But this morning, he was determined to get out of bed, take a shower, have a real meal, and basically just have a normal day. It started relatively well. He managed to prop himself up and get out of bed. But as he staggered his way towards the bathroom, he lost his balance and had to grab onto the door to keep from falling to the ground.

After steadying himself, Felix did attempt to keep walking towards the bathroom, but it was like the commands from his brain were not reaching his legs. He kept slipping and staggering and almost falling. Eventually, he just turned around to go back to bed, but immediately he collapsed to the ground and had to literally crawl painstakingly back to the bed. Then when he had finally pulled himself back on there, he pulled out his phone and called his mom again. But this time, he was not calling for advice. He was calling for help. He needed her to drive him to the hospital. Later that afternoon, Felix laid in a hospital bed with his mother to his left and an emergency room neurologist to his right. The neurologist had heard about Felix's symptoms, and she was now performing a preliminary examination, which really consisted of lots of questions about Felix's drug use, about a history of neurological problems in their family, had he had any recent head injuries. But basically all the questions she was asking him, he said no to. There weren't any precursors to him having these issues. Next, the neurologist poked Felix's arms to see what he could feel because he was complaining of numbness and tingling.

But it was like wherever she poked in his arms, he couldn't really feel it. It was like the tingling sensation had totally taken over both arms. That's all he could feel. After that, she measured his muscle reflexes in his legs and also shined a light in both his eyes. Then after that, she put her tools down and she looked at Felix with a very worried expression on her face. She said that based on Felix's symptoms, she thought that some part of his nervous system, like his brain or his spinal cord, might be inflamed. This type of inflammation can lead to things like nausea, numbness, and loss of coordination, all things Felix had been experiencing. This inflammation could be caused by a number of different infections or an autoimmune reaction. But to know for sure, she would have to run some more tests, and so she advised Felix to be admitted to the hospital. Six days later, the neurologist went to check in on Felix, who was still at the hospital. As soon as she walked into his room and saw Felix, she saw he looked terrible. His body was limp, his face was swollen, and his eyes were glazed over like he was staring off into the distance.

By this point, doctors had run imaging scans on Felix and had discovered that his brain and brainstem were inflamed like the neurologist had suspected. But the neurologist could not figure out why this was happening. Typically, inflammation like this was caused by an infection. But the neurologist had tested Felix for every infection she could think of that could have caused this, and all those tests had come back negative. So her new working theory was Felix must be having an extreme autoimmune reaction, which is basically when your immune system malfunctions and starts attacking in your own body. Autoimmune reactions can cause things like brain swelling. But this theory didn't really help Felix very much because first of all, it was nearly impossible to test to see if this theory was even true, that it was an autoimmune reaction. And First of all, even if you knew that's what it was, unfortunately, autoimmune reactions are notoriously difficult to treat. Basically, it was a shaky diagnosis that did not come with an easy cure. The neurologist had given Felix some anti-inflammatory medication, that maybe that would help, based on her research around autoimmune diseases, but it basically did nothing.

She knew that if she didn't find a way to lower the swelling in his brain and brainstem, that Felix could potentially suffer permanent brain damage or even death. Now, in Felix's hospital room, the neurologist walked over to him and tapped his shoulder, and she asked him how he was feeling. Felix, when he looked up at her, his eyes were rolled back in his skull, and it took a minute for him to focus on her. Then it was clear to the neurologist that it took all his energy to croke out an answer. But the words he said didn't make any sense. He said, metal, mouth. The neurologist said, What? What are you trying to say? Then he said, Taste, water. At that point, the neurologist realized what Felix was trying to say is that he had a metallic taste in his mouth and he wanted a cup of water to clear his mouth. The neurologist felt like this had to be a clue about what was going on with Felix. It was not some random symptom. This has to be connected to the totality of what was wrong with him, but she didn't know what a metallic taste in his mouth had to do with his other symptoms, and so she was baffled.

So she just grabbed a cup of water off the nearby table and handed it to Felix, and Felix immediately put it to his lips and tried to drink it, but it was like he couldn't, and the water just dribbled down his chin onto his chest. As the neurologist staring at her patient, she couldn't help but feel like she was just totally failing here. I mean, obviously, there was something horribly wrong with Felix, but she had not come up a proper diagnosis yet, and all the medications and treatments she had suggested so far had done nothing for his symptoms, and she knew if she couldn't get the swelling to go down, it was just a matter of time before he suffered permanent brain damage or death. At this point, the neurologist realized a big change would have to be made in Felix's care. Clearly, what she was doing was not working, and so she decided to transfer him from her hospital to a local university hospital where she knew there were some specialists there who they might be able to figure out what was going on here. But the next day, at that university hospital, that team of specialists that had been assigned to Felix's case were just as baffled as the neurologist had been.

Because now, Felix didn't just have swelling in his brain and a metallic taste in his mouth. He also was experiencing kidney and liver failure. This collection of symptoms meant Felix very likely did not have an autoimmune condition. They tested him again for more infections that maybe could still leave the possibility open that was an autoimmune condition, but again, those still all came back negative. And so effectively, these specialists who were here to solve this puzzle were back at square one. They had made no further progress. And so at this point, all Felix's doctors could do was just hope that whatever illness was plaguing Felix would resolve itself on its own, and they would just do their best to manage his symptoms and try to keep him comfortable until it did. However, by September of 2016, so two months after that first day that Felix went home sick from work, he had not improved. He spent most of his time laying in bed unconscious, barely clinging to life. At this point, most of these specialists were just monitoring Felix. However, one of them still felt like A diagnosis here was still possible. We just need to keep looking.

And so this doctor actually decided that instead of monitoring Felix, he was going to start looking into some medical research papers because he figured whatever Felix had had to be really, really rare. If it wasn't, they would have figured it out by now, and they clearly had not. So he must have something rare. If there's one place you can go to learn about very rare conditions and diseases, it's medical research papers. And so he began combing through all these papers Sure enough, you would actually find a case about another patient who had the exact same symptoms as Felix, and they even appeared in the exact same order. First, the stomach cramps and nausea, followed by the tingling in the arms, then the loss of coordination inflammation in the legs, then the swelling of the brain, followed by the metallic taste in the mouth, and then ultimately kidney and liver failure. Just like Felix, this patient's diagnosis in this medical journal was not an infection, nor was it an autoimmune disease. Instead, it was a condition that was so rare, it had only been recorded three times anywhere in the world over the last century. But this doctor understood that even though Felix's symptoms did appear to match, it still was highly unlikely he actually had this diagnosis because it's so unbelievably rare.

However, the doctor thought, Well, I'll just rule this condition out. All I need to do is a simple blood test. And so he did this blood test on Felix, literally believing it would just rule this out, except when the results came back, it was positive. This doctor had just solved the case, the one that nobody else seemed able to do. But the doctor was not happy. Instead, as he stared at the test results, he was horrified because this diagnosis was a death sentence for Felix. There was no cure for this. And worse, this diagnosis meant other people potentially could be in danger here. And so the doctor knew his next step, of course, would be to contact Felix's family and tell them what he had discovered. But he also knew this was no longer just a medical problem. The doctor called local law enforcement, and they began their investigation immediately. They interviewed basically everyone Felix ever interacted with on a regular basis, and they also sent forensic technicians to all the places that Felix spent any time. And these technicians ran tests on all the surfaces that Felix might have touched at one point or another.

They also ran tests on the food and the water that he might have consumed. They even at one point tried to test the air that Felix had potentially breathed. And they did all this because they were trying to find one very specific substance. But despite basically looking everywhere in Felix's life for weeks and weeks, they didn't find it. Meanwhile, Felix's condition only got worse. By the end of September, he had slipped into a vegetative state. But at least so far, the doctor's worst fears had not been realized. They actually expected other people to begin to turn up to hospitals with similar symptoms as Felix, but they hadn't. With no answers, but with no other victims either, the police investigation began to wind down. Felix remained in a vegetative state for months and then years, and officials still just had no idea how this actually happened to him. They concluded that, well, this was a horrible tragedy that very likely will never actually be explained, but at least hopefully, it will never happen to anyone else. But then, two years after Felix fell into his coma, some very strange things began to happen at his old manufacturing job.

At this manufacturing company where Felix used to work, it actually was pretty common place for employees there to get sick fairly regularly, like more than normal. However, their illnesses were basic, things like headaches and stomach aches and feeling tired, things that didn't really raise big red flags. But now, Otto, the middle-aged man who had complained to Felix over their lunch break about his stomach and his head hurting, was going into kidney failure together. In fact, he was so sick he couldn't come to work anymore and had to get dialysis three times a week just to live. Also, another much younger employee whose name was Elias, he was 26 years old, he had begun having stomach aches. Now, again, that was fairly common at this company. But for Elias, these were not normal stomach aches. These were crippling, severe, like you can't focus on anything else type of stomach aches, similar to the ones Felix was having. Now, Otto and Elias had not spoken to each other about their respective illnesses. This was a place where people just got sick periodically and kept it to themselves. It was just not really that big of a deal.

So they hadn't talked to each other, and they certainly had not connected what was happening to them to Felix and his illness, which was now over two years before. But that would all change one day in May of 2018. So again, we're still talking about two years since Felix went into his coma when Elias was having his lunch in the company break room and he would discover something that would connect everything and blow this case wide open. Elias's shocking discovery led police to do a search of a local home. At first, this home seemed totally ordinary until they went down into the basement. Because down there, it looked a mad scientist laboratory. There was this metal table with all these beakers and scales on it. Then behind it were all these shelves that were stacked high with old jam jars and paint cans and even old mayonnaise bottles. It would turn out inside of these mismatched containers was a collection of deadly chemicals that a judge would later say were more toxic and more deadly than the literal chemical weapons that were used during World War I. This basement laboratory belonged Klaus. He was one of the two employees that Felix sat with during that very awkward lunch break.

The one was Otto, who told Felix he didn't feel very good, and the other was Klaus, the man who, when asked how his day was going, just looked up at Felix, shrugged his shoulders and said nothing. It would turn out for years, Klaus had been buying deadly chemicals online, mixing them together, and then testing these concoctions on his coworkers. He would just poison their lunches and see what happened. Felix's very rare disease that only three people had experienced in the past century in the whole world was effectively extremely acute mercury poisoning. Basically, an ungodly high level of mercury poisoning. Because Klaus was literally just putting mercury into Felix's cereal, and he was just eating it up. In addition to poisoning Felix's cereal, Klaus also put lead, literally right on top of Elias' sandwiches, and then he also put combination of lead and cadmium into Otto's food. Klaus was only caught because Elias made that big discovery. While he was eating his lunch, he noticed there was a strange powder sitting on top of his sandwich, and so he called the police. Klaus never explained his motives for the poisonings. In March of 2019, he was ultimately sentenced to life in prison.

Unfortunately, 10 months after that, Felix, who had been in a vegetative state for three years to that point, passed away. As for Elias and Otto, they still suffer from long-term effects of chemical poisoning. A quick note about our stories. They are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. The Mr. Ballen podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories, is hosted and executive-produced by me, Mr. Ballen. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. Our head of production is Zack Levit, produced by Jeremy Bone. Research and fact-checking by Shelleyshue, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beemer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Callahan. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Eer. Audio editing and post-produced by Whit Lacassio, Jordan Stidham, and Cole Lacassio. Mixed and mastered by Brenda Cain. Production Coordination by Samantha Collins. Production Support by Antonio Monada and Delaina Corley. Artwork by Jessica Clogston-Kyner. Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugdon. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballen podcast. If you enjoyed today's story and you want to hear more like it, go ahead and check out our YouTube channel, just called Mr. Ballen, where we have hundreds more stories, a lot like this one, but most of them are not available on this podcast.

They are only available on that YouTube channel, which YouTube channel, which again is just called Mr. Balin. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time. See you.