The Toxic Woman

A&E doctors have many strange stories to tell – but could this be the weirdest yet?

In 1994, a young woman was rushed into the emergency room at the General Hospital in Riverside, California. She was barely conscious and taking shallow breaths. Her heart was beating extremely fast. A look at her medical notes revealed that her name was Gloria Ramirez, she was 31 - and she had advanced cervical cancer.

The medics rushed to inject her with drugs to keep her calm and bring down her heart rate, but it was clear that she was going into cardiac arrest. As they took off her shirt to apply the defibrillator to try and restart her heart, they noticed a strange, oily sheen to her skin.

‘There’s a fruity, garlicky smell coming from her mouth,’ one of the nurses frowned.