MrBallen’s Medical Mysteries - Ep. 4 | Sanju’s Belly/One by One

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

“Sanju’s Belly”For decades, a 36-year-old Indian man has been plagued by a mysterious swelling in his belly. He refuses to see a doctor, until one day, he’s rushed to the hospital with breathing problems. When doctors operate, what they find inside him is horrific.“One by One”A family in 1860s London is struck by a mysterious illness that claims three of their children. When the city’s finest physician is brought in to treat the family's last surviving child, a three-year-old girl, he is baffled by her symptoms. But as he digs deeper he realizes the true killer has been staring him in the face all along.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey Prime members, you can binge episodes 49 to 56 right now and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. In June of 1999, a surgeon in Mumbai, India, stood in his operating room feeling totally shocked. The patient, lying on the operating table in front of him had a condition that was so horrifying, the surgeon could barely process what he was looking at. But after a moment of stunned silence, the surgeon shook his head and refocused.

He needed to act quickly if this patient was going to have any chance at survival. So the surgeon took a deep breath and then reached his hand into the incision he'd already made in the patient's stomach. He felt around inside for a moment and eventually his hand came in contact with something that should not have been there.

It was large and solid and felt totally alien. And the surgeon just grabbed it as hard as he could and began to pull. the fierce power struggles, intimate moments, and shocking scandals that shaped our nation. From the War of 1812 to Watergate origin stories of the products you're obsessed with. Listen to the best idea yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 stories, please invite the follow button over to your cookout, but right before grilling their hamburger, douse the grill with lighter fluid so their food tastes like chemicals. On this episode, we're going to cover two stories about families who are dealt cruel twists of fate. First, we'll meet a man in India who's being held captive by someone very close to him, and when he tries to break free, something terrible happens. In our second story, we go back in time to England in the 1800s, where a loving family is torn apart

by a deadly disease that no one knows how to stop. Here is our first story, called Sanju's Belly. On a humid summer morning in June 1999, 36-year-old Sanju Bhagat was hard at work on a farm outside of Nagpur, a city in central India. The sun had just risen, and the air was already so hot that he found it hard to breathe. Sanju and a group of farmhands were hard at work tending to the soybean crops. He made his way through the field, stopping to catch his breath every few steps. Sanju moved a lot slower than his co-workers because of his massive belly. For the past 15 years, Sanju had struggled beneath the weight of his ever-growing stomach. At first, when he was in his early 20s, his family had thought he was just filling out a little,

like all young men do when they become adults. But Sanju's stomach didn't stop growing. It kept getting bigger and bigger until it had swelled to the size of a massive watermelon. But his arms and legs stayed stick thin. He never understood why his belly kept growing since he didn't eat much. By the time Sanju reached his early 30s, he was in constant pain

and his family desperately wanted him to see a doctor. But he couldn't afford to take time off of work. Although deep down, he had to admit he was a little scared of what the doctor might find. Sanju wiped the sweat from his eyes and told himself to keep moving. As he shoveled, he overheard another farmhand make a nasty joke about maternity clothes.

A few men laughed. People liked to joke that he looked pregnant. Sanju had been relentlessly teased about his so-called pregnancy for years. His neighbors and his old childhood friends would point and laugh at him. He knew he should be used to it by now, but it still upset him.

But his belly wasn't just a source of embarrassment for Sanju. The sheer weight of his stomach made even the simplest things like getting up from a chair or bending over very hard to do. Even now, as he pushed himself to keep up with the other men in the field, he could feel his back stiffening and his arms and shoulders aching. By midday, he felt ready to drop from physical exhaustion. The sun beat down on Sanju's head and he could feel his chest tighten. He tried to keep working, but today it was harder to breathe than usual. No matter how deeply he inhaled, he couldn't quite catch his breath.

Finally, he dropped his shovel and doubled over, gasping for air. Sanju gathered what little strength he had left and stood up straight. He could feel other farm workers' eyes on him as he gathered his tools and headed home. It was the longest walk of Sanju's life. He felt humiliated and useless, but he was also afraid. He could barely take a breath. By the time he got to the small home he shared with his family, he nearly fell through the front door. The last thing he remembered was falling hard on the tile floor. Sanju's mother was fixing lunch in the kitchen when she heard a noise in the front of the house.

She ran into the living room and found her son collapsed on the floor. She grabbed the phone and called an ambulance, then rushed to Sanju's side and knelt down beside him. She tried to roll him over on his back so he could breathe better, but it was very difficult because of his enormous stomach. She muttered every prayer she could think of, straining her ears for the sound of a siren. And finally, in the distance, she heard it. By the time the ambulance pulled up in front of their home, Sanju was barely breathing. The paramedics quickly assessed Sanju's condition. They put an oxygen mask on him, then strapped him to a gurney and loaded him up into an ambulance.

Sanju's mother wanted to go with him, but the nearest major hospital was in Mumbai, an 11-hour drive from Nagpur. All she could do was watch as the ambulance sped away with her son. Early the next morning, Dr. Ajay Mehta had just started his shift in the oncology ward at Tata Memorial Hospital. He was alerted that a new patient named Sanju Bharat had been brought in all the way from Nagpur and that he needed to be seen right away. Dr. Mehta hurried over to Sanju's room. If someone was rushed in an ambulance from so far away, it had to be a serious emergency. As soon as Dr. Mehta examined Sanju's giant swollen belly, he instructed the nurse to prepare the operating room for surgery. Dr. Mehta was a specialist in tumor removal,

and he was certain that Sanju had a massive tumor in his stomach, possibly the biggest one he'd ever seen. The tumor was likely pressing against Sanju's diaphragm, which was why he couldn't breathe. And given how big it was, and Sanju's weakened condition, the tumor had to be removed immediately. While another nurse prepped Sanju for the operation, Dr. Mehta gathered his surgical team and headed to the operating room. As they sterilized their hands and put on clean scrubs, Dr. Mehta warned them that the tumor's sheer size would make this a very challenging

operation. There was a risk of damaging the soft tissue in Sanju's stomach, his nerve endings, or blood vessels. In the worst case, the surgery could cause severe internal bleeding or even death. A few minutes later, Sanju was wheeled into the operating room on a gurney. Once he was under anesthesia, Dr. Mehta called for a scalpel. He placed one hand on Sanju's stomach for leverage. Then he cut into Sanju's belly. After the blade broke through Sanju's skin and opened up his chest area, Dr. Mehta expected to see blood and a bright red mass of cancerous cells.

Instead, gallons of thick, yellowish fluid gushed from Sanju's stomach, spilling onto the floor. The entire surgical team gasped. Dr. Mehta jumped out of the way trying to avoid the surge of bile. It had a foul odor that made everyone in the room start to gag. Nurses ran toward him with towels, trying to sop up the putrid-smelling liquid. While they cleaned up the mess,

Dr. Mehta remained calm and carefully inserted his hand into Sanju's stomach to locate the tumor. At first, all he felt was thick jelly-like fluid sliding between his fingers. Then he grazed something unusual. His eyes went wide as he dove a little deeper. His palm wrapped around something soft, but with a brittle core.

He realized this was not a tumor. Whatever was in Sanju's stomach had bones, a lot of them. Dr. Mehta's jaw dropped as his hand explored the object floating in Sanju's stomach. He grabbed onto one of the tiny bones and began to slowly pull it up and out of Sanju's stomach. He grabbed onto one of the tiny bones and began to slowly pull it up and out of Sanju's stomach. As he lifted the bizarre object into the air, he could hear more gasps from everyone in the room. Dr. Mehta could hardly believe his eyes. What he was looking at shouldn't be possible. He had never seen anything like this in his entire medical career. He placed it on a medical tray for analysis and turned back to Sanju.

Thankfully, he had survived the operation. But Dr. Mehta couldn't help but speculate how something so strange could have gotten inside of Sanju. A few hours later, Sanju awoke in a hospital bed. His stomach was sore, but when he moved his hand to grasp his belly, he looked down in shock. The giant lump was gone. He ran his hand over his flat stomach. He hadn't seen it like this in almost 20 years. He took a deep breath and smiled as he felt his chest expand. He couldn't believe he could breathe again without any pain. Just then, Dr. Mehta appeared in the doorway to Sanju's room

with a very serious look on his face. He confirmed that the surgery was a success, but as Dr. Mehta explained what they had found inside of his body, the smile slowly faded from Sanju's face. The object Dr. Mehta had removed from Sanju's stomach was a ball of pink flesh with a tuft of dark brown hair growing along one side. Two fully formed feet protruded from either end. In the middle was the beginning of a jawline. But what Dr. Mehta couldn't forget was the fully formed human hand that was attached to this ball of flesh.

It was what he had grasped in a gruesome handshake when he lowered his hand into Sanju's stomach. The hand had fingernails protruding from it. The nails were so overgrown they almost looked like tiny claws. A grayish-yellow tube grew out of the center of the fleshy mass, connecting it to Sanju's stomach. Dr. Mehta told Sanju that the surgical staff had witnessed one of the rarest medical conditions on Earth.

In a way, Sanju had been pregnant, not for the 16 years that his belly was protruding, but since before he was even born. The hairy, mutated lump he had removed was Sanju's twin. Sanju was a victim of an incredibly rare condition called fetus in fetu, which means fetus in fetus. When Sanju and his twin were first conceived,

they started out as identical twins, which is when a single fertilized egg splits into two embryos. But something went wrong during that division, and the cells that became Sanju's twin latched onto his embryo. As Sanju developed, his body formed around the twin's cells, which in turn fed off his bloodstream. This twin did not have a functional brain or heart, so it wasn't alive in the traditional sense.

But as Sanju grew, so did his twin. It fed on the contents of Sanju's stomach like a parasite, using the yellowish tube as an umbilical cord. If Dr. Mehta hadn't eventually removed it from Sanju's stomach, it would have gotten so big that it would have killed Sanju. Sanju recovered physically from the surgery in just a few weeks, but when he returned to Nagpur, he was upset to find that his neighbors still made fun of him. Word had spread in the news about what had been inside of his stomach. Instead of calling him pregnant, now he was the man who gave birth to his brother.

After his surgery, Sanju refused to allow doctors to follow up with his case. He never wanted a reminder that he had carried a dead twin inside of his belly. I know you're as obsessed with true crime as I am. And that's why I'm excited to tell you about a new app for iPhone called StoryRabbit. StoryRabbit is like having your very own audio tour guide for anywhere in the world. While you can choose from a variety of guides, we've created a special true crime guide voiced by me. Using the StoryRabbit app is simple. Pick a location on the map and search for rabbit holes, which are short audio stories made just for you. Whether you're hearing about unsolved mysteries nearby or exploring crime stories worldwide,

these captivating audio stories educate you on the darker side of history. Download the StoryRabbit app now for a free trial. That's StoryRabbit, all one word. Or go to StoryRabbit.ai to learn more. The next and final story is called One by One. In the spring of 1862, a man in London, England, named Richard Turner, sat on his son's bed. He held the sick little boy in his arms and spooned some medicine into his mouth. The child swallowed it and then let out a painful cough. Richard's wife, Elizabeth, who was standing by his side, looked at her husband with alarm.

It had been a horrific few months for Richard and his family. Two of their four kids had become ill and died of a deadly disease called diphtheria. As their son coughed again, both parents knew he had contracted the disease as well. In the 19th century, diphtheria was a plague across England and Europe. It caused dead tissue to build up in the back of the victim's throat. Eventually, this dead tissue would harden into a thick gray membrane, and it would become impossible for the victim to swallow or breathe. Diphtheria spread rapidly and affected children more than adults. Often, entire city blocks full of kids became sick at the same time.

It was highly contagious, painful, and almost always fatal. Worst of all, there was no cure. All the doctors could do was administer a variety of tonics and hope they would reduce the symptoms enough for the patient's body to fight off the disease on its own. The Turners had brought in doctors to try and save their children, but nothing the physicians tried had worked. Now all Richard and Elizabeth could do was watch helplessly as their third child got paler and weaker from the lack of oxygen. The little boy became delirious and drifted in and out of consciousness.

Just one week after he got sick, he died in his parents' arms. At the start of the year, they had four healthy children. Now they only had one child left, a three-year-old girl named Anne Amelia. The Turners were completely devastated. But they were also perplexed.

The rest of their neighborhood seemed untouched by this disease, while only their family was affected. The morning after their son's death, Richard went to work in a haze of grief. Over the next few weeks, they barely slept at night because they were listening for any sign of Ann Amelia getting sick too. Then, late one night,

while Richard and Elizabeth were laying in bed, they heard a sound from Ann Amelia's bedroom, a tiny cough and then another. Richard's heart filled with dread. Diphtheria had come for their last child.

By breakfast, Ann Amelia was visibly weak. She struggled to swallow her biscuit, and even sipping warm milk was painful. Richard and his wife couldn't just sit by and watch their last child die. There had to be someone in the medical field who could help Aunt Amelia. Their neighbor told them about a doctor they'd heard of who was considered one of the best in London. His name was Thomas Orton. If anyone could help their child get better, it was him. The next morning, Richard made his way to the hospital

where Dr. Orton practiced. He managed to meet with him and begged the doctor for his help. Initially, Dr. Orton was resistant to the idea. He was extremely busy, and since there was no cure for his help. Initially, Dr. Orton was resistant to the idea. He was extremely busy, and since there was no cure for diphtheria, he was skeptical that he'd actually be able to help them. But Richard would not give up. He pleaded with the doctor to please help what was left of his family. Their daughter's life was at stake. Dr. Orton was moved. He nodded as he shook Richard's hand, and he agreed to help them. The next morning, on April 3, 1862,

Dr. Orton packed his medical bag and left for the Turner home. The family lived in the Limehouse District, which was one of London's poorest neighborhoods. He wasn't shocked that sickness was prevalent there. The 1800s were a dark time for the entire city. The Industrial Revolution had turned London into a crowded, polluted mess. No matter where you went, it was difficult to escape the stink of raw sewage. Factories spewed toxic black smoke, which permanently lingered in the air as a thick haze. Dr. Orton's carriage sped through the dense crowds,

past beggars holding out hands for money, many of whom were children. Across the River Thames, trash and dead fish lined the banks. In the Limehouse neighborhood, conditions were even worse. Dr. Orton placed a handkerchief over his nose and mouth to minimize the foul smell of animal waste and rotten food that seemed to be everywhere.

When the carriage finally arrived at the Turners' home, Dr. Orton stepped down onto the narrow sidewalk, then he walked to their door, braced himself, and knocked. Richard Turner opened it, looking exhausted and ashen-faced, but he lit up at the sight of this doctor and welcomed him inside. Once Dr. Orton entered the tiny front parlor, he was pleasantly surprised. The home was like an oasis in this hellish neighborhood. It was clean, warm, and well-kept.

The Turners brought him into the children's room. A few toys were scattered about on the floor. Colorful drawings hung on bright green wallpaper, and fresh plants were perched on the dresser. Little Ann Amelia sat slumped on the bed against a pillow, covered in heavy blankets. She barely stirred when they entered. Her head hung to the side, and her eyes were glassy.

Dr. Orton could hear her struggling to breathe. The doctor opened his leather bag and got to work examining the child. He pulled out a tongue depressor and asked Aunt Amelia to open her mouth as wide as she could. When he looked inside to the back of her throat, he was surprised. He couldn't see any signs of a thick gray membrane normally caused by diphtheria. This was unusual, but it also meant that the disease clearly had not progressed as far as he had feared. With treatment, maybe he had time to suppress her symptoms and give her body time to heal itself. He spoon-fed her some opium tincture to ease her discomfort and showed Mrs. Turner how to rub ointment made from coal tar on her daughter's chest.

Then he shared his findings with Richard and his wife. He hoped he had gotten to Anna Amelia's symptoms in time before the diphtheria overwhelmed her. Dr. Orton could see relief wash over the parents' faces. Now all they could do was wait. Over the next two weeks, Anamelia did not improve. Even though Dr. Orton checked in on her and her parents tended to her night and day, she still became even weaker.

And just before the end of April, the three-year-old died. The Turners were destroyed. Their entire family had been wiped out in less than two months. Dr. Orton's heart broke for them. He felt frustrated and angry. He couldn't get little Anna Amelia's case out of his head. Something just didn't seem right.

The day after Anna Amelia's death, Dr. Orton sat in his office, poring through his notes. He struggled to make sense of what had happened. Every other doctor the Turners had hired had diagnosed the children with diphtheria, and all signs did point to that being the disease they all had, except Ann Amelia's throat had never developed the thick membrane that normally came with diphtheria. Dr. Orton couldn't shake the feeling that something else had killed her and potentially had killed her siblings. It was a crazy thought, but if it was true,

that could explain why no one else in their neighborhood had caught the highly contagious disease. Perhaps what killed the Turner children wasn't contagious after all. Dr. Orton was anxious to get more information from the Turners. So, just after Anna Amelia's passing, the doctor returned to their house. Despite their overwhelming grief, the two parents welcomed Dr. Orton inside, and they sat together at the kitchen table. He asked them if anything had changed recently at home.

He was curious whether they had eaten any new foods or maybe met new people in the area, but the parents said no, nothing has changed. Then the doctor asked if he could check their water source. At that time, families in the Limehouse district retrieved their water from pumps located on the street. People would have to queue up with buckets or tubs and haul whatever they could back home. The doctor inspected the water, and while it was far from clean, he couldn't imagine that it was the cause of their tragedy. And if it was, he didn't understand why other families weren't afflicted as well. Dr. Orton asked the Turners to think of anything else that might have changed in

the last several months. Anything. Mr. Turner paused and said the only thing he could think of anything else that might have changed in the last several months. Anything. Mr. Turner paused and said the only thing he could think of had happened around Christmas. They had saved enough money to buy the kids some new blankets and toys. They had even redecorated their room. The holiday season had been festive and happy, and their good cheer continued into the new year. But then, in February, everything changed. That was when their oldest child fell sick. It happened so fast, and it seemed to come from nowhere. Since then, their lives had been a nightmare. Dr. Orton listened quietly, frustrated that he couldn't glean any clues from what the Turners were sharing. He thanked them as he got up from the table,

and then asked if he might take one more look inside the children's room. Richard and his wife nodded. As he walked through the empty room, everything looked the same. The toys were still on the floor, the bed had the same blankets neatly pulled back. Then the doctor's eyes flickered past the pictures on one side of the wall, and that's when he saw something that he had not noticed before. A few hours later, Dr. Orton was sitting at a table in a dimly lit pub just around the corner from his office. Across the table from him

was Dr. Henry Letheby, who was a professor of chemistry and taught at the most prestigious hospital in the country, the London Hospital. As they sipped whiskey, Dr. Orton told him about the diphtheria diagnosis of the Turner children. He described how none of the treatments had improved Anna Amelia's symptoms. Then he described how her throat had never been scarred by the leathery membrane

that was so common in diphtheria. Dr. Letheby agreed that a number of things seemed suspicious, but if it wasn't diphtheria, he had no idea what else could have happened. That's when Dr. Orton shared what he had seen in the children's bedroom and why he thought it could explain the tragedy that had fallen on the Turners. Dr. Lethebe thought it was a long shot, but he was intrigued by Orton's theory, and he agreed to help him test it. Ann Amelia had not been buried yet,

so the next day, Dr. Orton ordered a tissue sample to be taken from her body. Then he sent that sample to Dr. Letheby for analysis. In the meantime, he ran some tests of his own on the unusual thing that he had discovered in the children's bedroom. A few days later, Dr. Letheby and Dr. Orton compared notes. They now understood the cause for the rapid and tragic deaths of the four Turner children, and it was not diphtheria. It all started just before Christmas. Richard and his wife wanted to make the children's room as festive as possible to celebrate the holiday season. So one Saturday, they decided to shop for new wallpaper and selected a pattern that the whole family loved. It was intricate and

beautiful, and best of all, it was a stunningly bright green. The color was actually called Shayla's Green, named after the designer. The shopkeeper told them it was a top seller at their store. When Richard put the paper up on the walls, the room was transformed. The four children were overjoyed.

In fact, they were so mesmerized by the vivid green wallpaper, they tore off little pieces to play with. Sometimes they would lick it like candy. But what neither the children nor the parents realized was that there was actually a special ingredient in the dye. This ingredient helped to create that very bright green that they all loved so much.

And this special ingredient made its way into the children's bodies and traveled through their bloodstreams. It saturated their lungs and caused fluid and mucus to build until one by one, it killed each child. That special ingredient was a deadly poison called arsenic. When Dr. Orton had returned to the children's room days before, he noticed that pieces of the wallpaper were missing.

After questioning the Turners about the reason, and them saying their kids were ripping them off and licking them, and then after running tests on Ann Amelia's stomach and then the wallpaper itself, the mystery was solved. At that time, arsenic was used in all kinds of household products, from women's makeup to children's toys, to dye for all sorts of fabric, and it was in low enough doses that at the time it was considered safe to touch. But that brand of wallpaper was the exception. Words soon spread across England about what happened to the Turner children. Dr. Orton's discovery sparked a

national outrage and concerned parents protested for the wallpaper to be banned. Dr. Orton campaigned for years until eventually the manufacturing of arsenic-based dyes was stopped. Thanks to Ann Amelia, many children's lives were saved. From Ballin Studios and Wondery, this is Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, hosted by me, Mr. Ballin. A quick 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 and Britt Brown. Our editor is Heather Dundas. Sound design is by Matthew Cilelli. Coordinating producer is Sophia Martins. Our senior producer is Alex Benidon. Our associate producers and researchers

are Sarah Vytak, Natalie Bettendorf, and Tasia Palaconda. Fact-checking was done by Sheila Patterson and Andrew Rosenblum. For Ballin Studios, our producer is Alyssa Tomineng. Our head of production is Zach Levitt. Executive producers are myself, Mr. Ballin, and Nick Witters. For Wondery, senior managing producer is Ryan Lohr. Our head of sound is Marcelino Villapondo. Our producer is Julie Magruder. Senior producers are Laura Donna Pollyvoda, Dave Schilling, and Matt Olmos. Our executive producers are Aaron O'Flaherty and Marshall Louis for Wondering. face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained

have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness. And inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained.

Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.