MrBallen’s Medical Mysteries - Ep. 80 | Stigmata

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

When a little girl in Thailand starts mysteriously bleeding from her scalp and hands, her doctors wonder if she’s faking it for attention – to make it seem like she’s experiencing stigmata, the wounds experienced by Jesus Christ in Christian scripture. The blood on the girl’s skin is real enough, but nobody is ever around when she starts to bleed.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 73 through 80 right now and ad free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. In 2005, at a hospital in Vietnam, a nurse sat at the bedside of her 14-year-old patient. It was after midnight and the hospital was eerily quiet. The girl had been asleep for hours, but the nurse didn't dare get up or even take her eyes off the patient. She had been told not to trust the girl. She had symptoms that nobody could explain and her doctor thought she was doing something

to fake her illness. And so it was the nurse's job to catch her in the act or to watch her so carefully the girl didn't have a chance to pull whatever trick was making her seem sick. But not everyone thought the teenager was pretending to be sick. They agreed that she was not infected by a bacteria, a virus, or anything else from this earth. In fact, some of the hospital staff thought her symptoms might be caused by something otherworldly, maybe even holy.

One of the nurses said the little girl's condition was proof of an actual miracle. The nurse who was keeping watch had worked in healthcare long enough to know that science could explain away even the strangest of cases. But she was also a religious person, and some small part of her hoped that this girl's condition was really a sign from God. Just then, the girl began tossing and turning like she was having a bad dream. Sweat beated on her forehead, the nurse stood to grab a towel and wipe it off, but then in the dark she saw something and the nurse's blood ran cold. She ran to

call the doctor and then she said a silent prayer because what she just saw was not of this world and she couldn't tell if it was a sign from God or the devil himself. I would define reclaiming as to take back what was yours. Something you possess is lost or stolen, and ultimately you triumph in finding it again. Listen to Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky wherever you get your podcasts. When Luigi Mangione was arrested for allegedly shooting the CEO of United Healthcare, he didn't just spark outrage, he ignited a cultural firestorm. Is the system working or is it time for a reckoning?

I'm Jesse Weber. Listen to Law and Crime's Luigi exclusively on Wondery+. From Ballen Studios and Wondery, I'm Mr. Ballen and this is Mr. Ballen'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. So if you liked today's story, please replace the follow button's toothpaste with mayonnaise and then turn their water off in their house so when they go to rinse their mouth out, they can't. This episode is called Stigmata. On a humid Monday morning in Vietnam in the fall of 2003, 12-year-old Anh Bui sat at her school desk.

She was bent over her notebook working on a writing assignment when her left hand got sweaty and started cramping. She dropped her pencil to shake her hand out, and noticed the pencil had blood on it. Ann looked down and saw a smear of blood across her palm, but she didn't remember cutting her hand on anything. She grabbed a tissue from her backpack and wiped off the blood. She thought maybe the pencil had given her a splinter, but she couldn't see a cut anywhere. And the red liquid on her palm definitely was not paint or some other substance.

It was blood, and it seemed to have come out of nowhere. Ann didn't like it when people looked at her, so she threw the bloody tissue into her backpack before anybody noticed. She decided not to tell anyone what had happened. The blood must have just gotten on her hand at some point that morning and she didn't notice. An figured whatever it was, it was not worth worrying about. So she turned her attention back to the lesson and tried to put the strange moment out of her head.

A few months later, An was reading at her desk, trying to ignore a headache. It was hot and muggy, which only made the headache worse, her forehead was covered in sweat and she felt a bead of moisture slide down her nose. She wiped it with the back of her hand and as she did, she noticed a smear of blood. Her forehead was bleeding. Ann immediately looked down at her desk and let her hair fall around her face so nobody could see it. She tried to be inconspicuous as she touched her forehead, searching for a cut.

The skin was unbroken, but there was more blood on her fingertips. And to make matters even stranger, there was a small pool of blood in her palm as well. She was stunned. Blood seemed to be seeping out of her hand and forehead for no reason. Then Han heard someone whispering behind her. She turned around and saw two of her classmates huddled together and pointing at her. Then another girl noticed and tapped the boy next to her on the shoulder. Within seconds, the whole class was gawking at her.

Ahn was mortified. She darted out of the room and down the hall to the bathroom. She made sure nobody else was inside. Then she turned on the faucet and scrubbed her hands and face until all the blood was gone. And then after that, she inspected her forehead and palms in the mirror, but there weren't any cuts on her body. Ann couldn't understand where this blood was coming from, but she still didn't want to tell the teacher or her mom. To her, that would just make the whole problem worse. And right now, all she wanted to do was forget this morning ever happened. One afternoon, a year later, Ann's mother, Tui, was walking Ann home from school.

She tried to ask her daughter about how her day went, but Ann just stared at her feet as they shuffled down the busy sidewalk. Ann, who was 13 years old now, had spent the past year acting very quiet and withdrawn. She was always checking her reflection in shop windows and running her hands over her face like she was checking for acne or something. Plus, Ann wasn't in any school activities this year. Ann had always been shy, but she was becoming a loner. Toohey wasn't sure what to do about it.

Once they got home, Ann kicked off her shoes and went straight into the living room without saying a word. But Tui cried out in surprise when she saw that Ann was leaving a trail of bloody footprints on the ceramic floor. She ran to her daughter to see if she was hurt. Ann rolled around and looked down at the floor, but instead of checking her feet for an injury, she began wiping her forehead and inspecting her palms.

Tui asked what was going on, but An didn't say anything. Instead, she just flopped down onto the couch and buried her face in her palms. Tui felt like her daughter must be hiding something, and so speaking very firmly, she told An to explain right now. An looked up, her face shiny with sweat. Then, red droplets began falling down An's forehead. explain right now. An looked up, her face shiny with sweat. Then red droplets began falling down An's forehead. Tui couldn't believe her eyes.

It looked like An was sweating blood. But An didn't seem shocked by this at all. Instead, An just seemed sort of embarrassed. Then Tui remembered something. Over the past year, she'd occasionally found small traces of blood on Ann's clothes. She hadn't thought much of it. She figured Ann got little scrapes and cuts sometimes, like all kids do. But now, Tui asked her daughter if all those stains had been this bloody sweat.

Ann nodded and said yes, then burst into tears. Ann said she was absolutely miserable. For the past year, in addition to sweating blood, she'd been spontaneously bleeding from her palms, the soles of her feet, her scalp, sometimes her arms and legs, and even her torso. And so her classmates thought she was really weird, and they made fun of Ahn every time this happened. And also her friends didn't talk to her anymore because of the bleeding.

The whole school basically shunned her for being this freak. An said she had tried her best to hide the bleeding, but occasionally she would bleed through her school uniform and everybody would see. Tui didn't know what to think, I mean she couldn't believe that she hadn't realized this was going on. But at this point, all she thought was her daughter clearly needed help. She had to get on to the doctor as soon as possible. A few days later, a physician at the local hospital named Dr. Nai Nguyen stood in an exam room with Anh and Thuy. As she inspected Anh's scalp, Anh explained how this spontaneous bleeding had basically made her a laughing stock at school and was ruining her life.

Now, Dr. Nguyen could tell that Ahn was clearly deeply distressed here. But far more pressing to the doctor were these symptoms. They were so confusing. Dr. Nguyen had never heard of anybody spontaneously bleeding from their extremities like this. It was totally alarming and while Dr. Nguyen would never say this out loud, especially to Anh, it was a bit creepy too. The doctor was very cautious as she combed through Anh's hair, searching for cuts, scars, ulcers, anything that might explain the bleeding.

But there was no markings of any kind on Anh's scalp or anywhere else on her body. And so after the exam, Dr. Nguyen peeled off her latex gloves and told Thuy that she wanted to admit her daughter to the hospital to run some more tests. She would test An's blood to see if An had an underlying disease like anemia or a blood clotting problem which might explain the sudden bleeding. She would also check for infectious disease. Whatever was wrong with An, Dr. Nguyen was confident that the lab work would show what was going on. But a few days later, Dr. Nguyen got the test results back. And An's blood work, her urine test, the chest x-ray Dr. Nguyen ordered, all of these

tests came back normal. On paper, Anh was completely healthy. Even a malaria test came back negative. Dr. Nguyen couldn't find a single reason for Anh's bleeding. And unfortunately, even though Anh claimed to have bled at least a few times since being admitted to the hospital, Dr. Nguyen had never been present to witness the onset of the bleeding. Which made Dr. Nguyen had never been present to witness the onset of the bleeding. Which made Dr. Nguyen consider a different possibility. Onset she often bled from her palms, feet, forehead, and torso. And while Dr. Nguyen was not Christian, she still knew these were the same locations on

the body where, according to Christian doctrine, Jesus had bled from during his crucifixion. And according to some Christians, they believe these wounds can appear on others like a holy marking. These markings, which mirrored the wounds from the nails in Jesus' hands and feet, the crown of thorns on his forehead, and the spear wound in his side, are known as stigmata. And so Dr. Nguyen began to wonder if Anh wasn't actually sick, but faking these stigmata-like wounds for religious reasons, or just for attention. Anh did say that everybody in school knew who she was now because of this bleeding,

so she was getting lots of attention. She said they treated her like a freak, but Dr. Nguyen knew that attention seekers didn't always search for positive validation. Negative attention could feel just as rewarding. If An was faking this, that would also explain why An hid the condition from her mom for more than a year, and why no one at the hospital had actually seen An while she was actively bleeding. The blood always seemed to appear when she was alone, so doctors hadn't been able to

determine where it was actually coming from. Dr. Nguyen realized this situation was going to be very tricky. Anh would almost certainly insist that her symptoms were real, and it would be up to Dr. Nguyen to figure out if she was lying or in genuine need of medical intervention. Hey, I'm Cassie DePeckel, the host of Wondery's podcast Against the Odds. In each episode, we share thrilling true stories of survival, putting you in the shoes of the people who live to tell the tale. In our next season, it's February 14, 1979. Elmo Wortmann and his three children are stranded on a remote Alaskan island after a massive storm destroys

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At 24, I lost my narrative, or rather it was stolen from me. And the Monica Lewinsky that my friends and family knew was usurped by false narratives, callous jokes, and politics. I would define reclaiming as to take back what was yours. Something you possess is lost or stolen and ultimately you triumph in finding it again. So I think listeners can expect me to be chatting with folks both recognizable and unrecognizable names about the way that people have navigated roads to triumph. My hope is that people will finish an episode of Reclaiming

and feel like they filled their tank up. They connected with the people that I'm talking to and leave with maybe some nuggets that help them feel a little more hopeful. Follow Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Reclaiming early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.

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Listen to Law and Crime's Luigi exclusively on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Spotify or Apple podcasts. The next morning, Dr. Nguyen walked into Anh's hospital room as Anh was finishing breakfast. Thuy sat in a chair against the wall, flipping through a magazine. Dr. Nguyen closed the door for privacy and told Thuy and Anh about the test results. She explained that without any evidence, it was going to be very difficult to diagnose Anh with a medical condition. As Anh and Thuy absorbed the news and looked pretty upset about it, Dr. Nguyen turned to

An and told her very gently that, you know, school can be very stressful and bullying especially can make people really upset. And so it would be totally understandable if when An was feeling overwhelmed at school that maybe she had begun to fake these symptoms, maybe to get out of a test or just to get out of a room or something. But the second Dr. Nguyen said this, Anh just stared at her with a look of pure disbelief on her face. She promised Dr. Nguyen that she had never faked the bleeding. She said she would just feel achy sometimes and then the blood would appear.

She had no idea why this was happening, but it was ruining her life. She would never do this on purpose. Now Dr. Nguyen was expecting this reaction, and so in an attempt to catch On off guard, she just said, On, are you causing these wounds yourself to look like the stigmata? On and her mother exchanged very confused glances. Tui shifted uncomfortably in her seat and explained that they were not Christian, they were Buddhist. There was nothing in their beliefs about bleeding hands or feet, and An said she'd never even

heard of stigmata. The room fell into a brief silence, and then Dr. Nguyen had to admit that if An wasn't Christian, it was unlikely she was faking stigmata wounds. She could still be faking the symptoms for attention, but Dr. Nguyen still thought it was possible that Anh truly had a mysterious medical illness. And so if Dr. Nguyen was going to be able to help Anh, she would need more information. And so on her way back to her office, Dr. Nguyen stopped at the nurse's station. And she gave the staff strict orders to watch Anh closely and let her know if the girl did

anything unexpected or strange. A few hours later, Dr. Nguyen was getting ready to go home when she got a call. An Bui was bleeding. Dr. Nguyen hurried down the hallway to An's room, and when she stepped inside, she saw An sitting on the bed just staring back at her, and there was blood all across her pillow. An's mother was standing next to the bed, looking very confused. Dr. Nguyen asked Thuy if she had seen the bleeding begin, but Thuy said no, she was asleep when it started. When Dr. Nguyen looked over at the nurse on duty, she shook her head no as well, she had

not seen the bleeding start. She said that she had checked on An fifteen minutes earlier and nothing was happening and when she came back, An was bleeding. Dr. Nguyen snapped on a pair of latex gloves and then told An she was going to search for the source of the bleeding. Then she started moving her fingers through An's hair and pressing down on her scalp. And as she did, she could see blood smeared in Anh's hair, but she couldn't tell where it was coming from. She asked if Anh was in any pain,

and Anh said yes, she had a headache, and she said she was feeling very tired. Finally, after not finding the source of the bleeding, Dr. Nguyen stepped back and told Anh that she wanted to take a few samples of the skin from An's scalp for testing. The procedure was called a punch biopsy. She would numb An's scalp and then cut out three little patches of skin and hair follicles, each about three millimeters long. After hearing this, An began to cry, and said she did not want another test. Dr. Nguyen nodded and said she understood, but she told Anh this test could help them

figure out what was actually wrong with her, and then hopefully she could get treated and go home. It took a minute for Anh to calm down, but eventually she did, and then she told the doctor she was ready to get started. The following morning, Dr. Nguyen received the biopsy results, and they showed something fascinating. An's scalp was covered in these microscopic pockets filled with blood. Dr. Nguyen didn't know why these spaces had formed or what was causing them to burst,

but she intended to find out. Dr. Nguyen, during the biopsy, had also collected some of the bloody mixture that coated An's scalp, and results showed that it was actually a mixture of red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and sweat. And it was the sweat that gave Dr. Nguyen an idea. She told Anh to go to the stress testing room in the cardiology department, and when Dr. Nguyen arrived, Anh was already standing glumly on the treadmill. Anh stared angrily at Dr. Nguyen, while a technician clipped a safety cord to her shirt and a nurse

double-knotted Anh's shoelaces. Dr. Nguyen couldn't blame Anh for being annoyed here, but she didn't have time to argue with an angry child. She had a case to solve. Because the bloody mixture contained sweat, Dr. Nguyen wondered if she could induce the bleeding with vigorous exercise, and so she was going to have Anh sprint on the treadmill to see if she could make her sweat turn red. Once everything was all set up, Dr. Nguyen nodded to the technician.

The treadmill belt began moving, and the technician ramped up the speed until Anh was running. In no time, she was breathing hard and sweating. Except, there wasn't any blood in the sweat. So, Dr. Nguyen had the technician turn up the speed of the treadmill. As the belt moved faster, An struggled to keep up. Dr. Nguyen crossed her fingers, hoping that blood would appear on the girl's forehead. An's face grew pink and then beet red from the exertion. For a moment, Dr. Nguyen thought the blood was poking through An's skin, but then she realized An was just bright red from running so hard. Her sweat was still clear.

Dr. Nguyen felt defeated as she told the tech to shut the treadmill down. Dr. Nguyen forced herself to smile. She told An she did great work, but she was secretly very frustrated. If a stress test didn't cause the bloody sweat, Dr. Nguyen didn't know what would, and so it made her turn back to her initial suspicion that Anh might somehow be causing the bleeding herself. Now, she couldn't understand how Anh might make her own scalp bleed, but it had been more than a week and still no one at the hospital had seen the actual onset of An's bleeding.

Her own mom hadn't even seen it. And so if An was deceiving everybody, then Dr. Nguyen wanted to put an end to it. Today. And so Dr. Nguyen pulled An's nurse aside and told her to sit by An's bedside overnight and to watch the child like a hawk. She told the nurse not to leave Ann alone, not even for a moment. A few hours later, Ann was startled awake in her hospital bed. Her forehead was pounding and she was drenched in sweat. It took a moment for Ann's eyes to focus,

but when they did, she realized her nurse was standing right over her looking absolutely stunned. Ann sat up and instinctively felt her face, and as she did, she immediately understood why this nurse was staring at her. Ann's face was covered in red sweaty blood. She could feel it oozing out of her pores and trickling down her chin, but instead of helping her clean up, the nurse was just gawking at her. An closed her eyes and hoped the nurse would go away. She felt like a zoo animal on display for the whole hospital.

When she opened her eyes again, the nurse was still looming over her. But instead of staring at her, the nurse smiled and told An she was going to call Dr. Nguyen. And she told An that she was now certain An could not be faking her symptoms. An was so relieved. A few days later, An would get her diagnosis. Once An had begun bleeding in her sleep in full view of that nurse, Dr. Nguyen was convinced the bleeding truly was spontaneous. But she still didn't understand why it was happening. After thoroughly searching medical literature for cases of spontaneous bleeding from the

hands, feet, and head, Dr. Nguyen eventually discovered a rare condition that matched An's presentation. Its scientific name is hematidrosis. Now, not much is known about hematidrosis, but it's a condition that causes tiny blood vessels in the skin to break open. The blood inside these vessels might get squeezed out through the sweat glands or leak into hair follicles, causing the patient to essentially sweat blood. Doctors don't know exactly what triggers haematodrosis, but they think it could be related to stress,

like the fight-or-flight response. This condition has been reported only in a limited number of documented cases, making it difficult to study extensively. However, there are some historical reports of similar cases. Some scholars believe that many documented cases of stigmata throughout history were actually just misdiagnosed cases of hematidrosis, which technically would have made Dr. Nguyen's initial diagnosis correct on was suffering from stigmata, but not for religious reasons.

In fact, Dr. Nguyen never discovered what actually caused Aan's bleeding episodes, but she did find a way to cure them. Dr. Nguyen prescribed on lorazepam, a mild benzodiazepine commonly used to treat depression. It helped reduce An's anxiety, and after two months on the medication, the bleeding stopped. Hey, Prime members, you can listen to new episodes of Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries early and ad free on Amazon Music.

Download the app today. And also, Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries ad free. Join Wondry Plus today. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at ListenerSurvey.com. From Ballen Studios and Wondry, this is Mr. Ballen's Medical Mysteries, hosted by me, Mr. Ballen. A quick note about our stories. They are all inspired by true events, but we do sometimes use pseudonyms to protect

the people involved, and also some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. And a reminder, the content in this episode is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This episode was written by Aaron Lan. Our editor is Heather Dundas. Sound design is by Matthew Cilelli. Our senior managing producer is Nick Ryan. And our coordinating producer is Taylor Sniffin. Our senior producer is Producer is Nick Ryan. And our Coordinating Producer is Taylor Sniffin.

Our Senior Producer is Alex Benedon. Our Associate Producers and Researchers are Sara Vytak and Tasia Palaconda. Fact Checking was done by Sheila Patterson. For Ballin Studios, our Head of Production is Zach Levitt. Script Editing by Scott Allen and Evan Allen. Our Coordinating Producer is Samantha Collins. Production Support by Avery Siegel. Executive Producers are myself, Mr. Ballin, and also Nick Witters. For Wondry, our head of sound is Marcelino Villapondo. Senior producers are Laura Donna

Palavota and Dave Schilling. Senior managing producer is Ryan Lohr. Our executive producers are Aaron O'Flaherty and Marshall Louis for Wondry. Everyone has that friend who seems kind of perfect. For Patty, that friend was Desiree. Until one day... I texted her and she was not getting the text. So I went to Instagram and she has no Instagram anymore. And Facebook, no Facebook anymore. Desiree was gone. And there was one person who knew the answer.

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