and more worried, seeing your daughter waste away? i was thinking she was getting tired of going to the doctors, and then finding nothing. she says mom, i give up, i will not go to the doctors anymore. i said no, you can t, you have to go back. you cannot give up. she was not even walking normally anymore. just one it seemed like things could not get worse, a disturbing new symptom. i went next door to see her, and she, we ended up on her kitchen floor. and she was crying to me and said, she had pulled out a chunk of her hair, like, just in the shower. it came out. brigida beautiful, dark brown locks started to fall out by the fistful. when you see her lose her hair, i felt like that was her most beautiful trait.
school. they teach you a lot of moral values, things that are important in life. brigida would beg to go to church during the week, is that true? during the week, yes. a little girl who begged to go to church grew into an accomplished young woman who ran across the and excelled in school. did she put a lot of pressure on herself then, to be perfect? yes. she has always been that way. even in kindergarten, they used to get a lot of homework. she was the type of girl, if she made a little mistake, she did not want to have her pages show that she had erased something. she would start all over. near the end of her senior year in high school, brigida met a young man named race a runner like he was, uto, a great behind her, but ambitious and determined to go to the naval academy in annapolis. when did you first hear about race? i was 16 years old. i remember, she met him at a car show. she was there doing the venture
she would not throw it away like that. as they eliminated all of the other possibilities, the detectives, along with doctor lapointe came to a sinister conclusion. i am proceeding like this is unintentional poisoning until proven otherwise. why would somebody choose thallium? someone would choose thallium, because it looks like a medical disorder. it presents as someone having a slow decline, and withering away, dying. you would associate this with a chronic illness. it is poison, to get away with it. the next step to solving this mystery was figuring out how brigida had been poisoned. doctor lapointe did his own kind of detective work. and, you see this kind of, really bright spots everywhere, all throughout. these little white flex? the little white flecks are thallium ian brigida s deduct digestive tract. when you see this. in the context of what we are seeing, like, oh my gosh. a telltale sign?
toxic metal, thallium, to his patient, brigida uto. for tense hours and days, the doctor and his team fought to save brigida s life. she consumed more than enough thallium to kill her. and yet, i do not know why i am here. but [laughs] i do not know why i am still alive, and that is scary. [laughs] meet brigida, she is still with us. did you feel like you were dying? i, i did. i did, but i was too afraid to admit it to myself. what kept you alive at that time? well, my son. wanting to see my son. as the antidote took effect, brigida, in essence, woke up. she found herself in a hospital bed with only wisps of hair on her head. but she could not walk or
sent out brigida s samples. brigida, in pain the whole time. finally, the lab results came back. just as he suspected, it was thallium. a lot of it. brigida husband and young son seemed to be clear of the toxic metal, but she was in serious danger. her levels were off of the charts? they really were. more than 1000 times the acceptable level. wow, that is unbelievable. a hospital staffer had driven through the night to get hold of prussian blue pills. doctor lapointe started brigida on them immediately. but, with so much thallium in her system, dr. lapointe worried that prussian blue would not be enough to save her. he also put her on dialysis to filter her blood. it was a slow process. when fbi special agent john deal arrived to question her, brigida was still desperately