Ep. 65 | Brain Freeze

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Early in July of 1982, a corrections officer made his rounds at a jail in San Jose, California.

Everything seemed normal as he inspected each inmate's cell.

But as the guard peered into the last cell on the row, he was startled startled by what he saw.

The inmate was sitting on his bunk staring forward, his mouth hanging open.

He looked completely frozen, almost like something out of a wax museum.

The guard gave the cell door a few loud knocks with his flashlight, but the inmate didn't move or even blink.

The guard was afraid that the inmate was dead.

So he unlocked the door and stepped into the cell, and he got right up next to the inmate.

And when he did, he could feel breath coming from the man's open mouth.

So he knew he was alive.

He gently touched the inmate to try to get him to react, but he didn't.

And that gentle tap made the man's whole body rock back and forth on the bunk like a rocking chair.

The guy was stiff as a board.

The guard had no idea what was going on, and he was feeling very freaked out.

But then he noticed the inmate's eyes, they had a look of absolute terror in them.

And the guard knew this man needed help right now.

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From Balin Studios and Wondery, I'm Mr.

Ballin, and this is Mr.

Ballin's Medical Mysteries, where every week we will explore a new baffling mystery originating from the one place we all can't escape, our own bodies.

So, if you like today's story, the next time you're invited over to the Fall of Buttons' house for a sleepover, be super soothing and tuck the Follow Button into their sleeping bag and read them a story.

And then, right as they fall asleep, turn on Norwegian death metal at full blast.

This episode is called Brain Freeze.

On a warm morning in July of 1982, 42-year-old Daniel Martinez woke up in a small apartment in San Jose, California.

Next to him, his girlfriend Kathy slept with her head on his shoulder.

Light poured in through the window.

It made Daniel groan and he closed his eyes.

He and Kathy had gotten high on heroin the night before, and now he felt way more hungover than usual.

Daniel remembered that the heroin he had shot up last night burned like red-hot lava as he injected it into his vein.

Within seconds, he had felt this amazing high, but along with the expected feelings of euphoria came hallucinations that left him stumbling around and bumping into things.

It had also taken him a long time to come down and finally fall asleep.

Daniel thought maybe that was why he was feeling so stiff that morning.

As he tried to pry his arm out from under Kathy's head, his body felt super heavy.

He had to pull his arm really hard, which woke Kathy up.

And when Daniel told her how weird he was feeling, she said she felt stiff too.

Then she pulled the covers back over her head to go back to sleep.

Daniel wanted to lie back down too, but his parole officer told him if he didn't show up for his court appearance that morning, he'd be headed straight back to jail.

And so, very slowly, Daniel pulled himself up and shuffled to the bathroom.

An hour later, Daniel pulled into the parking lot of the county courthouse.

The whole drive, Daniel had struggled just to turn the steering wheel of his old Volkswagen.

Now that he was here, he knew he only had 10 minutes to register in the courtroom, so he tried to move quickly.

But once he was out of his car, he could barely feel his feet as he walked towards the entrance.

He felt so clumsy.

It took him multiple tries just to drop his keys into the tray for the metal detector.

Daniel did his best to look casual as he walked past the guard.

But he stumbled as he he passed by and had to grab the conveyor belt just to catch his balance.

The guard looked at him suspiciously and asked Daniel if he was intoxicated.

Daniel tried to explain that he was sober, but his tongue felt as numb as his feet and so he slurred when he spoke.

And so he was not surprised when the guard took his arm and told him he was under arrest for suspicion of being under the influence, which was a clear parole violation.

Daniel knew he was headed to jail.

Almost a week later, Daniel sat motionless on his bunk in jail, itching and burning where the weight of his body pressed into the thin mattress.

For the past six days that he'd been in jail, Daniel had felt his body growing heavier and more rigid.

It took him longer and longer to make it to the cafeteria line when it was time to eat, and even when he finally shuffled his way through the line, he dropped his tray at least once per meal.

And so the guards started to bring his meals directly to his bunk, but eventually Daniel couldn't even bend his arms to eat or drink.

Finally the guards brought him soup with a straw, but by that time his mouth and jaws had started to lock up and so he couldn't even eat.

And on top of that, because his jaw was all locked up, he couldn't really speak.

It was just a raspy gasp.

Daniel didn't know what was more terrifying, the fact that he couldn't make his body move anymore, or the sinking feeling that nobody was coming to help him.

As Daniel sat there motionless on his bed, he heard the heavy metallic sound of the guard's flashlight knocking on his cell door window.

Daniel heard the guard then shout out two or three commands at him, but his body wouldn't respond, so he just sat there motionless.

Then Daniel heard the heavy door slide open, and he heard the sound of the guard's boots walking towards him, and then Daniel saw the guard's face as he stared directly into Daniel's wide-open, unblinking eyes.

Daniel watched as the hulking guard reached out and gently touched him on the shoulder.

And because Daniel was so rigid and couldn't really move his body, as soon as the guard touched him, it was like he became a rocking chair.

He just went back and forth on the bunk, more like a piece of wood than a human body.

The guard took one more look into Daniel's eyes, and then a moment later, pulled out his radio and called for medical help.

Later that day, Dr.

Owen Green examined the middle-aged man who now lay shackled to the gurney in the emergency room of the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.

Dr.

Green checked his watch and noted that the man, Daniel Martinez, had stared straight ahead without blinking for at least three straight minutes.

And the rest of his body was motionless too.

And not just motionless, but frozen.

Dr.

Green could barely move the man's legs or arms without applying significant force.

Dr.

Green wondered if maybe Daniel had been given tranquilizers to keep him docile.

So he ordered standard blood tests, and soon enough, he had the results.

The tests found no tranquilizers in Daniel's system.

Meanwhile, several hours had gone by, and Daniel's frozen state had not changed at all.

So, the doctor decided to run a few more tests just to make sure Daniel wasn't faking his symptoms to try to get out of jail.

Dr.

Green picked up the small hammer normally used to tap under a person's kneecap to test their reflexes.

But instead of doing that, the doctor turned the hammer over and dragged the pointed side very firmly across the sole of Daniel's left foot.

Now normally, this would elicit a pretty big reaction.

It's uncomfortable.

But as he did it, Daniel stared straight ahead, giving no reaction.

Next, the doctor took Daniel's right hand and dragged the hammer across his fingernails, jamming it into his nail beds.

Most people cannot absorb that pain without reacting, but again, Daniel didn't even move.

Dr.

Green still was not entirely convinced that Daniel wasn't faking this, so he decided to try an extreme test.

He asked the nurse to bring him a vial of ammonium carbonate.

also known as smelling salts.

He broke open the capsule and waved it directly under Daniel's nose.

Now, most people, when exposed to smelling salts with it right under your nose, will instantly gasp for oxygen as their nose fills with the most irritating ammonia vapors.

But Daniel didn't even cough.

At this point, Dr.

Green knew Daniel could not be faking his symptoms.

Something was clearly very wrong with Daniel, and he needed to be seen by a specialist.

A week later, Dr.

Kenneth Schuster, the hospital's head of neurology, walked into an exam room to check up on Daniel.

As Dr.

Schuster entered the room, Daniel lay propped up in bed.

He stared straight ahead, his mouth slightly open.

His arms were bent and frozen at his sides.

Dr.

Schuster had been asked to help make sense of Daniel's symptoms.

Many other doctors had tried to diagnose Daniel, but so far, nobody had an answer.

By this point, Daniel basically could not speak at all, so as a result, it was impossible to get a clear medical history from him.

And even though Dr.

Schuster could see clear track marks on Daniel's arms, indicating a history of intravenous drug use, he didn't know of any drug, legal or otherwise, that could cause a man to freeze like this.

So the doctors could not agree whether Daniel's problems were from a psychological problem or caused by a physical condition.

Now, the staff psychiatrist had diagnosed Daniel with something called catatonia, which is a condition where someone becomes rigid and mute after some sudden psychological crisis.

Considering Daniel appeared to abuse drugs and did have a criminal history, it certainly was not out of the question that maybe he had suffered some kind of severe trauma at some point.

But Dr.

Schuster was not convinced that catatonia was the right diagnosis here, and so he decided to test this theory by testing Daniel for a particular symptom of catatonia, called waxy flexibility, in which patients can remain in uncomfortable positions indefinitely.

Dr.

Schuster gently pulled one of Daniel's stiff arms until it was straight over his head.

Daniel's arm stayed frozen in the air for about 30 seconds until gravity began to pull it softly down.

Dr.

Schuster nodded as he timed the process.

It took at least three minutes for the arm to fully come back down to rest.

And so at this point, Dr.

Schuster understood why the psychiatrist thought that this meant that Daniel was catatonic.

But Dr.

Schuster decided to perform some other tests that could show Daniel's problems were not purely psychological.

He noticed that Daniel hadn't blinked at all since he had entered the room.

And And so Dr.

Schuster tapped Daniel gently between the eyes.

Even people with catatonia will eventually blink if they're tapped in this way, and Daniel did blink.

However, most people will stop blinking, even if the tapping continues.

But Daniel didn't.

He just kept on blinking, which Dr.

Schuster knew was a sign of brain damage.

And then, after a while, Daniel's eyes suddenly slammed shut.

Dr.

Schuster asked Daniel to open them, and Daniel didn't.

He just sat there with his eyes closed.

Dr.

Schuster was starting to see that Daniel had a problem in the part of his brain that controls movement.

This meant that Daniel's frozen condition was likely caused by an injury or disease in his brain, not by psychological damage from a traumatic life event.

Dr.

Schuster instructed one of his colleagues, Dr.

Ryan Curtis, to move Daniel to the neurobiology unit of the medical center for further treatment.

But Dr.

Schuster wasn't sure what that treatment would even be.

As he ran through the lists of other tests he might want Dr.

Curtis to perform, Dr.

Schuster wondered how they could even help Daniel at this point.

A week later, Dr.

Curtis spooned some pudding into Daniel's mouth and watched him slowly swallow.

Dr.

Curtis had been personally helping feed Daniel the last few days so it was easier for him to monitor his progress.

With a week of around-the-clock hospital care, Daniel was better hydrated and his nutrition had improved.

But the fact was, Daniel was still mostly silent, motionless, and frozen.

When Dr.

Curtis had finished feeding Daniel, he went to wash his hands in the sink.

Afterward, as he stood there drying his hands, Dr.

Curtis's eye caught a glint of light reflected on Daniel's fingernail.

Then another little flash from another fingernail.

Slowly, faintly, Daniel's fingers were moving.

Dr.

Curtis realized Daniel was intentionally moving his fingers.

This was not just a reflex.

Dr.

Curtis grabbed a pen from his pocket and a pad of paper from the nurse's station, then he went over to Daniel and put the pen in his hand and began to wrap Daniel's fingers around the pen.

And he was shocked when he saw Daniel begin to grip it.

Once Daniel had the pen, Dr.

Curtis asked Daniel to write his name on the pad.

Slowly, Daniel's hand began to move over the page, and at first it just looked like a squiggly mark, but over the next five minutes, Daniel was able to slowly write out his name.

Dr.

Curtis called for Dr.

Schuster to come witness Daniel's progress.

Over the next half hour, the two doctors watched as Daniel wrote three more short lines.

Daniel wrote that he was aware that his body was not working, but he didn't know why.

Dr.

Curtis was thrilled to see that Daniel's mind was working inside of his frozen body.

And so as Dr.

Curtis made a few notes of his own, Dr.

Schuster began asking Daniel questions, and with each answer, he began to piece together a history of Daniel's health.

And so Dr.

Schuster asked Daniel to tell him what kind of medicine or drugs he was taking.

And Daniel wrote one word in big letters, heroin.

When he saw this, Dr.

Curtis shook his head.

He and Dr.

Schuster both knew that heroin, as harmful as it was to the human body, couldn't cause the extreme symptoms Daniel was suffering from.

So Dr.

Schuster rephrased the question.

Had Daniel been prescribed any medicine by a doctor?

Dr.

Curtis then helped Daniel hold the pad steady as Daniel scrawled one more shaky word.

No.

Over the next few hours, Dr.

Curtis and Dr.

Schuster put together the rest of Daniel's story.

They went over every detail of the night two weeks earlier when Daniel's body first began to freeze.

They covered the drugs, the hallucinations, everything.

And then Daniel wrote down something that stopped both doctors in their tracks.

Daniel wrote that his girlfriend, Kathy, had also woken up feeling stiff the same way Daniel had on that terrible morning this all began.

But he hadn't seen or heard from Kathy since then.

Dr.

Schuster immediately rushed to the phone and called the police to request an immediate welfare check at Daniel's address.

He could only hope that Kathy was still alive.

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Several days later, Dr.

Schuster pulled into his parking space at the hospital and took the back elevator to the neurobiology unit.

It was finally time to give Kathy an examination.

When the police had done that welfare check at Daniel's apartment, Kathy had not been there.

It would turn out she was staying with her family.

However, it took Dr.

Schuster making many phone calls to the family to convince them to bring Kathy to the hospital even though they knew something was wrong with her.

But eventually, her sister had finally brought her in and today the sister was by Kathy's side as Dr.

Schuster entered the room.

Immediately, Dr.

Schuster could see that Kathy was in the same frozen state as Daniel was.

Kathy's sister wiped Kathy's mouth with a cloth as she told the doctor how her sister had come home that morning two weeks ago, stumbling and slurring her speech.

The family had rushed her to the hospital, but the doctors there had refused to admit her for what they assumed was drug intoxication.

Kathy's sister was outraged, but she was afraid that if she made a scene, Kathy might be arrested, so she brought Kathy home.

Since then, the entire family had taken care of Kathy around the clock and prayed she would just snap out of this.

Dr.

Schuster told the women that his best guess as to what was happening to Kathy, which also clearly was happening to Daniel, must have started on the same day, that whatever happened happened to both of them at the same time.

Maybe they accidentally ate something toxic.

A pesticide, perhaps.

Maybe there was a carbon monoxide leak in the furnace, or they had some other chemical exposure in Daniel's apartment.

Dr.

Schuster said he didn't want to rule anything out at this point.

And so in order to figure out this mystery, Dr.

Schuster convinced the sister to let him admit Kathy to the hospital.

That way, at a minimum, she could get the basic care that she needed.

A few days days later, Dr.

Curtis took the short drive down to Santa Cruz where a fellow neurologist was throwing a party.

Once he got inside, he was happy to see some old friends.

But it wasn't long before he and his neurologist friend were back to talking medicine.

Dr.

Curtis wanted to discuss Daniel and Kathy's strange symptoms, but first, his friend wanted to tell Dr.

Curtis about a strange case he was working on.

He described two patients he had seen in a local emergency room the week before.

They were brothers who lived in Watsonville, about 50 miles from San Jose.

They were two healthy young men in their 20s who had been found in their apartment by their mother.

Both men were completely frozen, unable to move or talk.

Dr.

Curtis couldn't believe what he was hearing.

His friend was describing Daniel and Kathy's symptoms exactly.

He found himself nodding when his friend said that he thought these two brothers had the symptoms of a neurological disease called Parkinson's, which can make muscles rigid and slow moving.

Dr.

Curtis had discussed the possibility of Parkinson's with Dr.

Schuster, but they both agreed that a Parkinson's diagnosis could not possibly be correct for Daniel and Kathy.

Parkinson's developed slowly, and Daniel and Kathy had gotten sick literally overnight.

What's more, Parkinson's disease is not contagious, but both Daniel and Kathy fell ill at the exact same time.

So diagnosing Daniel and Kathy with Parkinson's, it just didn't make any sense.

Dr.

Curtis's friend felt the same way about his two patients.

Then he added an odd detail about these two brothers that he found interesting, although he didn't know if it was related to the disease they were suffering from.

He said both of the brothers were longtime heroin users.

Dr.

Curtis knew that Daniel and Kathy were also heroin users, but he'd never heard of heroin making people frozen.

But four frozen heroin addicts could not be a coincidence.

Even though it was very late, He asked his friend for the phone and called Dr.

Schuster immediately.

After sharing this new information with Dr.

Schuster, Dr.

Curtis could hear the concern rising in his colleague's voice as he made the link.

What if a poisoned batch of heroin was circulating around Northern California and it somehow caused these Parkinson's-like symptoms?

If the heroin was to blame, they could have a serious public health disaster on their hands.

First, they needed to track down some heroin from the same batch and test it right away.

And second, they had to warn heroin users that there could be a deadly poison on the streets.

A week later, Dr.

Schuster flipped through Daniel Martinez's medical records one more time as he sat on hold with the San Jose Police Crime Lab.

As a headache began to settle in between his eyes, he caught a glimpse of his face reflected in the small window of his office.

It was late and he looked as tired as he felt.

He hadn't gotten a full night's sleep since Dr.

Curtis woke him up last week with the news about the two frozen brothers.

After the hospital put out a press release about the potentially poisoned drugs, the local media had picked up the story.

By the end of the week, Dr.

Schuster had found himself in a room full of cameras explaining the situation to reporters from all over the state.

As a result of all this coverage, two other cases had been discovered, bringing the total number of frozen patients to six.

In between seeing patients and running the clinic, Dr.

Schuster had acquired samples of the heroin each of the patients had injected, and sent the samples to the crime lab for analysis.

Just then, the hold music paused, and Dr.

Schuster finally heard the familiar voice of the crime lab's lead toxicologist, Sabrina Davis.

As Sabrina read the test results, Dr.

Schuster sat up in his chair, completely stunned.

She told him all six patients had injected the exact same chemical, but that chemical was not heroin.

However, she said she wasn't actually sure what this chemical was, and it would take time to figure that out.

Dr.

Schuster thanked Sabrina for all the hard work and asked her to keep on searching.

And he was about to hang up the phone when Sabrina suddenly said she had one more idea.

She suggested that he track down an article in an obscure medical journal that reminded her of this case.

It described a college student from the 1970s who had been found paralyzed in his parents' basement in Bethesda, Maryland.

Dr.

Schuster jotted down the name of the journal, thanked Sabrina again, and then hung up the phone.

The next day, Dr.

Schuster found a copy of the article, and after he finished reading it, he finally understood what was happening to the six frozen patients, and the answer had been staring them in the face the whole time.

It would turn out, Daniel, Kathy, and the four other frozen patients had all been poisoned by a bad batch of something that was brand new at the time.

Synthetic heroin.

Synthetic street drugs were so unusual that the drug compounds were written about in medical journals like the one Sabrina suggested to Dr.

Schuster.

That article described the case of of a college student who was trying to cook up fake heroin, a compound called MPPP.

When the amateur chemist heated the compound at too high a temperature, the heat changed it into a different compound called MPTP.

When he injected this bad batch of fake heroin, he froze up and couldn't move.

All the symptoms of advanced Parkinson's disease.

Daniel, Kathy, and the rest of the other frozen patients got a batch of the same kind of overheated fake heroin.

When they injected it, this faulty chemical wreaked havoc on their brains, causing them to develop the same Parkinson's-like symptoms overnight.

People with Parkinson's lose certain brain cells that control the brain's ability to produce a crucial chemical called dopamine.

Dopamine delivers the brain's messages to the nervous system, telling the body how to move.

Without dopamine, people cannot move at all.

Usually, it takes Parkinson's victims years for enough of these cells to die off before they notice a change in their motor functions.

But scientists found that the fake heroin chemical, MPTP, was able to destroy these brain cells within a week.

While there's no cure for Parkinson's, Daniel and the rest of the patients were thankfully able to be treated.

They were given a compound called L-DOPA, a medicine that increases the dopamine in the brain, and after just one dose, they were already able to start moving their bodies normally again.

However, L-DOPA treatment comes with many side effects, and unfortunately, none of the frozen patients made a total recovery.

But there was a silver lining to this case: the discovery of this bad batch of heroin, the MPTP compound, for the first time gave researchers a substance that could reliably create a Parkinson's-like effect in a lab setting.

Now, scientists can accurately test for new drugs on animals and get them to market much faster.

And so, as a result, what happened to these six people has led to enormous advances in Parkinson's research.

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From Balin Studios and Wondry, this is Mr.

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Ballin.

A quick note about our stories.

They are all inspired by true events, but we do sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and also some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

And a reminder, the content in this episode is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

This episode was written by Alison Taylor.

Our editor is Heather Dundas.

Sound design is by Andre Plus.

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