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00:02We're going to turn now to that medical mystery in upstate New York.
00:08Two more girls are now reporting symptoms of an illness that has stricken more than a dozen students.
00:14The first time that it happened to me, it was terrifying because I didn't understand why I couldn't control a
00:20certain part of my body.
00:23Prior to the outbreak, I think I was living in a good place.
00:27It definitely felt like something that was happening overnight. Like I just woke up one day and all these girls
00:32had the tics and then a couple months later, oh wait, so do I.
00:37The onset was fast. I would hear a, and it was usually accompanied with a head jerk.
00:44For months, doctors in Leroy, New York have been trying to figure out what caused 12 girls to have severe
00:50tics.
00:52It's very odd to have the exact same type of tic.
00:55There was just a lot of like grasping at straws kind of theories going around.
01:00People were like desperate to solve it.
01:02Everything got so much worse after the news attention came.
01:05That's when there was like a whole bunch of more people that were coming out with it.
01:09I'm at school and there's four news vans today. There's five news vans today. Oh, there's Telemundo.
01:14People started to talk about this derailment that had occurred 41 years earlier.
01:18People were reaching out to Aaron Brockovich. It was one of those types of things like in Jurassic Park where
01:23I just sort of pulled back the bushes.
01:25I was labbergasted.
01:27And what a bunch of bull****, man. And the more attention people gave them, the more that snowballed.
01:57We're going to turn now to that medical mystery in upstate New York.
02:00Two more girls are now reporting symptoms of an illness that has stricken more than a dozen students.
02:04They've developed uncontrollable tics like somebody would with Tourette's.
02:17My name is Rose Ortiz. And in 2011, I was in eighth grade at Leroy Junior Senior High School.
02:25And it was a time.
02:30I didn't have what I view as the normal childhood experience for a lot of reasons.
02:36Football games were not a thing I attended unless I was, like, marching in them.
02:39Like, there wasn't a lot to do. There was, like, some waterfalls that used to go jump off a lot.
02:44And that was really about it, because Leroy's kind of boring.
02:49Growing up in Leroy was pretty normal.
02:52My parents, I just had to be home by dark. I could go play down the street at the park
02:56with all my friends.
02:56It was a really safe community. Very wholesome childhood.
03:02Leroy is definitely one of those small towns where everybody knows everybody and everybody's in everybody's business.
03:07But everyone's super friendly, too.
03:14Leroy is a beautiful town.
03:17When I first started working there, I felt like I struck the gold mine.
03:20Not so much salary-wise, but in terms of satisfaction.
03:25A lot of tight-knit families. Most of the shops are locally owned.
03:33I will be honest, I do not know a lot about the Jell-O Museum.
03:38I just know that that is something that Leroyans are proud of.
03:43It's the birthplace of Jell-O.
03:45We have the Jell-O Museum.
03:47The McDonald's used to have, like, all these Jell-O facts.
03:51Like, I can remember going on school field trips to the Jell-O Museum.
03:54Like, I guess all we got are Jell-O and weird tics, and so that's what we are.
04:05I come from a small town, so I know what small towns are like.
04:09There's just something Norman Rockwell-ish about growing up in a small town.
04:14But it can have its drawbacks as well.
04:17Because if people turn on you and their clicks will develop this human nature,
04:23they can, you know, be ostracizing.
04:25It can be really hard when you're, if you're in a small town.
04:32The first thing we noticed as a tick, like, my mom and I, it was, like, a facial twitch.
04:36And we were like, something's up there.
04:38And so it was, you know, we had a pediatrician.
04:41She's like, hey, why are you doing that?
04:42She's like, oh, that's Tourette's, hands down.
04:44And that was when I was about seven.
04:45That was, like, third grade or so.
04:49As I got older and as time progressed, I got more vocal tics.
04:53I got a lot louder, a lot more noticeable.
04:56Like, I've had a bajillion million different tics.
04:59Some of them have been swear words or animal noises.
05:03I've had tics where I hurt myself.
05:05Like, I used to have a tic where I would literally punch myself in the face.
05:08I wish I was getting the rose that would yell out swear words from you.
05:13Oh, I have, have you not heard the swear words and I've been yelling this entire time?
05:16Because I've said bitch at least eight times.
05:20Like, it's hard, it's hard to tell when you don't know what you're listening for.
05:25And it just, like, all sounds mushed together.
05:30I remember the first day this happened and I had known nothing about any of this yet.
05:34I hadn't heard anybody in the hallway.
05:36I hadn't heard whisperings about things.
05:38But I remember I was sitting in class and one of the girls I'm in class with looks over and
05:43goes,
05:43Oh my God, like, Rose, like, did you see what happened?
05:45And I'm like, what do you mean?
05:46And she's like, there's this girl saying that she caught Tourette's and what's going on?
05:49And I'm like, what are you talking about?
05:52She pulls up this video and I watch it and it's this girl that, like, I think she was a
05:56senior at the time.
05:56And she's literally, like, talking about how she just woke up from a nap with tics and it was this
06:00crazy thing.
06:01And I was like, dude, I'm freaking out. Like, are they going to, like, come for my head on this
06:05one?
06:05Like, I remember in that moment being like, I'm not contagious, but are people going to think I am?
06:12Now, there was all these noises in the hallway and all these things going on and all these people, like,
06:18pouring out support to try and help these other people who were doing what I'd been doing for years by
06:24that point and, like, struggling to gain support for.
06:27Tourette's is not contagious.
06:29And it's very rare, fewer than 1% of the population have it.
06:33So what was causing it?
06:35I mean, not exhibiting any of these signs before that and all of a sudden in 2011, in the fall,
06:41you know, this is happening.
06:42Like, why? What caused it in the first place? It was such a mystery.
06:51So this is my puppet, Oscar, that I got from Burger Fest here in Hamburg.
06:59More people are drawn to Oscar than the trombone, so kids won't pick up my trombone and break them.
07:04Nobody likes to be harped on, so when you're trying to fix posture or something, Oscar does a better job
07:10of being a little kinder about it than your teacher.
07:22My name's Bradley Mihalik. I was the high school band director and marching band director for the Loroy Central School
07:29District from 2001 to 2018.
07:362011, from my perspective, the band was at a high point.
07:40It had a lot of success at the state level with the marching band, which was my big baby.
07:48Prior to the outbreak, I think I was living in a good place and thought things were going, um, things
07:57were going really well.
08:02The onset was fast. I would hear a oop or almost like a quick yip, and it was usually accompanied
08:10with a head jerk, a tilt, or an arm jerk.
08:14Within a matter of weeks, I had two in one section, one up a little bit closer to me.
08:23So, something was definitely going on.
08:37It's like, what, 10? 11? What year was it? 2011, you said?
08:41This was 14 years ago. Oh my gosh.
08:44I'm Tracy, and I'm here to talk about the tick incident that happened at the Leibert Junior Senior High School.
08:49Oh my goodness, I'm bouncing now.
08:51Oh my gosh.
08:58If I show you pictures of me back then, I was like an emo kid, and I had the slick
09:02hair, and the dark black makeup, and I was super just like, like I said, I didn't try to make
09:08a lot of friends.
09:10I did marching band, and I was in, like, choirs.
09:15My first encounter with the ticks was in the lunchroom.
09:19I don't recall which girl that it was, but I remember she had a vocal outburst.
09:24It, like, freaks me out, because she, like, screamed.
09:26She, like, made a high-pitched noise.
09:29Some of the kids were like, what the is wrong with her?
09:32Look at this stupid bitch, like, really mean.
09:35Like, teenagers are mean.
09:37I don't even think I knew what Tourette's was, let alone ticks or anything like that.
09:43I wouldn't say I had any close friends that came down with any of the ticks.
09:47There was a girl I was in marching band together with.
09:51We were friendly with one another.
09:54It's not like when it started it was all of us at once.
09:57It was, like, one or two girls, and then maybe next week there was another girl.
10:02And then maybe next two weeks there'd be a couple more girls.
10:05Like, there was new cases of it popping up in different ages of our school, in different grades.
10:12There were other girls.
10:13Like, there were groups of cheerleaders, and there were groups of soccer players, and there were groups of marching band
10:18girls.
10:19And we didn't know what was going on.
10:24The first time that it happened to me, it was terrifying, because I didn't understand why I couldn't control a
10:29certain part of my body.
10:31It would feel like I had all this energy that I had to get out of me, but it was
10:34going to come out however it wanted to come out.
10:36What's wrong?
10:37I was concerned at first because I didn't know why it was happening to me.
10:41I was constantly trying to tell myself that this was all in my head, right?
10:45Like, you can stop this at any point.
10:47Just don't make a noise.
10:48Like, you have control over your body.
10:50What are you doing?
10:51Just don't move.
10:54I was down the hall from the nurse, so you could hear an episode of a student slamming themselves against
11:01the wall, flailing on the floor, hitting their head on things.
11:05Almost like a temper tantrum combined with a cedar.
11:09In a matter of weeks, I had four or five that had it.
11:14We were all just panicking, trying to figure out what's going to happen next.
11:18Is this permanent?
11:19You know, like, how much more is this going to spread?
11:21How did this happen?
11:22Every day there was another girl.
11:24There was another thing.
11:24There was another meeting.
11:25There was another newsman.
11:26Like, it really just snowballed from that point on in a matter of probably weeks.
11:31It ramped up very, very, very quickly.
11:34Not only was it more students, but it was more violent.
11:37I'm like, no, no, no, no.
11:39Like, this will be fine.
11:40They're not coming for me on this one.
11:41And I was wrong.
11:42I was wrong.
11:43And so it was like, you're causing this, like, go away.
11:46I'm literally just like 14 trying to go to school.
11:49It was just crazy.
11:51Chick!
11:51Chick!
12:00I mean, I guess you wanted to talk about the Leroy shindig, the whole thing that happened.
12:09I didn't really think too much of it, you know?
12:11Because, like I said, there were already girls in the school who had it.
12:15So it was just kind of another thing.
12:17It was very weird, though, to seem like there was case after case after case coming up.
12:22It definitely felt like something that was happening overnight.
12:25Like, I just woke up one day and all these girls had the tics.
12:29And then a couple months later, oh wait, so do I.
12:32My name is Emily Dunn.
12:33I was the youngest recorded one.
12:36I knew the names of the other girls, but none of us all hung out or anything.
12:41These are like seniors and juniors, and I am just a wee little eighth grader.
12:46My physical tics were more like an arm jerking and like a head jerk kind of thing.
12:52It was weird.
12:53It was all just to one side always.
12:56You know how when you're falling asleep, you kind of feel like that motion like you're falling and you jolt?
13:00It's almost exactly like that.
13:06I was bullied quite often.
13:08I would go to school and then I would text my mom halfway through the day,
13:11come pick me up, I can't do this.
13:13Because everybody was just so mean.
13:15I would get on the bus, everybody walking past me would get in my face so that the bus driver
13:19couldn't hear it and say,
13:20Faker, you're faking.
13:21It kind of takes a toll on you because it's like, but I'm not.
13:25I didn't want to be doing it.
13:27I wouldn't be doing this if I had the choice.
13:30But it's not a choice.
13:31It just, it happens.
13:36Everything got so much worse after the news attention came.
13:39I feel like that's when there was like a whole bunch of more people that were coming out with it.
13:43It was just like, okay, yeah, I'm at school and there's four news vans today or there's five news vans
13:47today.
13:48Oh, there's Telemundo.
13:49Like, I don't know.
13:49It's uncomfortable having somebody wanting to talk to you about something you don't understand yourself.
13:57I got a call from people from Dr. Oz.
14:00First of all, I'm 12.
14:02How did you get my number?
14:03Second of all, why are you calling me and not my mom?
14:05I am not the responsible one here.
14:09I definitely think the media presence made everything worse.
14:13I don't want to say they blew it out of proportion, but the wild theories that they would just throw
14:17out and everything.
14:18There was just a lot of like grasping at straws kind of theories going around.
14:24There was definitely a lot of people saying, oh, don't drink the water.
14:28Don't drink the Leroy water.
14:29You're going to get the Tourette's.
14:30You're going to get the tics.
14:34There was a really bad rumor going around that we had all slept with the same person and that we
14:38all were having an STD.
14:41Somebody was telling me that they were sent like a flow chart of the way all the girls should sit
14:45in the school.
14:46So that when the ions like flew through the air, they wouldn't tick because they had to say, oh, yeah,
14:53people were like desperate to solve it.
14:55That shows it's another drawback to a small town is that people do gossip.
14:59If I were a parent with a child who started ticking like this, I would want to cover every single
15:08base, every single possible cause.
15:12From environmental to illicit and illicit drugs, food, water, everything.
15:23You didn't know what this was, why it was, why it was starting to happen more frequently.
15:28And that's where we started to get people who were legitimately fearful of something that could be an environmental factor.
15:37A lot of people were also saying there was some train accident out in Lime Rock 20, 30 some odd
15:43years ago.
15:44Something leaked out of the train or something like that.
15:57I've always enjoyed covering stories that have a certain amount of mystery to them that may not be crystal clear
16:06at face value.
16:07I've just always enjoyed that. So those kind of stories attracted me.
16:13My name is Steve Orr. I was a reporter for the Democrats and Chronicle, which is the daily newspaper in
16:20Rochester, New York, for 40 years.
16:23It was in the fall of 2011.
16:26We began to hear, you know, a handful of young ladies in Leroy.
16:31At that very point, I'm not sure there was, at least publicly, there was a really great explanation that had
16:37come out yet for why they might be experiencing these illnesses.
16:42People started to talk about this derailment that had occurred 41 years earlier.
16:46It was a very large spill of a toxic chemical.
16:50Could this be somehow related?
16:55In 1970, there was a freight train running on the Lehigh Valley Railroad tracks, which went east-west across upstate
17:02New York.
17:03The train was in the town of Leroy, outside the village, about three miles outside the village in a rural
17:10area, and it derailed.
17:14Two rail cars tipped over that contained trichloroethylene, an industrial solvent that can be toxic.
17:22This is 30,000 gallons.
17:25That's an enormous amount of trichloroethylene to be spilled in any one place.
17:29And what happened is, there's a quarry next to the spill site.
17:33Like, teenagers used to go swim in the quarry next to, you know, so they all knew where the place
17:37was.
17:37And there was a very small amount of TCE that had gotten into the quarry area.
17:44We would walk or ride dirt bikes over there, and you could jump off, and you could swim there.
17:51The fire department brought a pumper out and washed the TCE away.
17:55But unfortunately, where it went was into the ground.
17:59Listen, toxins, you could be exposed to toxins and not feel the effects for years, okay?
18:04We know that from people who cleaned up right after September 11, 2001.
18:09And they're dying today, 20, 25 years later.
18:13So, it wasn't unreasonable to look at these potential environmental causes that would be manifesting so many years later,
18:20because that is what happens with some substances.
18:25And then Erin Brockovich, the famous environmental activist,
18:32she had heard about the situation with the symptoms in Leroy, and took an interest in it.
18:39And she brought up the derailment.
18:43The Leroy investigation was one of those things that just rose to the top.
18:50A tremendous amount of messaging traffic saying,
18:52please go and investigate.
18:54Please try to figure it out.
18:55Please help those girls.
18:56My name is Bob Bocock.
18:58I've been doing environmental investigations alongside Erin
19:01from the very beginning of her exposure to the water case in Hinkley, California.
19:08In Leroy, the community members were taking me to areas all over town.
19:16I walked down the train tracks from the quarry, and that was where I discovered the railroad crash.
19:22It was one of those types of things, like in Jurassic Park, where I just sort of pulled back the
19:27bushes.
19:27And that's where I found hundreds of 55-gallon drums full of the chemicals that had been spilled in 1970.
19:38I was flabbergasted.
19:55This is where it all started.
19:58Late December 1970, 3.30 in the morning.
20:02The rail car came screaming through here, skipped the tracks, dumped a load of highly toxic TCE, and a rail
20:11car full of cyanide.
20:15At the time the train derailed, there was no EPA.
20:19But once the Environmental Protection Agency is established, it goes to work in certain areas,
20:25like creating a Superfund site for the train derailment.
20:29Why is it that when Bob showed up, there were rusting barrels everywhere?
20:33Is it possible that the EPA cleanup somehow caused this outbreak?
20:40The government was pretty embarrassed.
20:42They came out, they re-barreled them, they hauled them off, they cleaned it up.
20:47They put a chain-link fence around the site.
20:50When that substance oozing from the barrels was tested, it was found to be safe, but there were non-hazardous
20:58levels of TCE.
21:00It was present, but not at a hazardous level.
21:03Almost all of the people who exhibited these symptoms were young women.
21:09If it was TCE, why would it only affect teenage girls and not teenage boys, not faculty members, not the
21:21janitors?
21:22There were reports from the State Department of Health that they could find no environmental cause, no external cause that
21:29might have triggered these.
21:31The information that the school district was, I'll say, able to provide was not a ton.
21:39So, they could say, we looked at environmental, we did a study, and we didn't come up with anything.
21:45We've tested the air, we've tested the grounds at the field.
21:49This is not contagious.
21:53So then, what is it?
21:55You are not doing your job. You are not doing your job.
21:58The town did a big meeting, and it was one of those, like, public, like, anyone can come kind of
22:03things.
22:04They held it at the school.
22:05It was basically just, like, open mic for the town to ask all their questions.
22:11There was, I guess I would call it the unproductive yelling.
22:15You need to fix our kids, and you're not doing enough, and, you know, why isn't this fixed yet?
22:20What are you doing to protect my kids? What are you doing to protect these people's children?
22:23There were people that were definitely in camps that it has to be environmental.
22:27There were people in camps for contagion.
22:31I was just so fed up of hearing all these parents just freaking out all the time, and it's like,
22:35what is this fixing?
22:36I mean, can you imagine being, you know, in that school or being one of the parents, and all of
22:41a sudden your daughter or your child is, has these movements that are, it can be painful.
22:47I mean, some of these students were, like, hitting themselves and falling down. They had bruises.
22:52Seriously, what is happening in this town?
22:56I thought, okay, these weird things are happening to me because there's something wrong with my brain.
23:01Like, obviously there's something medically wrong with me. I need to get this looked at.
23:06I saw a couple of doctors, one was in Buffalo, that ran all kinds of tests.
23:16Hi, I'm Laszlo Meschler. I'm the Chief Medical Officer of the Dent Neurologic Institute, Professor of Neurology and Oncology.
23:25The Dent Neurologic Institute is a private academic neurological center, and it is the largest neuroscience center in the United
23:34States.
23:35We're proud to say that we see about 1,400 patients a day.
23:392011 comes along, and we were asked to see a patient referred from Leroy, New York.
23:46We were asked to give an opinion on their movement disorder.
23:49So the movement disorder were either tremors, tics, something called myoclonic twitching, which is fast arm movements.
24:00We saw the first patient, and it was an unusual presentation.
24:05What really screwed up everything is that patient number two shows up coming from the same location.
24:11We started seeing patient number two, number three, and at the end of the day, we got up to patient
24:15number 16.
24:23There's people that run into the burning house, and there's the people that run away from the burning house, and
24:27I think I'm one of the ones that runs in.
24:29My name is Dr. Jennifer McVig. I work at Dent Neurologic Institute in Buffalo, New York.
24:35In 2011, I was seeing patients at Dent as a pediatric neurologist.
24:41I could tell if I had a new patient in a room, and I could hear them from the hallway
24:46if they were going to be involved with the Leroy case or not,
24:49because it was very odd to have the exact same type of tic.
24:53The proverbial breakfast club kind of scenario, we had the kids that were kind of the goth kids.
24:59We had the cheerleaders. We had the kids that were athletic.
25:03When we saw these young ladies, Dr. McVig and I looked at each other, and I said, this is a
25:08conversion disorder.
25:09There was a component of psychological issues causing physical symptoms.
25:22So the conversion disorder, there's nothing wrong with the central nervous system or the brain.
25:28Despite that, the individual is having real symptoms. It has to be something different, such as an emotional issue.
25:36Individually, they are called conversion disorder, but then when you start seeing similar patients that were from the same location,
25:43then you start to say, well, there's something more here.
25:45Now we have mass psychogenic illness when you have 16 patients with similar symptoms.
25:50What I recall them saying is that it's basically like if one person is doing something enough,
25:58a group of other people could start doing it just from being exposed to it.
26:06There's so many examples of this through history.
26:09Dancing mania in Strasbourg in 1518.
26:12People would dance out of nowhere and some of them would collapse and die.
26:17It is almost like a domino effect.
26:19Your effect on an individual, your effect of being around an individual has an effect on them and has an
26:25effect on them.
26:26It's a shared experience.
26:28But as far as women, I really think that there's some genetic predisposition to women seeing others either suffering or
26:35having movement
26:36and feeling inclined to help or be similar.
26:40I don't know. Maybe it's the nurturing part.
26:44There was a total of 20 patients, of which all of them were adolescent young ladies,
26:49oldest about 17, all the way down to 12, 13.
26:52One was a male who, as I know, was dating one of the girls.
26:58How many age outliers were there?
27:01One.
27:02There was a young woman, 35 years old, who had this problem.
27:10And she came to me from Leroy.
27:13She knew several of these girls, neighbors and so on.
27:23It was 2011 when I started having symptoms that I could not identify.
27:31My name is March Fitzsimmons.
27:33I was, and still am, a licensed practical nurse.
27:38I worked with individuals who have developmental disabilities and sometimes physical disabilities.
27:47Even now, I don't know why all those teenagers going through it affected me the way that it did.
27:58At this point, there had been, like, a couple of videos.
28:02I do remember that I was with a friend of mine who has a child who was affected.
28:10In October of 2011, the movements became a little bit more prominent and a little bit more frequent.
28:18Sometimes I would look like I was daydreaming.
28:22I was aware of what was going on around me.
28:26I just could not communicate.
28:29It could take me up to two minutes to say I need a glass of water.
28:36I was carrying my kiddo down the stairs and I dropped him.
28:46I did not, at that time, admit that I needed to see somebody.
28:52I had bills to pay.
28:54I had a child to take care of.
28:56And it was December 5th of 2011 where I couldn't hold it in anymore.
29:04I was in a meeting and suddenly I couldn't stop my head from moving.
29:10It hurt so bad you could see it.
29:13And the vocal tics were just getting louder the more scared I got.
29:22It's hard to talk, I know, I'm sorry.
29:24I was able to take a deep breath and I said, I need to leave and I don't know when
29:29I'll be able to come back.
29:30After that day, the next 12 weeks was a whirlwind.
29:37I saw 27 doctors and I went through 32 medication changes.
29:44At one point in time, my breakfast consisted of 22 pills.
29:57My dad took me to meet with Dr. Metchler.
29:59He had said, if I can't help you, I will find somebody who can.
30:04Today, this, this is a good day.
30:08After a lot of trial and error, we found that gabapentin and lamictal and valium helped to control the physical
30:19tics.
30:20And cognitive behavior therapy helped control the vocal tics.
30:27I was prescribed two medications.
30:29I know one had to do with something for muscle relaxing.
30:33And the other, I'm pretty sure it was an antibiotic because they were trying to rule out some sort of
30:38infection.
30:38There were some girls who went on all kinds of different meds.
30:44So we had no issues about our diagnosis and we also had no issues about other people questioning the diagnosis.
30:53The problem is I had to abide by my rules, which is HIPAA.
30:58I can't divulge information on individuals.
31:02I could not come out and individually explain to the media or the families as a group that what our
31:11diagnosis was.
31:13The doctors were following the law.
31:16But sometimes when you have to keep the patient's diagnosis secret, you're doing that at the expense of the public
31:24having full knowledge of what's going on.
31:27We just said, these kids are going to be fine.
31:30Trust me.
31:34So you can imagine how aggravated we were when all I hear is the mysterious disease, the unknown mysterious disease.
31:42It aggravate the hell out of us.
31:44That only amplified the anxiety in the families and the patients.
31:50So how are you going to fight that?
31:51It was a no-win situation.
31:54It got to a point where I, true story, I went into his office and slammed my hands on the
32:00desk and I said,
32:02Laszlo, this is going to hit the fan pretty soon.
32:05People are going to the media and we're not saying anything.
32:09It's time that we say something.
32:13So that's when I asked permission from some of the parents, can we say something?
32:18And that's what happened.
32:19We went out in media and we said, look, leave these girls alone.
32:23They are going to be fine.
32:24This is really a disorder, a psychological disorder causing physical symptoms, emphasizing that these children are not faking it.
32:33Just give them time back up.
32:38I heard about the conversion disorder diagnosis.
32:43A lot of people disagreed with it because what they were saying conversion disorder is just wasn't lining up with
32:51all of the girls.
32:52Some of them, yes, it did line up perfect, but not everyone.
32:58So that's what the doctors thought it was, conversion disorder and mass psychogenic illness.
33:04But not all the families were satisfied with that answer.
33:07They don't want to buy that it was in their daughter's heads.
33:10It still doesn't answer the questions of how this all started and where it started.
33:16Families had a difficult time accepting it and they were looking for answers.
33:20It's difficult to accept a psychological issue versus structural issue, even though it's your child.
33:26And that's when individuals outside our practice started questioning our diagnosis.
33:38Oh my God, what a bunch of man it was.
33:42One of them truly had Therese syndrome.
33:45And I think that's what happened.
33:47They saw that she was getting attention.
33:51So one of them, another one started.
33:53They saw she was getting attention.
33:55And suddenly the whole click happened.
33:58So they wanted attention.
33:59And the more attention people gave them, the more that snowballed.
34:04Absolute whole .
34:13They wanted an all around.
34:15Why is this happening to all of these girls?
34:18But like I said, a lot of it just didn't line up.
34:2299% of the people out there do not know what I'm about to tell you.
34:26Essentially what happened is there was illness, sickness and tics going on.
34:31Well about that time, we had to take our daughter to a local hospital.
34:36One thing I blessed my kids with was a regularly, irregular heartbeat.
34:40It's benign.
34:41But it was the first time it hit her.
34:43And the triage nurse in the ER, she asked her point blank.
34:47Have you used any drugs or smoked anything like synthetic marijuana?
34:52And the daughter says no.
34:54This nurse looked at me.
34:55She said, okay, I'm going to tell you something right now.
34:58Some girls that reported this went to a football party with the football team.
35:03The cheerleaders and the football players.
35:06Somebody produced a ton of synthetic marijuana.
35:08They smoked a lot of it.
35:10The nurse looked at me.
35:12She said, God damn it.
35:13If I could say this, I can't.
35:15It would put an end to this right now.
35:17The nurse thought it was a synthetic marijuana and a girl smoked it.
35:21And that just one thing led to another.
35:22It was mass hysteria.
35:23She said, there was nothing environmental other than they smoked synthetic marijuana.
35:27And were found by law, they couldn't say anything.
35:33This synthetic marijuana, which was known as K2 or Spice, wasn't readily available.
35:39You could buy it at the gas station, a little convenience store.
35:42It not only could have caused tics, but it could make people suicidal.
35:47It was taken off the market.
35:48But it was very dangerous during this time.
35:51We don't know who was at this party or who used synthetic marijuana.
35:56But we do know there exists a plethora of information connecting the use of synthetic marijuana to tics and other
36:04uncontrollable physical movements in some people.
36:07This is not our theory.
36:09It is well documented in peer reviewed medical journals.
36:13I find it very compelling that we've learned about this synthetic marijuana at this particular party that had football players,
36:21cheerleaders and other students at it.
36:27I started using drugs at a really young age.
36:31I started off smoking cigarettes.
36:33And then from there, I started to smoke weed.
36:35And then we found this stuff called K2, which is synthetic marijuana.
36:39And I was using synthetic marijuana prior to, during and after the tick outbreak incident that happened at the Leroy
36:48High School.
36:49At the time, I was not aware of the side effects of smoking K2.
36:54And just recalling how I felt during those times, I would black out.
36:59I had seizures.
37:00I had hallucinations.
37:02I was suicidal.
37:03It was awful.
37:05It was awful.
37:07It was awful.
37:07As far as I can remember, I don't recall the doctors ever specifically asking if we had tried this drug
37:17called synthetic marijuana or if they had asked if we had been using drugs at all.
37:23But again, to be honest, even if they had, I feel like at that age, I would have flied.
37:31I definitely partook in some things that I shouldn't have.
37:35I don't think it was like every single episode is related to I use drugs.
37:42I had the issues.
37:43This definitely was a mass psychogenic illness.
37:46Could that have been a factor in people having the types of movements?
37:50Some of them?
37:52Absolutely.
37:53Now, in terms of the toxicology, the chemicals involved, could they have been detected with the tox test that were
37:59given to these girls?
38:01No.
38:02So if there was a tox, it was usually at the ER.
38:05So anything that we were able to get, we included.
38:09I don't think there were a lot of them that were shared with us.
38:11So they might have been blocked from us.
38:13Could this have been the bark that kind of ignited the flame?
38:17Maybe.
38:17Then why are these ticks showing up mainly in girls?
38:22Why not the boys?
38:23And maybe some of the boys' teams were being tested and they knew that.
38:26So they stayed away from the synthetic marijuana and the girls were just using it.
38:30That's one explanation.
38:32So the vast majority of the people afflicted were students at the high school.
38:38We approached almost everyone and almost everyone said no.
38:44Is there something you're afraid to talk about?
38:51In February of 2012 is when I first started to notice, oh, hey, wait, I'm not doing this as often
38:55anymore.
38:56After the medications and everything kicked in, everything kind of started to subside, I was just kind of glad to
39:02be on the other side of it at that point.
39:04Because it had been a very rough few months.
39:06I don't really dwell on it anymore.
39:09I'm living a somewhat fulfilling life and doing pretty all right at it, I'd say.
39:17After everything died down, it was just like, so hush hush.
39:20So like, don't talk about it.
39:22Don't look at it.
39:22Don't look at it.
39:23And I knew that after all of this, regardless of what happened with them, I was still gonna be ticking.
39:27It's obvious I have Tourette's.
39:29That's not something I can hide.
39:30So like, it doesn't bother me for one second.
39:32Like, it's just part of who I am.
39:36Give me a shush!
39:38Since 2019, I have been off of all my neurological medications.
39:44I have all sorts of tools in my toolbox that helps me deal with the stresses.
39:52I'm not good at it, really.
39:55But I practice it regularly.
39:59And I force myself to do a whole lot of journaling.
40:02And it works.
40:04Journaling works.
40:09It was one of the first cases in history where the community could see in real time how this evolved.
40:15Mass media, social media, that had never been a thing before with a lot of these events.
40:20Now you can just watch it unfold.
40:22You can put on the TV, oh, how are the girls doing today?
40:25You know?
40:25And it fed the flame.
40:26It was interesting.
40:29So the more attention these young ladies got, the worse the symptoms.
40:34Because the stress and anxiety that was associated with being in the media aggravated everything.
40:41I'm very thankful that it isn't happening anymore, that it isn't something that I still have to struggle with.
40:47It's given me a different level of understanding and empathy for human beings.
40:53Whether some got tics because of the synthetic marijuana and others followed Sue through mass psychogenic illness, I don't know.
41:03I don't know that we'll ever know the truth.
41:05Unless all of these girls talk to us and tell us whether they smoked or not.
41:09Yeah.
41:10So we're going to do now what about room time?
41:12Yep.
41:13Which is like you just sit there silently from the other side.
41:15You guys want me to be quiet?
41:17Do you remember the part where I actually have Tourette?
41:19No.
41:20I can hold it for about 30 seconds, but that's all you get.
41:24I'm sorry.
41:24No, you're just chill out forever.
41:26Sure.
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