Ep. 71 | A Clean Break/Look, Don’t Touch
MrBallen’s Medical Mysteries
Wondery | Ballen Studios
4.7 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 11 February 2025
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“A Clean Break”
When a night out in Nepal leaves a tourist weak and hungover, he figures he’ll feel better after some rest and rehydration. But his stomach pain becomes unbearable, and he heads to the hospital. That’s when a doctor discovers a secret that the man didn’t even know he had.
“Look, Don’t Touch”
When dozens of children contract salmonella after visiting the Denver Zoo, doctors assume something there caused the outbreak. But when they investigate further, the answer turns out to be something that was supposed to be impossible.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, Prime members. You can binge episode 65 through 72 right now and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. |
| 0:11.3 | In the summer of 2023, the owner of an all-night medical shop in Kathmandu was busy restocking shelves. |
| 0:22.6 | It was late, sometime after midnight, but the man didn't mind. |
| 0:25.6 | He liked working the overnight shift. |
| 0:27.6 | It was quiet, and some nights nobody came in at all, which gave him time to do the accounting. |
| 0:32.6 | But the peace and quiet was shattered when two drunken men in their 20s stumbled inside. |
| 0:42.0 | One of them was covered in blood and leaning hard on the other, barely conscious. |
| 0:46.8 | The uninjured man explained that his companion needed to be stitched up quick. |
| 0:51.6 | The shop owner happened to know basic emergency medicine, so he jumped into action. |
| 0:57.1 | He cleared off the table in the corner of a store and then told the friend to lay the injured man out on the table. |
| 0:59.2 | Then he went to the back to get his sutures kit. |
| 1:02.4 | By the time the shop owner returned to the front of the shop, |
| 1:06.9 | the injured man was lying there, babbling drunken nonsense and clutching his stomach. |
| 1:09.1 | The owner wasted no time, though. |
| 1:12.1 | He rolled a stool up to the table and lifted up the man's shirt. There was this nasty gash in the man's abdomen. It took him a few minutes to clean the wound |
| 1:17.5 | and staunch the bleeding with gauze. After that, he worked quickly to stitch the edges of the cut |
| 1:22.4 | back together. After he was done, the friend thanked the shop owner and paid him what little cash he had in his pocket. |
| 1:30.4 | And then he assured the shop owner he would get his injured friend back home safely. |
| 1:35.1 | Once the two men left and the shop owner began cleaning up the bloodstained table, |
| 1:39.2 | he also began thinking to himself how glad he was that he was able to help. |
| 1:43.2 | That man could have easily bled to death, |
| 1:45.4 | but now he'd be just fine once he sobered up. But the shop owner had no idea that by this time |
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