Hysterical - We're Gucci | 7

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

In the series finale, a mysterious doctor travels to LeRoy with a new, controversial diagnosis. But is it the right one? As the girls improve and the chaos of the outbreak fades away, we hear from the people impacted and find out that while something truly scary happened in LeRoy, it was also truly remarkable.Listen to Hysterical on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting https://wondery.com/links/hysterical/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Previously on Hysterical. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop fucking around. She's like, I can't. My eighth or ninth day, straight ticking and doesn't stop. That's when things got scary for everybody.

She basically said, oh, it's all in your head. You're fine. Am I going crazy? Is this really happening? That just does not fit. That doesn't land with me. That is not it. I know it's not.

We broached the following question briefly at the very beginning of this series, but I feel like now, this being our final episode, we have enough background knowledge to actually hazard a guess. The Waldorf Jell-O salad. Is it a salad or is it a dessert? No, seriously. In the original Joys of Jell-O cookbook from 1963, which I own, shut up, the Waldorf salad is made with lemon or mixed fruit or orange pineapple Jell-O. Sounds like dessert. And it's got apples in it and walnuts in it. Dessert. But it also has celery in it. And vinegar. Salad. It also upsettingly has mayonnaise on it.

Salad. But the recipe says the mayo is optional. Dessert. In the end, of course, it's salad, it's dessert, it's neither, it's both. Honestly, it's dealer's choice. Such states of in-betweenness work for something like Jell-O. The stakes are gloriously low. But when a mystery illness is tearing through your town, settling on labels and definitions takes on a little more import. We're not just trying to

categorize our lives here. We're looking to stop this thing from spreading. And we're looking for a cure. But how do you solve a mystery illness that no one can agree on? On today's episode, this is how it ends and also, in a way, how it never will. I'm Dan Taberski. From Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, this is the conclusion of Hysterical. Episode 7, we're Gucci. Bury it in the depths of the internet is the Kill List.

A cache of chilling documents containing hundreds of names, photos, addresses, and specific instructions for their murders. Kill List is a true story of how I ended up in a race against time to warn those whose lives were in danger. Follow Kill List on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Kill List and more Exhibit C true crime shows like Morbid

early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. I'm Afua Hirsch. I'm Peter Frankopan. And in our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we're talking about the life of US President JFK. He steered the world through moments of terrifying geopolitical crisis. But was he quite the shining

hero he seemed? A complex personal life, and of course, the source of countless conspiracy theories. There's so much to cover, right? What are you most looking forward to talking about? I'm really looking forward to the Cuban Missile Crisis because it's just one of the most dramatic things that's ever happened in history. I don't know, there's something about Kennedy. You know, as I'm growing up, thinking of him as an all-American hero, the good looks, I want to scratch the surface and see what's really underneath. I'm a slightly different generation. I never really understood what the big deal was. I just knew that there was a big deal. Well, I'm a different generation.

I knew you were going to take it like that. I feel old, but historians love the dating process. So follow Legacy now from wherever you get your podcasts. Or binge entire seasons early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. I think I was one of the youngest girls in the whole group of everybody and everything. You all know Emily. Emily was in eighth grade and in the marching band when this all happened and her tics started. Hers were mostly a big jerk of the head and arm. So I kind of felt alone for the most part because all the other girls were, they were friends with each other and like they knew each other and everything. And I was like, oh, I'm kind of

alone in this. But like, I know I'm not alone, but I'm alone in this. Did you think that this is how you were going to be forever now? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I'd walk home from school and I'd be like, man, I'm never going to be able to drive because I'm doing this. The thing that struck me was just that there was no build up to her having tics. It was just like instant. It was like a switch had been flipped. Remember, Emily's mom, Kathy, was weirded out by the fact that almost everyone was going to the same doctors, the ones at Dent Neurologic Institute nearby.

She wasn't totally opposed to the idea of conversion disorder. She wasn't like anything but that. But there were so many voices and so many theories, She wasn't like anything but that. But there were so many voices and so many theories, she didn't know who to believe. Kathy's 13-year-old daughter, Emily, started to tick just two weeks ago. So they did the TV thing, looking for answers that way. They explored different doctors, different natural remedies were prescribed, even a juice. So, I mean, it was juice. It was 100% natural. And we thought, it can't hurt. I still crave that juice, not going to lie.

It was really good. You crave it? Oh, all the time. Tastes good, didn't do much. But they kept trying. There was never, there was no, like, right thing to do. It was just, let's try this. All right, that didn't work.

Let's try this. That didn't work. Let's try this. Until, eventually. Ding, ding, ding. Let's try this. That didn't work. Let's try this. Until eventually... Ding, ding, ding. We got a winner. Through this little network of all the parents talking to each other, I got connected with the mother of one of the girls. She said, we got in contact with this doctor from New Jersey, New York City area.

This is Dr. Trifoletti. This is Dr. Trifoletti. This is Dr. Trifoletti. Dr. Rosario Trifoletti is a pediatric neurologist. And they said, well, he's an expert on PANDAS. PANDAS. P-A-N-D-A-S. Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Strep. With PANDas, a child develops psychological and neurological symptoms after a lingering strep infection. Symptoms that can include obsessive-compulsive behaviors and Tourette-like tics. It's rare and was only identified as an illness in 1998, so still a lot of unknowns about pandas. But this new doctor seemed confident that it might be a match. He's willing to travel here to Leroy to see these girls free of charge. And I thought,

well, what's it going to hurt? It's another doctor. It's another opinion. Let's go for it. Local neurologists who've seen the Leroy teens believe they are suffering from conversion disorder, a psychological condition. Another specialist disagrees, and he has traveled to test the high schoolers for a bacterial infection. So in late January, at the height of the outbreak, and the day after Bob Bocock and Team Brockovich exploded into town, Dr. Trifoletti arrives. They probably pass each other in the street. And he meets with nine of the affected kids and their families, including Kathy. He kind of sat with us all together in a big group and was explaining what PANDAS is, why he thinks maybe there's a connection there. He says, and I'd also like to do blood tests if you all agree to it, you know.

And I was like, OK, makes sense to me. Blood test sounds like a good idea. If there's no infection in her bloodstream, then we can say, yeah, it's conversion disorder. If there is an infection, then we can say it's something, you know. So I was like, let's test her. And I think it was maybe less than a week later, we got the results back that Emily had evidence of walking pneumonia. Trifoletti makes a public announcement. He says he has found elevated levels of strep antibodies in five out of the eight girls tested. And he found elevated levels of mycoplasma pneumonia antibodies in seven of the eight girls. He couldn't quite call it PANDAS.

PANDAS is related to strep, and they found more than that. So based on his findings, Trifoliti announces that he is ready to give this mystery illness a name. Leroy syndrome. Then he begins treatment. And it was steroid, anti-inflammatory, which was ibuprofen. And I believe there was something to treat the infection. Like antibiotic?

Like an antibiotic. And I don't remember 100% on that one. But I remember it was heavy on the ibuprofen and the steroid was one of those ones where you start heavy and taper off. And it took her 11 days and the symptoms were gone. No more sudden head jerks. No more flailing arms. No more sudden head jerks. No more flailing arms. No more tics. And I thought, okay. What else?

There's the proof. There's my evidence to me. That was just like, I closed the book on it. This is what it was. But let's take a beat for a minute. Does all this make sense? After all this time and all this grief, could it really be that simple? So Pantos does not square with you? It didn't pan out for my patients. Yeah. Dr. McVig, the neurologist at Dent, had already seen 14 of the affected girls,

and she says that she had already ruled out PANDAS. Now, I can't speak of the four that I didn't see, but when you look at the literature and you compare it to evidence-based medicine, absolutely did not fit with pandas. Those patients did not. Here's the first problem. The presence of strep antibodies in and of itself doesn't mean pandas. In fact, test any random group of kids for strep or other lingering bacterial infections, and as many as half or more are going to come up with elevated levels, especially during winter, especially in a place like Leroy, where snowfall gets measured in feet and keeps everyone inside and germy for months. Also, unlike conversion disorder, PANDAS is a disorder that appears overwhelmingly in boys, not girls. Also, PANDAS is a pediatric

disorder. It happens to children. All the known affected people in Leroy were past that stage. They were teenagers and a woman in her 30s. Also, PANDAS is not contagious. So is this the correct diagnosis for what's happening in Leroy? A non-contagious, very rare disorder that occurs mostly in prepubescent boys? Even, let's say, it's pandas. Why is it all young, healthy, previously healthy girls? They don't have autoimmune disorders. They don't have a weakened immune system.

For all of them to have it concurrently at the same time in the same school, that's just logically like, let's just think about this, people. Eventually, Trifoletti says he treated six of the girls based on his diagnosis. And he says all six saw improvement. Emily is cured completely. So here's the big question. If Trifoletti's diagnosis is wrong, why would the treatment for it work? Well, some people suspect, okay, I suspect. I suspect that what Trifoletti has to offer isn't necessarily the right answer, but something maybe just as useful. An answer that's easier to believe in.

You know when something makes, ah, it makes sense. This is Alicia. You remember her. She was one of the satellite cases that had popped up after she and her softball team passed through Leroy, and she came down with symptoms. Alicia, too, went to see Dr. Trifoletti. See, I might not, I'm the same way with movies. I might not remember lines or scenes perfectly, or at all, really. I have an awful memory. But I remember how things feel. That's like what I go by, like how I felt on

the inside. That's what I can remember. And when she saw Trifoletti? I just remember feeling a little more at ease. Just in his presence, I just felt a little bit more at ease and heard. And I was maybe optimistic, too, that he would have more answers, which he did. I feel like he almost was like the voice of reason sometimes, you know? Kathy describes a similar feeling. Just what he said, just to me, it made sense. It just felt like an answer and a possibility. And if nothing else, I was like, at least it's somebody who's like, seems sincere. And just for the fact that he traveled here, he's doing it free of charge.

Like that spoke to me. That was like telling me that, hey, this is somebody who at least seems concerned for their well-being so did anybody suggest that it was the placebo effect that yeah that be that they had treated the pandas with with these things but because she believed in it she got better um we did follow-up blood work after like a few months later and it showed no infection in the blood. And I was like, okay, so no infection in her blood, no ticks. I see that as a connection. And there was just a lot of people that still insisted,

no, it's conversion disorder. And I said, I've got my answer. Like, it worked. So I'm not going to dig anymore. And even Dr. McVig acknowledges the diagnosis that she's offering, conversion disorder, is almost more confusing than no answer at all. She says she saw this play out in one of the families who resisted conversion disorder, who really just didn't want to hear it. So this family wanted there to be something more other than this is an emotional, social, emotional issue and we need to do some internal introspection and calming and relaxation techniques and felt like I was hokey and, you know, that this wasn't genuine on my end and there must be something medically or someone to blame or someone to sue.

It's a hard thing to look at self. It's harder than blaming others. I do have to say it does strike me as something that I can relate to, like to go to the doctor and you're having these things happen to you and for the doctor to look at you and just be like, look at self. Like that's hard to hear because that's just more fucking work. And you're a teenager too. Yeah.

Because that's just like a nightmare. Who wants to look at themselves when you're 16, right? When I was 16, I don't know if I had the capacity to look at myself. Tonight we have some news. Tell it, Dr. Drew. Some of the girls apparently have gotten better over the past three weeks. Some did have antibiotics. And the question is, to what extent did they play a role here?

Or was this a placebo or something else? And perhaps what Trifoletti was really offering was an off-ramp from all the craziness that had come to surround the mystery. We tried to ask Trifoletti about all this. He and his office told us multiple times he won't talk about what happened in Leroy. Even though, it's got to be said, headlines about his involvement are still splashed all over his website. And I understand conversion disorder worked. It was accurate for those other girls that it worked for.

As long as they were satisfied with that answer, I didn't, that's fine. That's fine for them. And then there was still the group that legitimately had this pandas-like infection. And it was just happened to be this terrible, perfect storm of a situation. You know, they were in a little terrarium together and this is what happened. So, in the end, it's mass psychogenic illness and it's Leroy syndrome. It's a salad and a dessert.

It's neither. It's both. It's dealer's choice. But are we satisfied to just Waldorf Jell-O salad this thing and call it a day? Not quite yet. There's one more Leroy girl I want you to hear from. This person never made it into any of the news reports. You never saw her face on TV. She never even caught the Tourette's-like symptoms that had spread through

the high school so ferociously. Because this person had already been dealing with Tourette's syndrome itself for years. And she ended up in the center of it all. I'm Ellis James. And I'm Colin Murray. And this is Everything to Play for, the show that takes you inside the greatest sports stories of all time. Our latest two-part series tells the story of a legend, a man who changed football in this country. It's Brian Clough.

We'll be talking about the footballing miracle he achieved, winning back-to-back European Cups with Nottingham Forest, and of course, his unforgettable one-liners. They won it all by cheating! And I can't wait for this one. We can't discuss Brian Clough without talking about his partnership with Peter Taylor, and we'll be telling some of our favourite Clough anecdotes. I'll also be making a bold statement

that this will never happen again. Me working with Ellis will never happen again, that's for sure. Follow everything to play for in the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge seasons early and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus. Hello, Matt and Alice here, the hosts of Wondery's podcast, British Scandal. Our latest series, Peru 2, begins on the sandy shores of Ibiza.

Michaela McCollum should have been having the summer of her dreams, but it all went wrong when she met the gorgeous Davy in a bar. I think less holiday romance, more recruitment for a drug cartel. She agreed to team up with another young Brit, fly to Spain to collect a drugs package, then head straight back. However, only at 30,000 feet does Michaela realise she's not on the way to Spain, she's heading for Peru. And when they get there, they find out it's not a small drugs package but 11 kilograms of cocaine. The summer holiday turns into a spell in a Peruvian prison and a story that becomes an international media sensation. To find out the full story,

follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. You know, in the days of the witch trials, they too had a way to solve an unsolvable mystery, an A-B test that gave an answer every time. When someone was accused of being a witch and the question was, is she or isn't she? Some places would use a test called swimming the witch. And it's simple. They would tie you up and throw you in a pond. If you float, you're a witch. If you sink, you're not a witch. You're tied up at the bottom of a pond now, but no one thinks

you're a witch. Swimming a witch was effective not because it gave a rational answer. It is, of course, craziness. But it did give them an answer, no in-between. And it gave a town someone to pin all this unpleasantness on, some poor, buoyant witch who they'd pull out of the water and perhaps hang on a hilltop nearby. There's at least one human instinct we can all recognize. When it's too difficult to sit with the unanswerable, the next best thing is finding someone to blame. I was first diagnosed when I was about eight years old. I had started this weird facial twitch thing and, you know, we went to the doctor and she looked at me and she's like, yep, that's Tress. when I was about eight years old. I had started this weird facial twitch thing.

And, you know, we went to the doctor and she looked at me and she's like, yep, that's Tourette's. Let's send you to Neuro. This is Rose. But looking back at it, now knowing that information, we can notice tics that I had as young as like two and three years old.

The development of Rose's tics as a kid came gradually. It's a common marker for Tourette's syndrome, as opposed to the sudden onset of the mystery illness in Leroy. Other differences? You've got to have multiple tics for at least a year for it to be considered Tourette's. Also, Tourette's occurs overwhelmingly in boys rather than girls. But not for Rose.

In 2011, she had just entered eighth grade at Leroy High School. I mean, I had always had very prominent tics from the time I was diagnosed. Like I had facial twitches. I would go through spurts where I would be throwing things. I was always very loud. Like I always have very loud vocal tics. You will always hear me. Everybody always knows who I am.

Can I ask you, how disruptive did you feel? Like when you say you were taking a test and you'd like throw a pencil, like did it feel like you were say you were taking a test and you'd like throw a pencil like did it feel like you were getting in other people's way i wasn't worried about being the weird kid that needed extra testing i wasn't worried about being the weird kid on meds like everybody's a weird kid for some reason that was just my thing and i was fine with that But then the arrival of the mystery illness, or as Rose might have called it, attack of the clones. Like, I can remember sitting in school and someone looked at me and was like, oh, did you hear like so-and-so caught your text? And I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about?

Like, I was just confused. I'm like, dude, how? What? Like, what do you mean somebody caught my what in fact you can't actually catch Tourette's it's not that kind of disorder so yeah like Tourette's in itself is not contagious like I have two brothers neither of them are ticking I'm not like I don't need to be quarantined in a little bubble like I work around people's food every day nobody else has Tourette's like we're Gucci but like Tourette's can be suggestive in the sense that when you're around other people that tick you tend to tick more that's when Rose

says she became the target as the obvious source for all of it because that was it immediately immediately it was you're contagious and all this stuff like right from day one who was saying that I mean at first it was the kids. It started with just the kids. It was, oh, you're contagious. Oh, she caught it from you. Oh, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I'm just trying to go to school, dude. But like, nobody stood up and was like,

hey, this isn't their fault. Don't blame them. Like, not once did an adult say, that's not how that works. This isn't their fault. Leave them alone. People were like yelling at me in grocery stores. Like, like, and again, I'm 14.

Grown ass men would walk up to me and scream at me for causing this in the middle of a grocery store. Like. Wow. And then there was the horde. Leroy was the new dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder. Cameras and reporters everywhere and approaching the girls outside the school. And I just kept being like, this is not me. Like, I am not a part of this. Leave me alone. Like, the only thing I could really tell them was that I had Tourette's and it wasn't contagious and I didn't know what was going on. And then

they'd leave me alone after that because, oh, you're not a medical mystery. That's not what we want. Like, no, literally, that's what it was. As soon as I was like, I have a real answer for you. They were like, no, we're done. We're good. And at the same time, the stress of it all is making Rosa's Tourette's tics worse. Much, much worse. So I had a tic where I would punch myself right here in the face over and over and over and over. And like I. And your chin. That was your tic. Like my tic was literally to like cold cock myself and like with force not just like with force so i had fractured part of my jawline and another one of my ticks i have permanent damage

in my right eye because my other tick was to punch myself in the eye i was literally beating the shit out of myself rose developed a kicking tick that was so severe she began coming to school in a wheelchair. I had a tick for a little bit where I would slam my head off the table. I had to get sent home one day with like a goose egg

on my forehead because I would just like bang my head on the table. And I was going through that while all of this was going on, while all of the other tick stuff was happening. That was all starting for me.

And that's when Rose says that the school took action. And so the school was like, well, none of these other girls tick when Rose isn't around because she's not there to start it. So they pulled me out of all my classes and I was doing all of my classes in the sound booth for the auditorium. Like it was like this little like closet like thing. And we'd go to my class. I'd get my classwork. And then I'd go sit there and do my classwork so that none of the other girls could hear me. So you would go get your classwork

and then you would go sit in a soundproof audio booth. Yep. Yep. And do your work. Yes. I was like, you guys are alienating me for something I've been diagnosed with, something you know about.

And I don't have what they have. And I don't have what they have and I haven't caused what they have. You know, I remember being told the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. And right now you are the few. I was told that by an adult at Leroy Central School District. And I just remember, OK, all right. That sucks, I guess. Like, that sucks. What do you do with that? You go home and cry about it and then go to school the next day. You know, I took that one on the chin. I just kind of said, you know what? Okay. Hurt. Wow. took that one on the chin. I just kind of said, you know what? Okay. Heard.

Wow. Needs of the many, needs of the few. You know who coined that phrase? Karl Marx? FDR? You proceed from a false assumption. I'm a Vulcan.

It was motherfucking Spock. To James T. Kirk on the Starship Enterprise. Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan. It's a harsh logic. But hey, Spock's a harsh guy. With harsh bangs. But more than that, he's a logic guy. He's the logic guy.

That's his whole bit. But is that the logic we're going with in this situation? The one girl who actually has a diagnosis? A diagnosis that isn't mass psychogenic illness. And she's the one we put in the audio booth all day? The de facto padded cell? Is logic even the thing to be grasping for here at all? Did it feel like mass hysteria? It makes sense to me. It makes sense to me. I don't think, like, I know I wasn't contagious. I know it wasn't bad tampons. I know it wasn't yucky water,

but I didn't necessarily know what it was. And I knew that it wasn't my job or problem to figure out. And I knew that the reason everything was such a shit show was because everybody decided they were a detective and tried to figure it out instead of letting the people that knew what they were doing try and handle it. You know, had everyone stepped away from the beginning and let the professionals try to figure this out, I don't think it would have gotten as bad as it did. It's probably the most frustrating paradox about mass psychogenic illness. It seems the harder we try to figure it out, the reporters, the soil tests, the town meetings, the pontificating, the Brockoviching, the worse the outbreak gets. I'm not sure there's a way around it. If I were a parent, I'm sure I'd be ransacking the Mayo Clinic looking for an answer. But it really does seem to be the thing that puts the hysteria in mass hysteria.

We tried to talk to the school about what happened to Rose and about any of how they reacted when the mystery illness showed up in Leroy. They declined. And so in terms of what the truth of what happened 10 years ago, you're still not sure. I'm not. And I don't ask. It is. It was. It's done. Eye of newt and toe of frog. Wool of bat and tongue of dog. I kind of get why they used to blame witchcraft for events like the one that happened in Leroy.

It's contagious, it's unexplainable, and it's scary as hell. All things that bring out the worst in us. It feeds off our attention, and yet it's totally impossible to ignore. It's not hard to imagine some witch behind a tree laughing her ass off, which, frankly, we would have had coming after the whole pond thing. But there's another quality to it.

It's one that's hard to acknowledge when we're in the throes of an outbreak. But when the stakes are a bit lower, it's easier to spot. Bonjour à tous. Nos invités d'aujourd'hui. Merci. Anyone speak French? No worries, what's about to happen runs deeper than language It's a French talk show Candy-colored set, studio audience, perky host, panel of guests And the topic of today's show, people with unusual laughs.

Like that one. Everyone on the panel has some sort of bizarre laugh. There's another one. Unleashed by a panelist after hearing that weird one before it. And maybe you can guess how all this is going to evolve. People have genuinely lost control. Even the host is helpless. I still laugh every time I watch it. Across time and space and screens. Maybe you're laughing too. A contagion.

Of all the meanings of the word we've explored, this is my favorite hysterical yet. How the contagion here is almost magical. Even if we can't quite fathom why our minds tether themselves together like this, and why it feels so good. I've come to see that it's no less magical when, instead of a laugh, it's a symptom. A distress call of sorts, sent out by one person and picked up by another, who doesn't just mimic it, but experiences it themselves. And then another, and another. A human chain, connecting each to something larger. A couple years ago, at a sheep farm in Inner Mongolia, several sheep begin doing something

strange. They begin walking in a circle. Not walking around the edges of their pen so that it looks like a circle. They're actually walking in a perfect circle. And they don't stop. Soon, they're joined by more sheep. And more sheep. Till there are hundreds of them, circling, like pilgrims, around a holy shrine. For 12 days straight. Experts have theories as to why, but no pat answers. It's a mystery.

In 1987, a female orca is spotted off the coast of Washington state, swimming around with a dead salmon on her head, wearing it like a hat. Why? You'd have to ask her. But soon, the behavior spreads to other orcas in her pod, and to other whales in other pods nearby, all swimming around wearing fish-like hats. It goes on like this for about six weeks, and then they all just stop. No more salmon hats. No one knows why. These kinds of things, these uncanny, unexplainable connections, they occur in the natural world all the time. And we are part of that natural world. And apologies to Spock, but forcing rationality can sometimes be the most irrational thing to do.

So, like, I volunteer at Tourette's Syndrome Camp every summer. Wow. Yeah, and I love it. It is one of the best things I do with my life. Case in point, Rose. Every year. It's so amazing. But we all tick so much more because we're all ticking. Does that feel good or bad? Oh, I love it. Like we said, Tourette's is suggestive. One ticking person being around another can make the symptoms worse for both. Now, imagine dozens and dozens of them. But like, I, you know, when you go to camp and all these kids,

like, a lot of times it's the first time they're around somebody else that has it, and so they just go ham, and it's the funniest thing. But instead of resisting, they just let it happen. They don't hold back. It is so worth every second of it, because you are having the best time and you are around your people. And the other thing is there's something called tick shopping. That's the actual name for it.

And you can pick up other people's ticks. They're not just aggravating each other's symptoms. They are sharing them, passing them back and forth unconsciously. There's still so much about Tourette's that's unknown. But these kids are able to revel in the mystery of it. Even if only for one humid, buggy, wonderful weekend in the summer. So I always have to take the day after camp off because I'll come home with God knows what takes doing what. But it's the best feeling ever.

It is the best feeling ever. The line between contagion and connection is a thin one, sometimes barely there at all. Eventually, the mystery illness in Leroy followed the pattern of many mass psychogenic illnesses over the centuries. It flared up, it caused havoc, and it faded away. It died down in part, it seems, because the attention died down. The TV appearances dried up. The camera crews tiptoed away.

The headlines got smaller. Almost starving hysteria from getting the attention it needs to survive. At the height of it, Dr. McVig and her colleagues even asked the TV stations to stop showing video of the girls taking on the air, because that was potentially how it was spreading. A couple of local stations actually did. Dr. Drew did not. And in the spring, many of the affected kids began to improve. Some with Dr. Trifoletti, more with Dr. McVig. So the kids that started to get better, there were some that got better right away and honestly did not want to be involved with anything at all. Like they were out. They were done respectfully.

Did it get, I wonder if the media, if the craziness actually were just like, you know what? I'm out. I'm fine. I feel better. They did. And there was a handful that it happened. As time passed, it also became clear that in some of the individual cases, there seemed to be more stress and trauma than many of the girls had been willing to let on, especially on national TV. And there was a lot of stuff that evolved at that point in time that was not revealed to me about stressors that they had in their life that now the event was quote unquote over or ending that they actually felt like they had internal permission to tell me, oh, by the way, you know, I was struggling with my sexual identity or, oh, by the way, I had this internal family

conflict or, oh, by the way, this happened at school and someone accused me of this. And it was pretty profound. And, you know, it was like, wow, that would have helped me in the middle of this crisis to understand where you're coming from. Even Dr. Trifoletti, the Pandas doctor from New Jersey, even he was surprised. When told by Times reporter Susan Dominus about some of these traumatic situations, Trifoletti said, quote, geez, I didn't realize the extent. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. It's hard to distinguish between the drug and the placebo effect. As far as what I believe happened, I believe it's impossible to say what each individual girl

experienced. Each one really did have their own symptoms, their own comorbidities, their own aggravating circumstances. But as a group, as a town, as a collective, I think it was mass hysteria, a mass psychogenic illness, and among the rarest of kinds, to affect so many with such prominent symptoms for such a sustained period of time. That's not an accusation. It's an acknowledgment that yes, something truly scary happened in Leroy, New York, but also something truly remarkable.

By the time graduation arrived and summer break was upon them, finally, the sickness was all but gone from Leroy Junior Senior High School. The yearbook makes no mention of how jacked that whole year had become. And that letterboard sign in town at the church that just a few months earlier read, We're praying for our Leroy High School girls, its letters got rearranged. Now it said, Leroy, still a great place to live. How are you doing now? Better. I feel, yeah, yeah, I feel better. Emily's symptoms went away, but the memory of them, and of that time, still looms large in her mind. Do you have a tick? No. And I think about it i'm like i do because i still think about it

to this day i'm like this just like came and went almost like a season basically like a like almost like a netflix season like you got nine episodes here you go run with it how come i still don't do this like what did we do like how am i are we? Am I fixed? Am I going to something going to happen? I'm going to hear some noise and that's going to set me off or it's just so still kind of like question mark. Number one, I don't have conversion disorder. I never did. Alicia also rejected conversion disorder. She accepted Trifoletti's diagnosis, but only as one part of a larger series of health problems that she was dealing with.

Last year, she got her master's in social work and now advocates for kids with autism. I absolutely love it. Really? Oh yeah, because they're another population that's often dismissed and not heard and not advocated for and don't get the services and treatment that they deserve.

People ask me all the time, they're like, well, do you wish you didn't have it? And I'm like, I can't fathom that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rose, of course, never had it at all. But she still has Tourette's and she's still mostly okay with it. Like, are there times where I could wish I could just shut the hell up? Like, yeah. Do I miss a movie theater?

Absolutely. But like, I think I'm good. Like, cause it would, it would just feel funny. It would just be weird to just be still and quiet. I can't, it doesn't, it doesn't click in my head. Rose still sees Dr. McVig to help manage it. And it's just so funny now to be on the adult side of it, but still seeing her to be able to look back and be like, bro, that was some shit. Like, you know. In the end, the only person we talked to who really embraced conversion disorder, Marge, the 36-year-old nurse and mother.

I went through the cognitive behavior therapy and I did the work and I saw her three times a week for for what felt like forever it always does and as for why it's more common among women than men I don't know why it's mostly women but it's why are why are there more male serial killers than female serial killers Well, shit. Marge left her job in healthcare and now works in sales online. She sells, appropriately enough, vibrators. It's not just vibrators. I'm telling you, we have an excellent line of bath products.

You are beautiful from morning to night. I will give you my card that's nice to hear how else can i help out hysterical women other than selling them a great vibrator Thank you. or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. And if you have a tip about a story that you think we should investigate, please write to us at wondery.com slash tips. Hysterical is a production of Wondery

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