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Hey Prime members, you can binge episodes 41 through 48 of Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries right now and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. A middle-aged mother named Kay was fast asleep in a remote forest in Indonesia when she heard her phone ring. Her hand drifted over to the nightstand by her bed, but by the time she grabbed her phone, the call had gone to voicemail. When Kay looked at the screen, she felt a bolt of fear.
She had two obviously urgent text messages as well as three missed calls all from her sister in Hawaii. And in the text messages, her sister was trying to tell Kay that her son had a fast-moving infection that actually could kill him and so she needed to get home right now. Kay's trip to Indonesia to work on a farm had been her adventure of a lifetime, but now all she could think about was her son.
Two days and 6,000 miles of travel later, Kay finally arrived by her son's bedside and she was shocked at what she saw. When she had left for Indonesia, her son had been this healthy, tanned, surfer young man and now he was sickly looking with a tangle of wires and tubes coming off of every part of his body. As Kay began to cry, she kept asking the same question: "How could this have happened?"
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From Ballin 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. If you like today's story, please stop by the Follow Buttons house while they're cleaning and then kindly offer to dust off all their furniture. Once they say yes, open up the vacuum and empty all of its contents all over their furniture and then leave.
This episode is called Surf's Up. It was the afternoon of December 24th, 2008, and while most residents of Hilo, Hawaii were celebrating Christmas Eve, 23-year-old Graham McCumber was just getting home from a long day of construction work. Graham backed his pickup truck into his driveway, but he didn't go inside his home. Instead, he stayed just long enough to grab a surfboard, put it in his truck, and then zoom off towards the ocean a few minutes away.
Surfing was the only thing that helped Graham unwind after eight hours of hoisting building materials at a construction site. Graham drove with the windows down on the balmy evening, taking in the smell of sea salt as he pulled into his usual parking spot. He spent a few minutes wrestling on his wetsuit, then he grabbed his board and ran toward the water. Graham surfed until dusk had settled over the beach, feeling all the stress of the day melting away. Then he paddled to shore, toweled himself off, and hopped back in his truck.
By the time he got home, it was already dark, and he realized he was running late. A friend had asked him to join a holiday potluck dinner, and he still had to make something, and so he didn't have much time. Graham jumped in the shower, and then afterwards, he went outside to the large garden behind his house. Graham had planted this garden with his mom, whose name was Kay. Normally, Kay lived with him at the house, but she was working on an organic farming project in the remote forests of Indonesia.
Like his mom, Graham preferred an organic and holistic lifestyle and loved growing his own food. He even practiced herbal medicine like his mom and wanted to be a healer someday. And Graham just loved to share the fruits and veggies from the garden. So he harvested a few bunches of kale, then threw together a salad, and dashed off to the Christmas Eve dinner party. Graham would spend the evening laughing and celebrating the holiday with friends, and then when he got home and climbed into bed, he felt great.
The next morning though, on Christmas Day, Graham woke up with a splitting headache even though he had not drunk any alcohol at the party the night before. He lay in bed without moving for a few minutes and slowly the throbbing subsided. He rolled out of bed and stood to get dressed but then his arm started to itch and so he began to scratch it but just as he did, another itch began on his leg. Soon, Graham felt itchy all over his body
But when he checked the spots that itched, there was no visible rash of any kind on his skin. And no matter how hard he scratched every spot, there was just no relief.
Graham had never felt this way before and it made him really anxious. He wished he could talk to his mom and ask her advice because she would know what bundle of herbs to chew or what tea to drink, but obviously she was gone in Indonesia. However, his mother's sister, Aunt Lynn, she knew a lot about holistic cures too. So he called her and she told him to come over right away and so Graham grabbed his car keys and headed out the door, itching himself the whole time.
The drive to Lynn's took about 15 minutes, but today it felt like an eternity for Graham. By the time he arrived, Graham's arms and legs were bright red from all the scratching he was doing, and his stomach was starting to churn. He felt like he was going to throw up. He let himself in through the front door and called out to his aunt. She came in from the kitchen with a concerned look on her face, just as Graham collapsed onto the couch.
Lin asked Graham to tell him how he was feeling. And he told his aunt that the itching all over his body felt like it was actually under his skin, and so he just couldn't actually itch it. And he said his stomach felt like it was being twisted into knots. Lin quizzed him on what he'd eaten or touched over the past 24 hours, but Graham assured her that he hadn't done anything new and was not allergic to anything he'd touched or eaten at the potluck.
Lynn thought for a moment, and then she told Graham she'd be right back. Graham closed his eyes and tried to relax as his aunt went outside to her garden.
A few moments later, Aunt Lynn came back with a handful of peppermint and some other herbs for his stomach and headache. Graham had used these traditional remedies before, and in the past they had given him some comfort. And so he thanked his aunt and took what she had given him, and then after a while, once he felt like his stomach was settling down, he said goodbye to his aunt and headed home to try to get some rest. When Graham got home, he flopped into his bed and closed his eyes.
But although his stomach was feeling better and his headache was gone, the itching had now turned into a deep burning sensation. It felt like his blood vessels were on fire, and the throbbing in his temple had come back. It was a dull pain while Graham was lying down, but the moment he stood up, it felt like someone was driving an ice pick into his forehead.
That afternoon, he called his aunt back to ask if he could spend the night at her house. He was in a lot of pain and wanted someone close by in case something bad happened. She agreed to drive over and pick him up. After a very uncomfortable car ride, Graham shuffled his way into Aunt Lynn's guest bedroom. He climbed into her bed and fell asleep instantly, sleeping through the night. The next morning, December 26th, Graham woke up with a shooting pain in his temple. It was so strong, a wave of nausea rose up in his throat.
Graham ran to the bathroom and barely made it to the toilet before he threw up. Moments later, Aunt Lynn was kneeling next to him, rubbing his back as he hung his head over the toilet bowl. His aunt's hand on his back made Graham feel a bit better, and he asked her if she wouldn't mind making him some ginger tea because he thought that might help too. And Graham was surprised when he heard his aunt say no.
And then he felt his aunt pat his back one more time before she stood up and told him that as much as she and the rest of their family believed in these traditional remedies, it was now time to go to the hospital. About an hour later, Lynn tried to hide her worry as she helped Graham walk into the emergency room at the Hilo Medical Center. And as Graham sat down on a chair along the wall, Lynn felt helpless because she could see that Graham was in so much pain he was now crying.
Lynn had never seen her healthy athletic nephew so sick. She tried her best to appear calm as she checked him in at the reception desk. Then she took a seat next to Graham and filled out his paperwork for him. She actually knew his medical information by heart because they were very, very close. She was essentially his second mom. After a short wait, the receptionist called Graham's name and a nurse helped him stand up and then walked him through the doors into the patient area.
Lynn sat in the waiting room for about 30 minutes before a nurse came out and invited her to come see Graham. When Lynn walked into the exam room, a doctor was in the middle of explaining that they were still waiting for some tests to come back. Once he had those results, he'd have a better idea of what was going on with Graham. Lynn could see Graham grimace. He told the doctor he was in a ton of pain, like a level 10 out of 10, if not higher. He asked if there was anything they could give him for the pain while he waited.
The doctor hesitated, then said if Graham's pain was really that bad, they could start him on a morphine drip. Morphine is a very, very strong painkiller. Graham immediately nodded yes. If it would make the pain go away, he wanted it. Lynn was shocked. Morphine was a serious drug. But she knew how much pain Graham was in and understood why it could be necessary. Aunt Lynn gave her nephew a comforting smile and then sent a text to Graham's mother, Kay, letting her know that her son was sick.
But they were at the hospital and Graham was getting cared for and Lynn promised Kay that she would update her if Graham got any worse. A few hours later, Lynn was walking back from the vending machines when she saw Graham's doctor approach his bed. Lynn felt relieved, assuming they must have a diagnosis. And so she walked over and she asked the doctor if she should go home now and maybe grab an overnight bag for Graham.
But the doctor told her that wouldn't be necessary. He said all the tests came back negative, he thought that Graham simply had a serious case of the flu, and he was going to discharge him. Lynn couldn't believe what she was hearing. She reminded the doctor that Graham's pain was so intense that he was put on morphine. Once it wore off, she was worried he'd just end up right back at the hospital.
Lynn could see the doctor was skeptical. She wondered if maybe he thought Graham was faking his pain to get a morphine fix. And so she assured the doctor that Graham was a really good kid and was in legitimate pain and just needed help. The doctor promised Lynn that he believed Graham was in severe pain, but his symptoms were consistent with just a bad flu and did not require further treatment at the hospital.
He was pretty sure Graham would be better in a couple of days, but he told Lynn to bring him back if he did take a turn for the worse. Lynn disagreed, but there was nothing she could do. The ER was discharging Graham, and she had to take him home. So Lynn waited while Graham signed a few release forms and then helped him back to the car. Once they were back at her house, Lynn helped Graham ease onto the couch, and then she handed him the TV remote. Then she threw his favorite blanket over him and made him the ginger tea he'd asked for earlier.
Then, she watched with worry as Graham barely sipped his tea and then complained that his head was still hurting and that his arms were starting to itch a little bit. Lynn had no idea what was wrong with her nephew, but she was pretty sure that Graham was suffering from something that was far more serious than the flu. And whatever it was, holistic remedies might not be enough to cure it. She just hoped that he would start to feel better overnight.
But the next morning when Lynn woke up, she heard Graham crying out for help from the guest bathroom. Lynn ran to the bathroom and knocked on the door and asked what was wrong. And from the other side of the door, Graham said that his bladder felt really full, but he couldn't urinate. Then in a more quiet voice, Graham said he felt like he was dying.
Lynn knew that Graham was right to be worried. If he couldn't relieve himself, his bladder could literally burst. A ruptured bladder can lead to blood infection, kidney failure, and even death. And so Lynn told Graham that they were getting back in the car, going back to the hospital, and they were not going to leave until Graham got the help he needed. When they arrived at the hospital, Lynn helped Graham to crawl out of the back seat where he had been lying. Then he leaned on her as he hobbled towards the sliding glass double doors that led to the emergency room.
As they got closer, a nurse noticed them and ran toward them with a wheelchair. Graham was very grateful as the nurse helped him sit down and right away he kind of slumped over in the chair. The nurse asked what was going on and as Graham cradled his aching head, Lynn explained that her nephew was no longer able to urinate. Graham could feel the nurse speed up as she pushed him inside. Minutes later, an ER doctor explained to him that they needed to put in a catheter to relieve the pressure on his bladder.
From there, they'd admit him to the hospital for treatment. A little after midnight, Lynn went in to check on Graham and found him lying awake staring up at the ceiling. She very gently squeezed his arm and Graham yelped in pain. Lynn snapped her hand back and apologized. She had barely touched her nephew and he had reacted like she had clamped his arm with a vice grip. Lynn told Graham she'd be right back then went to find the doctor.
The doctor came back with her to the room and then approached Graham's bedside and took a pen out of his coat pocket. He lightly ran the top of the pen along Graham's arm. And again, Graham flinched and told the doctor it really hurt when he did that. The doctor nodded and then did the same thing with the pen down Graham's legs. And as he did it, Graham winced and gritted his teeth. The doctor told Graham that the extreme sensitivity to touch was likely due to meningitis, an inflammation of the tissues that surround the brain and spinal cord.
When Lynn heard this, she felt her stomach drop. If Graham did have meningitis, she knew he could spend the rest of his life battling seizures, brain damage, hearing loss, or worse. Meningitis could even be fatal. The doctor said that in order to be sure, they had to perform what's called a spinal tap. That meant he needed to insert a large needle into Graham's spine. Lynn saw Graham's face go white. She could understand why he was nervous. If even a mild touch hurt him, how would a needle going into his spine feel?
But, if they were going to figure out what was wrong with Graham, he would have to go through with it. Once the anesthetic was working on Graham, the doctor carefully inserted the needle in between two of Graham's vertebrae. Lynn squeezed her nephew's hand as the doctor then pulled back on the syringe and filled it with Graham's spinal fluid. After the doctor had pulled the needle out of Graham's spine, Graham relaxed and let out a sigh of relief.
Lynn put on a brave face for her nephew. She was glad the procedure was over, but she had a sneaking suspicion that Graham's struggle was only just beginning.
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A few hours later, Graham's mother, Kay, stared in disbelief at her cell phone. While she was asleep on the other side of the world in Indonesia, she had somehow missed two text messages and three phone calls from her sister Lynn. The sisters had been texting for the past couple of days, so Kay was already aware that Graham was in the hospital, but this barrage of attempts to contact her could only mean one thing. Something bad must be happening with her son.
Her heart was pounding as she called her sister back, stealing herself for devastating news. When Aunt Lynn answered, she was crying. She told Kay that Graham had just tested positive for meningitis and was now fighting for his life. She needed to come home right now.
It took Kay two full days of travel to go from the remote forests of Indonesia all the way back to Hawaii. And as soon as she landed, she hopped in a cab and went straight to the hospital. The moment she saw her sister, Lynn, waiting in the parking lot, Kay broke down in tears. Kay had spent the whole flight mentally preparing herself to see her son in the condition he was in, but she still felt totally shocked as she rounded the corner into his room and actually saw him.
A tangle of wires and tubes seemed to be attached to every part of his body. He was pale and sickly looking, nothing like the healthy tanned surfer that Kay had left a few months ago. His blonde hair was greasy and clung to his face. Graham was awake, but barely. His voice was hoarse as he said hello to his mom and gave a weak smile. Kay immediately rushed over and gave her son a hug. She promised Graham she was there to help and she would work with his doctors to make sure he got better.
A few minutes later, Graham's doctor walked in and updated Kay on Graham's condition. Although they knew he had meningitis, the doctor believed it was actually a sign of a deeper underlying disease in his brain and spinal cord. One big hint was Graham's continued inability to urinate, something called Ellsberg syndrome. It really didn't make any sense that Graham could have this condition.
Ellsberg syndrome is most often caused by West Nile disease, a mosquito-borne illness that has never been detected in Hawaii. And Graham had never tested positive for West Nile disease. But at least doctors could test for West Nile, which causes swelling in the brain. Other potential triggers for Ellsberg syndrome were even more devastating to the brain, but there was no test for these conditions until the disease was more advanced. So Graham's doctors were still essentially at square one.
Kay just prayed they could keep her son stable long enough to find the answer. On the morning of January 12th, almost three weeks after Graham first got sick, Kay nodded off in the chair at the foot of her son's hospital bed. She woke up as her sister, Aunt Lynn, walked through the door with a cup of coffee in each hand. While Kay sipped her drink, she noticed her son shift a little bit. It had been almost 10 days since she'd arrived, and the doctor still didn't have a confirmed diagnosis for her son.
And now her son's eyelids were fluttering rapidly, the look in his eyes seemed distant, and then when Kay stood up and shook his leg and asked if he could hear her, Graham didn't respond. Behind Kay, Aunt Lynn, who was watching this, immediately punched the call button on the wall. Seconds later, a nurse bolted into the room, ushering Kay and Lynn out of the way. The nurse took one look at the monitor tracking Graham's vital signs and began shaking Graham's leg. When he didn't respond, she went to find a doctor.
Moments later, Kay held her breath as nurses ripped cords and wires out of her son and then pushed his bed as fast as they could toward the door and down the hall. As Kay watched helplessly with a look of absolute fear on her face, a nurse came over to her and gently explained that Graham had just fallen into a coma and now he needed to be transferred to the intensive care unit. Half an hour later, a nurse escorted Kay to Graham's bedside in the ICU.
Now, he was hooked up to a ventilation machine just so he could breathe. A feeding tube was down his throat. Graham was on life support now. Without these machines, he would die. Graham's doctor assured Kay that Graham was stabilized for the time being, but the meningitis was only getting worse. And the Hilo Medical Center didn't have the resources to care for Graham any further. They needed to transfer him to a bigger hospital in Honolulu, the capital city of Hawaii.
The medevac chopper was ready for Graham later that morning, and Kay, who was inside the chopper as well, placed a hand on her son as he lay on his stretcher, and then she watched as the helicopter lifted off the ground, and the ground below her gave way to a clear blue ocean. A short time later, Kay and Graham landed at the hospital in Honolulu, and Graham was quickly whisked away to the ICU at that hospital.
By late afternoon, Kay once again watched helplessly as medical staff huddled around her gravely ill son, going over notes and trying to talk about what this could be. That night, Kay made her way to the nearby hotel that one of the nurses had recommended. But when she laid down to sleep, every time she closed her eyes, all she could see was her son lying unconscious in his hospital bed.
Then she thought of the long list of drugs the doctor had prescribed for Graham, all names she couldn't remember or even begin to pronounce. They would regulate Graham's heartbeat and blood pressure and keep his organs from failing, and she knew these drugs were vital to Graham's survival. But they were also very hard on his body, putting him at risk for things like pneumonia, blood clots, and worse.
And so as Kay lay there in her hotel bed unable to sleep, she thought to herself that she just had to find some way to help her son. She just could not sit on the sidelines anymore.
And so the next morning, Kay walked into her son's room with a paper bag full of supplies. She took out a jar of noni juice, a tropical fruit with natural antioxidants, and after getting her son's doctor's permission, she fed Graham the noni through his stomach tube, hoping it would help his immune system fight off this mysterious disease. Then Kay grabbed a box of long steel pins. She lifted Graham's shirt and administered acupuncture all over Graham's stomach.
Kay believed the acupuncture would protect Graham's organs, both from the disease and from any side effects of the various medications required to keep Graham alive. Two days later, Kay moved around her son's bed administering more acupuncture treatment and all the while talking to him as though he could hear her. She fully believed Graham was getting better. She couldn't explain it, but it was like his presence was slowly refilling the room and it was getting stronger and stronger with each passing day.
Kay was certain that her traditional healing methods, combined with modern medicine, would help Graham's body heal. In fact, Kay was so focused on her work that morning that she barely noticed a doctor walking up behind her. He introduced himself as the hospital's infectious disease expert, and he said he had news for her, but unfortunately, it was not good news.
Her son's illness had finally advanced far enough that doctors could now tell whether he was suffering from an extremely rare but utterly devastating condition. And unfortunately, the doctor said, the results came back positive. He held up an image from Graham's most recent MRI and pointed to dozens of tiny white spots on Graham's brain.
He told Kay that each one of those spots represented a microscopic hole in Graham's brain tissue that were created by parasites living in his head. The doctor explained that Graham's increasingly debilitating symptoms had been caused by these parasites, called roundworm larvae, as they burrowed inside of him. Kay was so caught off guard and horrified by what she was hearing that she could barely speak for a second.
but then finally she just asked how could this happen the doctor explained that graham's condition is extremely rare and can only happen under very specific circumstances these roundworm larvae these worms grow in the lungs of rats and then are excreted alive through the rat's feces and then sometimes a snail will crawl over those rat feces
and the snail will become infested with these roundworm larvae as well. And if a person accidentally were to eat that infected snail or its slime, the roundworm larvae can enter that person's digestive system. The doctor said that the roundworm larvae had eaten their way through Graham's intestines and eventually made their way to Graham's brain, which is what made all those microscopic holes.
But it wasn't the holes that were making Graham so sick. The roundworm larvae were dying once they reached Graham's brain, and their decaying bodies were infecting the brain tissue. The condition, the doctor said, was known as rat lungworm disease. The doctor told Kay that he was terribly sorry, but he did not see a path to recovery for her son. At best, Graham would live in a vegetative state. Although his body could live, his mind would be gone.
He probably would not be able to do much more than open and close his eyes. At this, Kay actually just started shaking her head. This didn't make sense to her. She was certain that Graham could hear her when she spoke to him. He had smiled when she asked him questions like he understood what she was saying. And through her tears, Kay told the doctor that she refused to give up on her son. Over the next few weeks, Graham's condition was up and down as his body fought off several dangerous infections.
Kay trusted all the doctor's abilities, but she just felt like Western medicine alone would not actually be able to help Graham. And so, in between drug treatments to fight off the parasites in Graham's body, Kay gave her son supplements of herbs like spirulina, chlorella, and a Chinese herb called Xingnao-1. She had heard these treatments helped with nerve function, and she hoped they might allow Graham to recover faster.
Kay also continued feeding her son noni juice and continued giving him acupuncture. And through all of Kay's treatments, her son's eyes would periodically open and close. But the doctors told Kay that it was just a reflex and not something he was doing consciously. Then, one day in March, Kay noticed that Graham's eyes became more animated. It seemed like they were focusing on her.
Kay immediately pressed the call button and soon Graham's doctor came in and he confirmed that it did look like Graham was starting to wake up. Kay held her son's hand and encouraged him to make a noise, do something, make some sign that he was still there. For a while, the only sound Graham made was his labored breathing, but Kay kept at it constantly asking her son to give some sign and then kind of as a joke, she would say to her son as his labored breathing continued that he sounded like Darth Vader.
And when she said that, Graham's eyes seemed to focus again and he took what looked like a big deep breath and then in a very weak voice he said, "I am your father." Kay almost screamed with excitement. Not only was her son awake, he could speak. She reached down to hug him and amazingly Graham hugged her back. The doctors who were watching this were just as amazed as Kay was.
Kay liked to think that her treatments had helped support the vital work the doctors had done to keep her son alive. Together, they'd done everything in their power to give Graham's body a fighting chance against this parasite, and against all odds, he had overcome it. Within a few days, Graham was conscious enough for his mother to explain what had happened to him and how he had gotten this terrible disease from a snail.
Graham asked how that could possibly be because he could not recall eating any snails, and his mother kind of shrugged and said, you know, we may never know for sure how this happened. But she then told her son that most likely on the night that he had that potluck dinner on Christmas Eve, when he harvested the kale, perhaps there was a snail on the kale that had this disease in it.
When she said that, Graham's mouth fell open in shock. He thought back to that night and the bunches of kale he hastily gathered from their garden, and he'd been in such a rush to head out the door, he had forgotten to wash the kale. And so had there been an infected snail or infected snail slime on this kale, it's totally possible that Graham could have accidentally ingested it. Thankfully, nobody else at the potluck had gotten sick. On April 30th, after more than four months in the hospital,
Graham was finally able to return home. Over the next two years, he relearned how to walk and talk. Today, he rides his bike to a local community college where he's studying to become a physical therapist. From Ballin Studios and Wondery, this is Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, hosted by me, Mr. Ballin.
A quick note about our stories: we use aliases sometimes because we don't know the names of the real people in the story. And also, in most cases, we can't know exactly what was said, but everything is based on a lot of research. 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 Aaron Lan. Our editor is Heather Dundas. Sound design is by Ryan Patesta. Coordinating producer is Sophia Martins. Our senior producer is Alex Benidon. Our associate producers and researchers are Sarah Vytak and Tasia Palaconda. Fact-checking was done by Sheila Patterson.
For Ballin Studios, our Head of Production is Zach Levitt. Script Editing is by Scott Allen and Evan Allen. Our Coordinating Producer is Matub Zare. Executive Producers are myself, Mr. Ballin, and Nick Witters. For Wondery, our Head of Sound is Marcelino Villapando. Senior Producers are Laura Donna Palavoda and Dave Schilling. Senior Managing Producer is Ryan Lohr. Our Executive Producers are Aaron O'Flaherty and Marshall Louis for Wondery.
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