Today, I'm going to tell you two wild medical mysteries. But before we get into those stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do, and we upload once a week. If that's of interest to you, please invite the like button to your wedding, but give them the wrong date, time, and location. Also, please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into today's stories. Around 1:00 PM on August sixth, 2011, a 32-year-old seafood vendor named Carla Flores stood in the entryway of her home, balancing a tray of shrimp in one hand and waving goodbye to her three kids with the other. She told her kids she'd be right back, and then she stepped out the front door onto the streets of Culiacán, which is a major city in Northwestern Mexico. Carla was going to deliver this tray of shrimp to one of her regular customers. She walked down an alleyway and then onto a main road, and then eventually into a neighborhood with a whole bunch of brightly-colored houses.

She went up to one of them and knocked on the door. A man answered, and Carla handed him the tray of shrimp. He took the shrimp, gave her a handful of cash. She thanked him and turned and headed back down towards the street. Carla had made it all the way back to the alleyway right near her house when suddenly she heard this loud sound, and then before she could figure out what it was, this small, hard object smashed into her right cheek, and it hit her so hard, she fell onto the pavement. And so instinctively, Carla reached up and she touched her cheek, and she felt a warm, wet liquid. She looked at her hand and it was covered in blood. Carla tried to get up, but her ears were ringing and she felt dizzy, and then suddenly everything went black. 20 minutes later, a receptionist at Culiacan General Hospital watched as a man carried a bloody unconscious woman into the emergency room. He laid her down on a bench in the waiting area, and then he just turned around and began walking back out again. The receptionist jumped up and chased after this guy, demanding to know what was going on with this woman.

Who is she? What happened to her? What are you doing? But the guy just said, Look, I was driving down the road and I saw this woman bloody in the streets, and so I brought her here. I promise you, that's all I know. And then he turned and kept on walking, and the receptionist went back inside to check on the woman. The receptionist looked down at the woman. She was unconscious, her mouth was hanging open, and the entire right side of her face was totally mangled. And then embedded in this mess on the right side of her cheek, basically in her head, was this weird dark-colored object But she couldn't tell what it was, and she didn't have time to stand around trying to find out. She called for help, and a couple of nurses came running out of the emergency room, and together, they lifted this woman up, put her on a girney, and wheeled her back to see a doctor. A few moments later, Dr. Gustavo Dr. Mesa walked into Carla's hospital room. He'd been briefed on her condition, but when he went inside, she was no longer unconscious. Now, her eyes were wide open, and she looked totally confused.

Dr. Mesa could tell Carla was having trouble breathing, and she couldn't close her mouth. But then Carla began making this grunting sound. At first, the doctor couldn't understand what she was saying, but then it became clear she was saying, Rock, rock, rock. Dr. Mesa's first thought was, Oh, she's telling me she was hit by a rock. That's what's caused her injury. And so Dr. Mesa leaned in and looked at her wound, and he caught a glimpse of what looked like a dark-colored stone buried inside of her cheek. Dr. Mesa thought, Wow, she must have been hit so hard by this rock, this stone, for it to get buried that far inside of her face. He promised Carla he would get it out, but first he told her she would have to undergo an X-ray to really figure out where it was in her skull and how exactly they'd be able to get it out. A few minutes later, Dr. Mesa stood in the radiology department looking over Carla's X-ray images, and it was immediately clear to him and all the other medical staff that what was in Carla's cheek was not a rock because the object was shaped like an oval.

It had round edges, and it was perfectly symmetrical. To Dr. Meza, it just seemed far too uniform to be a rock, but he didn't have a better guess for what it was. All he could tell from the X-ray was this object had broken Carla's upper and lower jaw and shattered several of her teeth, and now this object was stuck between her broken jawbones. Dr. Meza knew it was going to take surgery to get this thing out, but he needed more information before he felt confident operating. So he ordered a CAT scan of Carla's head to give him a more detailed picture of this object. When the results came in and Dr. Mesa looked at the image, his face went pale. He couldn't believe what he was looking at, but the proof was right there in front of him, and he knew he would have to do something and fast. So Dr. Mesa ran to the nearest nurse's station and told the nurse to evacuate everybody from the emergency room. Then he grabbed the hospital phone and he dialed a military official. Less than an hour later, Carla was no longer in the hospital. She was now out in the middle of a grassy field, laying on her back, absolutely terrified.

An anesthesiologist walked up to her and injected a local anesthetic into her cheek. And suddenly, the agonizing pain that Carla had felt ever since waking up in the hospital was now gone. But her absolute terror was not. Carla knew there were two doctors and a nurse standing by to perform an operation on her, but also there were two army soldiers just a few feet away from her staring at her. Carla saw a doctor start to bring a scalpel toward her face, and she had to close her eyes to keep from flinching. She heard the soldiers giving directions and the clinking of surgical instruments. All the while, Carla kept her eyes shut tight and just tried to pretend none of this was even happening. After what felt like a lifetime, Carla felt a shift inside of her face, and it was the doctors and nurses pulling this object out of her cheek. Carla opened her eyes, and right above her head, she saw the doctor holding the bloody thing they had just removed from her face. It was a live grenade. That's why she was being operated on, not in the hospital, but out in this open field, because if it did go off mid-operation, it would at least limit casualties.

That's also why the military was called in to tell the medical staff how to handle this live piece of ordinance in the middle of the operation. After the grenade was safely removed from Carla's face, it was disposed of by the army soldiers. It's believed that the grenade that hit Carla was fired out of a grenade launcher. That would explain the loud sound she heard in the alleyway before it hit her in the face. Luckily, though, the grenade fuse that should have ignited and caused it to explode didn't work. So even though it absolutely was a live grenade, it didn't explode, and so it didn't kill her. It's unknown who shot the grenade, why they shot it, or whether Carla was the intended target or simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Carla would ultimately lose half her teeth, she would undergo multiple reconstructive surgeries, and she would be left with a huge scar on her right cheek. But she said she was just happy to be alive, and she was forever grateful to the stranger who brought her to the hospital and to the medical team and the army soldiers who risked their lives to save her.

If you don't know this, But late last year, we launched a brand new, strange, dark, and mysterious show called Mr. Ballon's Medical mysteries. And so far, people love it. It is a free weekly show where each week we explore a new baffling mystery originating from the one place we all can't escape our own bodies. Topics discussed on this show range from obscure diseases and freak occurrences to totally weird medical mishaps that sometimes result in big, amazing discoveries and other times result in just unimaginable suffering and death. So if you're a fan of the Strange, dark, and mysterious, then you really ought to give Mr. Balin's Medical mysteries a try. To start listening, go look up and follow Mr. Balin's Medical mysteries on any podcast platform, and boom, You're in. You got yourself a new weekly show. But if you're super impatient like I am, and you can't wait a whole week to get a new episode, well, with your prime membership, you can listen to an entire batch of eight episodes at once because we release them eight at a time on Amazon Music. Also on Amazon Music, there are no ads.

If all this was not enough to sell you on maybe giving this show a try, well, then stick around at the end of this video, and I'll play you a sneak peek from our newest episode of Mr..

Balin's Medical mysteries.

One morning in the spring of 1982, a mother rushed to the reception desk at the Royal London Hospital in England, cradling her six-week-old baby girl named Claire. Claire was her first and only child. Like a lot of first-time parents, the mother was very paranoid about her daughter's health. So anytime there was a change in her behavior or her appearance changed, it was like this mom rushed to the doctor. That morning, the mother had noticed something very unusual on her daughter's head. There were two raised white lines that made the shape of a plus sign. There was one line that ran from the nape of her neck all the way in back, all the way up her head to her forehead, and the other line was and it went from behind one ear all the way to the other ear. Now, this mother had no idea what these lines were, what they meant, what caused them. And so as soon as she saw them, she scooped her kid up and she headed to the hospital. Now, in the past, every time this mother had brought Claire to the hospital, the visit always ended with, your child is just fine.

But this time, when the receptionist saw Claire's head and saw those lines, she immediately said, those do not look normal. And so she handed the mother some paperwork and told her they would get Claire to a neurologist as soon as they could. Fifteen minutes later, the mother stood in an exam room and watched as the hospital's pediatric neurologist, Dr. Fahad Afshar, examined Claire's head. After a moment, Dr. Afshar stepped back and he explained to the mother that these raised lines on her daughter's head were something known as bulging fontanels. When a baby is born, the bones of their skull are not actually fused together yet, and the thin gaps between these separate skull bones are called fontanels. Dr. Offshard told Claire's mom that when a baby's fontanels begin to bulge like this, it's usually because the child's brain is so swollen that it's beginning to push the skull bones apart. Dr. Offshard told Claire's mom that she had made the right decision to bring her daughter to the hospital, but he was clear that a lot of things can cause a baby's brain to swell and potentially cause these bulging fontanels. In order to figure out what was going on, they would need to order a CAT scan.

Claire's mom felt uneasy, but she said, Okay. They did the CT scan, and then a few minutes later, Dr. Afshar came back into the room with the results. With a grave expression on his face, he told Claire's mother that he had some terrible news. Her daughter had a brain tumor. Hearing this, Claire's mom felt like the entire world was crumbling all around her. She was terrified for her daughter, and she had a million questions. But before she could ask any of them, Dr. Afshar said, There's something else. He said that normally, brain tumors are made up of brain cells. But based on the CT scan, It looked like Claire's tumor inside of her brain was made partially of fat and partially of bone. Dr. Afshar said he had never seen anything like this and couldn't even begin to explain it. But the one thing he did know is that whatever this thing was, it had to come out of Claire. Leaving it inside of her head could, at a minimum, cause serious neurological damage, or at worst, could even kill the child. So Dr. Afshar told Claire's mom that she only had really one option.

Claire needed brain surgery. Even though the operation was very risky for a child as young as Claire was, it was the only way they could figure out what this mass actually was, and it was the only way to get it out. Soon after their conversation, Dr. Afshar was standing in the operating room with Claire sedated, laying face down on the table in front of him. Dr. Afshar made an incision across the back of Claire's head. Then he cut a rectangle into her skull, essentially creating a small door. He opened up that door to see the bottom of Claire's brain. He delicately moved the left and right hemispheres of Claire's brain slightly apart so he could reach the section where the tumor was. That's when he got his first glimpse of this strange mass. He grabbed it with a pair of surgical tongues and gently tugged. He was surprised at how easily it began to slide out, and slowly it came into the light. When Dr. Afshar finally got a full look at what this thing was, he was so stunned, he just froze, staring at this thing that seemed impossible. After setting this strange mass aside, Dr. Afshar closed her skull, stitched her head up, and then sent her to the pediatric ICU.

Claire laid unconscious in a hospital bed with her mother by her side for weeks. Meanwhile, Dr. Afshar ordered a genetic test on the mass he had removed from Claire's brain. It turned out Claire was not an only child like her mother thought. She was actually a twin. The mask that Dr. Offshar had removed from Claire's brain was her twin sibling's fetus. Claire had an extremely rare condition called fetus in fetu. Fetus in fetu occurs in the very early stages of a twin pregnancy when cells don't divide properly and one fetus becomes enveloped by the other. The enveloping twin looks like a single baby, but they're actually born with their siblings' partially developed fetus still inside of their body. The fetus in Claire's head was five and a half inches long. It had two arms, two legs, but its head hadn't formed yet. Claire's case was extra rare because her twin's fetus was found inside of her skull. In all of global medical history, intracranial fetus and fetus had only ever been recorded 18 other times. It was thought to be a fatal diagnosis because to this point, all the others who had it had died.

But after two weeks in the ICU, Claire woke up. And a week after that, she was healthy enough to go back home. And by 18 months old, she had fully recovered and had no lingering neurological problems. As far as the medical literature suggests, Claire was the first person to ever survive having her own twin removed from her brain.

In July of 1848, a 25-year-old man named Phineas Gage got a job working construction on the Hudson River Rail in New York. At this time in America, railroads were being laid all over the country, and so lots of workers, like Phineas, were needed to blast rock out of the way to lay down these railroad tracks. And as it happened, Phineas was an expert in explosives. He had learned how to set controlled blasts, growing up on his family's farm in New Hampshire. Then later in his life, he had worked in a mine blasting through rock. In addition to just being the ideal railroad worker for this time in America, when Phineas actually started working in New York on this railroad, his coworkers immediately started looking up to him. Phineas was extremely smart and energetic. He was this incredible conversationalist. He was charismatic and funny and a natural leader. Just two months into starting this new job, it was no surprise to anyone who knew Phineas or worked with Phineas that he was promoted to blasting foremen, which meant Phineas would lead the explosives team. Phineas was so excited about this promotion that he went to a blacksmith and had a custom tamping iron made.

A tamping iron is a long metal rod that's used to pack explosives. When railroad workers wanted to blast through, let's say, a big rock, they would start by drilling a deep but skinny hole in the rock. Then they would pour blasting powder inside, then they'd put a fuse inside, and then using this tamping iron, they would push the blasting powder and the fuse deep into this hole inside of this rock or whatever it was they were blowing up. Then once it was packed, they would ignite it. Usually, tamping irons were rough tools that looked like crowbars, but Phineas really wanted something special to commemorate this promotion. And so Phineas had the blacksmith make this perfectly straight, smooth, 4-foot long metal tamping iron, and on one end was a pointed side, and on the other was a blunted side. And this rod, it weighed about 13 pounds, and it was an inch and a quarter in diameter. And Phineas loved this tamping iron. He brought it with him not just to work, but basically anywhere he went. On September 3, 1848, so not long after Phineas' big promotion, Phineas and his explosives team were blasting through some rock that ran through a forest.

And Phineas, he was right up front over the blasting site, helping them prep the explosive. His team had drilled that long, deep, skinny hole into the rock they were about to blow up And then blasting powder was put inside, a fuse was put inside. And then Phineas took his tamping iron and began packing the powder infused deep into the rock. And the way he did this is he used the blunt end of his tamping iron to pack the explosives, which meant the pointed end was sticking out of the rock. And so as Phineas is doing this, someone behind him slipped on a rock. One of his men tripped or something. And so Phineas, with his hands on his tamping iron, turned to the right to look and see what was going on. When he did this, somehow his tamping iron that was inside of this skinny hole must have nudged against the inside of the rock, created a spark, and ignited the explosive inside of the rock, which meant the tamping iron was basically fired like a missile out of this hole into Phineas's head. It went in his cheek, up behind his left eye, up and out of his skull, and then shot 80 feet away, landing on ground, covered in Phineas's blood and brains.

This happened so quickly that for a second, after this thing has blown through Phineas's head, Phineas just stood there upright with his eyes wide, and then suddenly a geyser of blood began shooting out of the top of his head, and then Phineas fell backwards onto the ground. When Phineas's body hit the ground, he began having a seizure, at which point his coworkers, who were still shaken up from this sudden blast, they rushed over and tried to position him in a way that he wouldn't hurt himself. But I mean, they're looking at him and he's literally missing half of his head. He's covered in blood, and they're thinking, there's nothing we could do for him but basically wait for him to die. And so all of Phineas's coworkers, who adored Phineas, just stood there very somber watching their boss die. But eventually, Phineas stopped having a seizure, and then he opened his eyes and he looked up at his crew and he sat up and he said, What happened? Now, remember, half of his head has been blown out by a 13-pound, 4-foot long metal rod that has shot through his head. And his coworkers, when they heard how clearly he was speaking and how focused his eyes were, they couldn't believe it.

How in the world is this guy alive, let alone having a coherent conversation with them? And so the coworkers told Finneas, Please lie down. We'll get you help. Lie down. Relax. But Finneas, who still had blood also shooting out of his head, just stood up casually and walked over to the railroad cart and signaled for his crew to take him back into town. The crew, they're looking over at Finneas, who now is literally head to toe, just red from blood, still bleeding, but less so. He's just sitting on the railroad cart waiting for them. They walk over to him and they start these slow one mile journey into town on this railroad cart. The whole time, they're all looking at Finneas, expecting him to die any second. But instead, Finneas is just looking around with half of his head. At some point, he pulled out his logbook and carefully wrote down what time they were leaving their work site to make sure his crew was accurately paid. Then finally, they reached town and Phineas was still very much alive and looking around, acting like nothing had happened to him. The coworkers helped him to his hotel, and Phineas just sat outside on a chair in front of his hotel, just people watching, while his crew went and got a doctor.

A doctor soon arrived, and he, too, was completely shocked at Phineas's appearance, but even more so was Phineas's eyes. He looked at the doctor and his eyes were totally focused like he was all there, totally lucid, looking at the doctor, waiting for him to come over and help him out with his little injury. When the doctor timidly approached Phineas, Phineas very famously said as he sat on his chair, Doctor, here's business enough for you. Like everyone else, the doctor fully assumed that despite Phineas's miraculous recovery from this injury, that he would soon die from this horrific wound in his head. And so the doctor moved Phineas up into the hotel, put him in a bed, and then basically made him comfortable. Now, the doctor at this point was not trying to save Phineas. He felt like there was nothing he could do to save Phineas. At this point, it was like mercy. Let's make this as pain-free as possible for Phineas as he inevitably dies from this injury. But Phineas didn't die. He would break out of it and basically be okay again. However, his personality at first, after he came out of this state of delirium, William was not really the same.

No longer was he this funny, smart, charming, confident leader. Instead, he was this guy who seemed to have lost all of his inhibitions and was childlike. He swore all the time. He would tell people he had these crazy plans he was going to go do, but he would never follow through with them. He would tell his nieces and nephews these wild stories about himself that were obviously made up and not even close to reality. But overall, he was okay, even though you could see his brain pulsing underneath his skin on the side of his head that had been blown off. Within a couple of years of this injury, those changes to Phineas's personality fated, and he really did become old Phineas. However, there was one unique quirk to Phineas post-injury that never went away, and that was Phineas's unhealthy love for the tamping iron that had blown through his head. After his injury, Phineas Finius stopped making friends, and any friends he did have, he really didn't try to keep those relationships up. He didn't get married, he didn't have kids. Instead, the tamping iron became like his best friend. He took it everywhere with him, even posing at one point with the tamping iron the way you would expect a couple to pose for a photo.

Twelve years after his horrific injury, Phineas would develop seizures, likely from the injury, and then he would die with beloved tamping rod right by his side. His case changed neuroscience forever by showing that an injury to the brain could affect specific personality traits. Today, Phineas's skull and his tamping rod are on display at Harvard Medical School.

And now a clip from Mr. Ballon's Medical mysteries.

The winter streets of Boston were cold and gray as Zara hurried back towards her apartment. She was eager to get home and away from all these people she couldn't trust. But as she ran down the hallway of her apartment building and approached her unit, she froze. Her front door was already wide open. Moving slowly in case there was an intruder, Zara tiptoed to the doorway and peaked inside. Furniture was knocked over, books and clothes were scattered everywhere. The place had been ransacked. Suddenly it hit her. Zara felt like a fool. Of course she'd been robbed by her own parents. She'd given them her spare key, and they must have come while she was at class. Zara knew they were in on the same game as all of her classmates and even her professor. Zara couldn't tell what her parents had stolen, but she was not about to let them get away with this. First, Zara deadlocked her door, and then she began surveying her apartment. She had a feeling that her parents had not only robbed her, but it also contaminated the place with some poison. She rumaged through drawers and cabinets looking everywhere when her eyes suddenly landed on the refrigerator.

Zara went into the kitchen and slowly opened the fridge door. Her groceries were still there where she had left them, but she knew something was off. Zara leaned in and smelled. Then she jumped back and slam the fridge shut in disgust. She'd have to throw away all her food because everything inside of it had clearly been poisoned. Zara then picked up her phone to call her mother, Antoinette, and after a few rings, her mother answered. Zara told her mother that if she or her dad ever came anywhere near her apartment again, Zara would hurt them. If they wanted this to get ugly, Zara wouldn't be the one to back down. Then she warned her mother to never call her again.

And then Zara hung up.

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