A Wife Put Drain Cleaner In Husband’s Coffee. This Is What Happened To His Stomach.

Hey, Dr Bernard here. This video has absolutely 
nothing to do with anything you may have seen   or heard of in the news. It’s to teach 
what can happen in a poisoning like this. A Wife Poured Drain Cleaner In Her Husband’s 
Coffee. This Is How His Organs Shut Down. PB is a 41 year old man, presenting to 
the emergency room with hematemesis,   the vomiting of blood. He tells the admitting nurse that 
yesterday, when he was taking a dump,   he looked into the bowl before flushing, and 
instead of a regular stool, he saw a thick dark   goo that looked like asphalt in the toilet. 
All of this suggesting that over the last   couple of days, there had been significant 
hemorrhaging taking place in his stomach.

PB had a strained relationship with his wife 
Katie. They had been trying for so long to   have kids, but things just weren’t happening. This 
was just 1 part of their relationships problems. PB and his wife met earlier in their lives. He was 
highly educated, and as a young married couple,   everything was good, until one day, 
PB was suddenly laid off from his job.   Stunned and in disbelief, he tried as hard 
as he could to find more work in his field,   but no one would give him a chance. He tried using his credentials to get companies 
to bite on his idea of blockchain to optimize   logistics, agriculture, and medicine, 
through a company he incorporated himself,   but no one would give him the 
time of day. When that failed,   he tried doing a woodworking business, he tried 
making videos and podcasts, but everything he did   ended with him needing a loan that he couldn’t 
pay back, and Katie would have to bail him out. PB: “Babe, I just need like $5000 to pay off 
the tools, and I’ll work double time to make   more of these and pay you back and then 
some.

I’m just in a tough spot right now” Eventually, he figured out that so long as 
he made it look like he was doing something,   he could live free with no repercussions, because 
his wife would always be there to bail him out. PB: “By the way I was going to ask you for $5000 
so I could try to buy you a better personality.” After all this time, they kept 
trying to have a child with no luck,   and their marriage kept getting strained. 
“If he fails at everything in life,   no wonder he fails at making 
a kid too,” she thought. As the years passed, Katie became more 
and more successful in her career.   One day while she was on a call for work, 
PB was recording a podcast in the back.

PB: “Welcome back to Frankie 
Cambo’s super sweet podcast” Katie: I am so sorry about the noise 
everyone, my husband is busy being a   world famous podcaster. You see, zero, 
just like all his life’s successes. Mad at the passive aggressive dig, PB 
composited a picture of Katie. In his mind,   no kids yet was her fault. He didnt have proof 
of it, but he believed she was sabotaging it,   taking pills behind his back 
to prevent it from happening   in an effort to preserve and progress in her 
career. “God knows what she’s doing on those   ‘business trips,’” he thought as he left 
the picture on the table for her to see.

Upset at this horrible depiction, Katie 
made up her mind. Her entire married life   had been carrying failures of this one person, 
who appeared completely unthankful for the fact   that she allows him to live the life he does. 
In nature, a creature that lives off another,   and enjoys itself at the expense of the 
other, is a parasite. And a pest as such   must be removed to keep one healthy, as she 
prepared herself for what she was about to do. PB had had stomach problems all throughout 
his life. He had a diagnosis of ulcers,   where sores would appear at various 
parts of his stomach causing   massive pain. Sometimes the hurt would 
flare up for unknown reasons. He’d watch   his food carefully, but he also enjoyed 
things that could aggravate the ulcers. One morning, Katie was making breakfast 
for PB before he went off to "work." He liked to drink black coffee, no cream or 
sweeteners.

This may have made his ulcers   worse but it just seemed to be random at times. 
Under the sink was a bottle of drain cleaner,   and as PB’s coffee was ready, she 
poured some in, and served it to him. PB: Did we get new coffee? Why is it so bitter? Katie: Oh your black coffee 
is bitter!? What a surprise!   How about you just make your own breakfast 
next time then. Have a good day sweaty.

As the day continued, PB felt something was 
wrong in his mouth. He had a weird taste,   and it felt like there were hairs at the back of 
his throat. He felt a sore growing on his tongue,   and he really wasn’t sure what was going on. The 
bottom of his chest started to burn as he felt   uncomfortable throughout the whole morning, as his 
stomach ulcer pain started to get worse for days. Eventually, PB went to the hospital because his 
stomach hurt so bad, but doctors just gave him   more medicines for his ulcers. Because of his past 
history, they were pretty sure that this was what   was happening. He told them about the spicy and 
sour foods that he’d eat, the black coffee and   they encouraged him to change and avoid those. He 
did stop eating some of those foods, but it wasn’t enough. Katie didn’t pour the drain cleaner in PB’s coffee 
every day, but the frequency at which she’d do it,   and the amount that she’d put in increased. PB: “You gotta be kidding me right? Is 
this coffee or is it toilet cleaner?” One day, PB really wasn’t feeling well.

He 
could feel a burning just below his chest.   He had no idea what Katie was really doing to his 
coffee, despite him thinking something was wrong.   As he finally takes one more drink, PB felt a 
burn on his tongue and mouth like never before. And he’s brought to the 
emergency room where we are now. With a hoarse voice, PB tells the medical team 
that he drank coffee, then felt some kind of   burn was happening in his mouth and throat. 
He remembers the coffee wasn’t steaming,   the cup really didn’t feel that hot.

He 
said it smelled “clean” like laundry,   and he wasn’t sure if the coffee was stale or 
rotten or really, what had happened at all. He tells them about the constant indigestion 
that he’d been having over the last few weeks,   and about his ulcers, but the 
more he was talking about it,   the more he started to question himself if 
everything happening now was all in his mind. At examination, PB appeared to be ok at 
the moment. He was in mild distress, but   he wasn’t breathing quickly.

His blood pressure 
seemed ok, his heart rate was a little elevated,   but he was in distress. He had vomited 
blood. Typically you don’t want to vomit,   and when you do vomit, you don’t want blood, 
because that’s not supposed to be in your   stomach contents. His stools were black and 
tarry. This also means that blood had been in   his stomach contents and passed all the way 
through his intestines and out of his body,   the black color and tarry consistency being the 
digested remnants of the red blood cells. All of   this meaning that PB has had some kind of GI bleed 
happening for at least a couple days now, but why? Drain cleaner is a mix of sodium 
hypochlorite, which is bleach,   sodium chloride, which is table salt, 
and sodium hydroxide, also known as lye,   or caustic soda. If the word caustic refers to 
a substance that can cause a chemical burn, then   we can take a guess as to where the burns in PB’s 
mouth, tongue, esophagus, and stomach are coming   from. But PB and the medical team don’t know that 
drain cleaner was put into the coffee he drank.

The caustic chemicals in drain cleaner 
are high in pH. They’re not acids,   they’re bases. In some household 
cleaners, the basicity is so high,   that the cleaner will cause damage on contact 
with human tissue. But how does that happen? Human cells are defined by a lipid bilayer. 
Lipid referring to fats, which in chemistry   is really long chains of carbon, 
which is what oils are made of,   and bi meaning two. A double layer membrane 
made with fats, defining the border of a cell. The chemical reaction happening here is called 
saponification. If the drain cleaner that PB drank   contains high concentration of sodium hydroxide, 
and body cells are lined with a layer of fats,   then it means when he drank the 
drain cleaner in his coffee,   it wasn’t bitter because it was black coffee, but 
that it was stripping the lining of his throat,   and his esophagus. As it flowed down into his 
stomach, it was ripping open the cells on the   way down, destroying the tissue, making soap out 
of the inner lining of his gastrointestinal tract.

Katie didnt put a lot of drain cleaner, 
but she also didn’t mix it well.   PB may have gotten what he did in clumps, 
as gulps of the drain-cleaner-contaminated   coffee would roll down and start lysing the cells, 
eating away the tissue and causing caustic burns.   And the longer the drain cleaner was in 
contact with the same spot in his GI tract,   the deeper the wound, because more time would 
allow it to react, and penetrate in. Because   it wasn’t huge amounts of drain cleaner in his 
coffee all at once, the small doses PB would get,   could cause damage in the form of ulcers in the GI 
tract, but, PB already had had ulcers his entire   life. When ulcers become deep, they too can cause 
GI bleeds. All of this could explain everything   happening to PB. Without knowing about the drain 
cleaner, how could anyone tell the difference   between the ulcers he had had his whole life, 
and the ones caused by ingesting drain cleaner? As the medical team look at the 
camera going down his throat,   they find that his esophagus was 
swollen, inflamed and filled with ulcers.   Parts of it had sloughed off, 
liquefied like soap and necrosed,   consistent with caustic injury that can happen 
with ingestion of drain cleaner.

It wouldn’t   look like this if PB’s only problem were ulcers. 
But it wasn’t the only thing that they found. Doctors find that PB’s lower esophagus has 
started to narrow and close up, something called   a stricture. When tissue necroses, it sloughs off 
like how it did when PB first accidentally drank   drain cleaner, a healing process starts to take 
place where the injury happened. New blood vessels   start to form, and a protein called collagen 
started to deposit where the tissue died,   forming scar tissue. It’s similar to what 
happens when you get a deep cut on your skin,   except, caustic ingestion injury happens to a part 
of the body that isn’t as robust with protective   features like the skin.

The deeper the caustic 
injury, the more scar tissue that collects,   causing a greater narrowing of the esophagus. All 
of this suggesting that whatever’s happening to   PB now, has happened to him in the past. That 
time he was in the hospital earlier, it wasn’t   his ulcers flaring, rather he was correct in 
thinking something was wrong with his esophagus   because there may have been actual caustic 
injuries at that time, and he doesn’t know that. Overall, he appears to be ok in the 
hospital, but as the time continues,   his blood pressure starts to drop while 
his heart beat starts to increase,   all of this happening while he’s experiencing a 
sharp pain in his abdomen. He’s starting to have   a fever and blood tests find that his liver 
and his kidneys are starting to shut down. Doctors order scans and find that in his abdomen, 
there’s a large volume of free fluid and gas right   outside of his gut. Those aren’t supposed 
to be there.

So, where are they coming from?   Well if it’s a gas, it could be air. When 
you breathe, your lungs contain the air   inhaled and exchange the oxygen and carbon 
dioxide for exhalation. But air doesn’t just   flood in to the abdomen in the form of free 
gas, so for PB, it’s not coming from what’s   he’s breathing. But the GI tract does produce 
gas from gut bacteria’s metabolic activity,   and stomach acid and food are also fluids. 
If this is what’s in his abdomen, then it   means that something in his GI tract must have 
perforated, and is now leaking its contents out. As the gut bacteria starts oozing out in PB’s 
abdomen, his immune system detects this. When   you get a cut on your skin, the area becomes 
swollen and warm. This inflammation is the   immune system detecting the cut, and dilating 
the blood vessels so that immune cells can get   in to the injured area. But for PB, he 
didn’t get a cut, his immune system is   reacting to the huge bacterial load flowing out 
of his gut.

His blood vessels start to dilate,   causing his blood pressure to drop. This makes 
it harder for oxygen to get to the organs,   as they start shutting down. The kidneys 
can’t filter the blood, the liver has   problems processing the body’s waste, and then 
the brain starts to hypoxic. Hypo meaning low,   and ox referring to oxygen, as 
he starts to lose consciousness. We know that PB has an extensive 
history of stomach ulcers. We also   know he has current injuries from 
caustic ingestion. Both of these,   can cause GI tract perforation, so how can 
we be absolutely sure which one caused this? Doctors send PB in for surgery.

When they 
look, they find a caustic burn where the   perforation happened, suggesting that the 
drain cleaner, not his preexisting ulcers,   was the cause of his stomach contents leaking out 
in to his abdomen, causing shock, and causing his   organs to shut down. Surgeons close up 
the perforation and drain his abdomen. As he’s sent in to the recovery room, PB seems to 
be OK. As the days and weeks pass in the hospital,   he’s able to eat food again, 
he’s able to get up and walk,   with some help. Throughout his entire 
hospital stay, he saw Katie once,   despite his medical care being covered through 
her employer’s health insurance. And as awkward   as that arrangement was, PB was able to make 
A Recovery, unlike his marriage to his wife. Thanks so much for watching. Take 
care of yourself. And Be Well..

As found on YouTube

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