Ep. 25: Down in a Hole

0:06 Welcome to M4 Medicine, mystery, mayhem, and sometimes murder. I'm Andrea Marciano and RN with 35 years of experience across various fields. From direct patient care in hospitals to home health, geriatrics, and injury medicine, I face life, death, and everything in between. And I'm Crystal Miller and RN with 13 1/2 years of experience. My work spans home health, Hospice, emergency care, geriatrics, and occupational health. From the chaos of trauma based quiet moments with patients, I've seen stories that defy explanations. We've been friends for over 25 years and as nurses we've shared countless stories that have left us and our families speechless. Now we're bringing those stories and many more to you in medicine, mystery, mayhem, and sometimes murder.

0:53 Each week, we'll uncover cases that challenge the boundaries of medicine, sharing the human stories behind the science. From puzzling medical mysteries to shocking real life crimes, we'll bring you stories that'll leave you questioning everything you thought you knew while. We're both experiencing these nurses. We want to make it clear we're not here to give medical advice. This podcast is about storytelling, education and exploration, not diagnosing or treating medical conditions. This is medicine, mystery, mayhem and sometimes murder. Let's dive in. Hey Crystal, how are you doing? I'm doing pretty well. How are you? I'm very well, thank you. I'm enjoying the beginning of spring, starting to plant my garden, and watching my garden grow.

1:34 Speaking of spring, I've got baby bunnies in a nest in my front yard, in my front garden actually, and I'm so worried about them because it's been raining really bad. There's been flooding all around me. We didn't have any flooding but we definitely had some heavy rain and some standing water for a while. And I'm so nervous that they didn't survive it. And I have no way to check because if I disturb their nest then their mother will probably abandoned them and I'm so worried about it. That's the worst we had. I looked in the back of our cabin, we have a gazebo and I saw a cute little nest that a bird had built in the top. It was clearly empty. It they all flew off already. And we've got some little baby geese.

2:16 I mean, excuse me, duck, ducks in our pond. I said geese for some reason. But ducks. We have some little chicks and some of them have succumbed to the chicken in the sky, but we have some that are surviving. Yeah, it's funny how how spring really is like baby animal time. This is the first time I've ever had any baby animals in my yard. We also found, well, Lula, my cat found a toad in my house the other day, so that was interesting. Yeah, just a little, but he's a chocolate chip cookie standard, like chocolate chip cookie. That's fine. Did she bring the frog in? That no, she doesn't go outside. So she just, she just cornered it for us.

2:57 She hadn't heard it though. She just cornered it for us and she was able to grab it and release it. That's hilarious. She probably had no idea what that thing was. We have a bunch of a bunch of toads in the back. I hear them singing all the time and sometimes they stay, but usually they migrate. There's across the street from us. There's a retention pond that doesn't get any action. Ours gets very little, but it's still sometimes they just, they come out of the Creek and they go across the street to the pond. I don't know why they don't just stay in our pond because it's a lot friendlier, but they don't. So. Anyway, well, good. So what do you have for us today? Today I wanted to tell the story. This is probably a pretty familiar story to a lot of our listeners. It may not be as familiar as to younger generations necessarily, but I want to talk today about Baby Jessica or the baby in the well.

3:48 Let me tell you what my sources are really quickly. I'm scrolling down to it. My apologies. I used the an article from Texas Monthly called Jessica Mcclure's Well of Hope, a story from the Smithsonian Magazine called The Story of Baby Jessica. 30 years later a story from People magazine The Rescue of Baby Jessica New York Times after baby Jessica a life spent struggling the Today show an interview of Jessica McClure Jessica McClure before the headlines, before the cameras, before she became America's baby Jessica she was just. Jessica McClure, a curious 18 month old girl from Midland, TX, a little girl who loves singing nursery rhymes, exploring backyards, and making her teenage parents laugh. I want to make sure that our listeners understand that we want to give, we want to make sure that we keep our, I think we've said this before, but we want to make sure that we keep our stories humanized when, when there are human beings involved and not, you know, relegate them to just statistics. And so I do have a little bit of some back story about Jessica's parents and kind of her first 18 months of life. Her mother, Sissy, was just 17 when Jessica was born. Her father, Chip, was barely 18.

5:01 They were two young kids trying to build a life in the middle of West, TX oil country. They lived modestly, surrounded by extended family, love and the kind of quiet hope that says maybe tomorrow will be better. Jessica's world in October 1987 was simple. Her mom's daycare, her aunt's backyard, the wide Texas sky. But then, in one moment, in a single blink of distracted time, everything changed. So are you familiar with this story? Oh my gosh, I remember living through it and watching the news and just being so worried. That was two years before my first child was born, and I didn't know yet how quickly someone that age can move. Just the moment of not paying attention. And I remember how some of this played out. It was very tense for everyone.

5:53 So I was in college by then, and it was just, yeah, I just remember watching it all the time on the TV. It was one of the first things I remember watching live. That's interesting you say that because actually it was in the infancy of CNN, which was the basically the original 24 hour news cycle television station. And so CNN was was actually broadcasting it live 24/7. Yeah, I remember that. Were you old enough to remember? I mean, given the 10 years I was 11. Yeah, but do you remember it? Yeah, absolutely. And I remember that. I just remember how dirty she looked when she came out.

6:34 And I was not prepared. I was not prepared for that, which is so funny. But I was 11, right? I was expecting just a baby to come out. Yeah, not a. Dirty, broken baby. Yeah, yeah. It was very intense. It really was. What were you just reading from? What was that source? Do you remember? Oh, that's my own writing from all the sources. Oh, OK, great. I kind of write. I kind of writing to read man, I got to use it. Yeah, you do. Carry on, OK? On the morning of October 14th, 1987, Jessica was playing outside at her aunt's house, where her mother, Sissy helped run a home daycare. The backyard was dusty, cluttered with all toys, and somewhere near a fence line, a forgotten relic and abandoned well casing.

7:15 Only 8 inches wide, just big enough for a toddler's foot to slip inside. So I wanted to give you a visual of what 8 inches wide is. It's about the size of a dinner plate. OK, The well had once been capped by a large rock or cement piece, and a few days earlier someone had moved it, planning to fix it later. And like so many dangers in ordinary life, it was forgotten. It was one of those I'll get to it situations with not a thought to any possibility of danger to anyone. I mean, obviously the thought had been there at some point because the rock was put there or the cement block was put there. But whoever moved it for whatever reason, they just, it did not occur to them that the importance of putting it back. And I want to emphasize also that this rock was absolutely not removed out of malice or forethought of anything. It was just as just a sad mistake. When I if I remember correctly in the original story, they were looking to reactivate this well.

8:13 They were looking to see if it was still a good well on the property. I didn't hear. It's not, it was not actually a water well. It was an old, an old oil detecting well. That's not the right word, but I believe I have it in my story. But yeah, so it was. It's called a, it's called a well casing. And they use it to see, to see if there's oil and when. OK, let's, let's talk about her falling. So Jessica was wondering, just a few steps from the other kids at this home daycare run by her mother and her aunt stepped onto the spot and vanished. Her fall was silent. The first anyone knew was when the other children screamed. Sissy ran outside, scanning the yard and saw nothing until she heard it.

8:59 Jessica's tiny cries coming from beneath the earth now did you? Do you remember hearing Jessica in the Well? Yeah. Yeah, that's one of the things that's a, that's a core memory for me is. And we're going to get to the most endearing part in just a minute, but. Yeah, I, I think I remember what it was probably. Do so. The 911 call came fast. So fast the dispatcher first thought it was a prank. My baby fell down a well. It sounded impossible, but it was real. Jessica McClure was 22 feet underground, wedged inside a crumbling shaft that was never meant to hold life. And what's interesting about this also is that Welsh that well casing was not actually 22 feet deep.

9:43 The ground was so unsettled and not compacted that she actually broke through the bottom of the well and fell an additional number of feet. I don't know how many exactly, but she was far below the bottom of the of the well. So first first responders arrived within minutes, but they quickly realized this was not a normal rescue. The well was too narrow for any adult to descend. Like I said, the surrounding soil bit that's Hard Rock mixed with sandy loam was dangerously unstable. Yeah. Because I remember them being really worried that if they tried to send anything down to her, not only was she small enough not to really be able to grab something, but they worried they were going to collapse it more. Yep.

10:26 So one wrong move. I think might have just said this could trigger a collapse. They couldn't pull her straight out, so they would have to. Well, actually, I'm going to back up a little bit because they did try putting down a rope. Yeah. She was too little to know what to do with it. So they decided that they were going to dig a parallel, well essentially next to the the one that she was in and tunnel sideways to reach her. They knew it would be dangerous. They knew it would be slow, and they also knew that Jessica didn't have forever. You know, it's a simple plan in theory. Dig a parallel shaft, then a horizontal tunnel. Excuse me, to her location. But nothing about the reality was simple.

11:08 Equipment failed, compressors broke, drills jammed against unexpected rock layers, and time was running out. Here comes the sweet part. Jessica's breathing, heard faintly through microphones lowered into the shaft, changed over the first hours. She whimpered. She called for her mother. And then she started singing faint broken songs, Winnie the Pooh melodies drifting up from the dark. And that, that is a core memory for me. Just that sound of hope. Frankly, just phenomenally unbelievable and endearing. Can you imagine having been there and hear this teeny tiny little voice and just know it was there, but then also know that, as you said, the time was limited?

11:51 They had sent an air tube down. They were pumping oxygen in, yes. They were worried about her being so compressed that she could not fully breathe. Yep, they pumped oxygen in the whole time. CNN, like I said, aired near continuous live footage. Every major network network picked up the feed Across America, televisions flickered with updates, right? I mean, those of us who didn't have CNN because their moms and dads wouldn't buy them cable were able to watch it on the local news. And maybe not in real time, you know, as much as CNN, but just in practice, practically or relatively real time. Yeah, I remember we had it. I was, if it was 87, I was already at college.

12:32 And so we had, I'm sure we had all the cable stuff because, you know, we wanted it. And I, I just remember it being available and I was watching it and it was summertime, I think, wasn't it? What was the month? October, OK. Because I couldn't remember if I was in college classes or not. And I work too, but I remember watching it as much as I possibly could. Yeah, You know, churches prayed, schools held vigils, people held memorials, vigils. You know, I said that with candles and things like that staying up all night. And then behind the scenes, rescuers started discussing darker options if tunnelling failed.

13:15 An explosive experts explosives expert was standing by to blast an opening, the last desperate measure that could easily have killed Jessica in the process. It was a choice no one wanted to make. 20 hours passed, then 30, then 50. Now consider this. We're at 48 hours is 2 days. So 50 hours were two whole days into this baby in a well. The rescuers battled exhaustion, dehydration and despair. Not only were they battling their own exhaustion and dehydration, they were battling Jessica's dehydration and exhaustion. You know, men wept openly when setbacks delayed tunneling the tunneling process.

13:55 Jessica's faint cries rose and fell like the beat of a fading drum. Finally, after 58 agonizing hours, a team of miners, engineers and paramedics finished tunnelling close enough. The final push fell to a young paramedic paramedic named Robert O'Donnell. He crawled through the narrow shaft wedged against sharp rocks, moving inch by inch towards Jessica's trapped form. When he finally reached her, she was barely conscious. Her tiny body was twisted, her right foot pinned painfully against her head, her skin bruised and scraped. Robert whispered to her, gently shifted her, lubricated her with petroleum Jelly and pulled.

14:39 And Jessica McClure, against all odds, emerged into the light. Bruised, scared, scarred, crying, weakly but alive. And everyone else was crying very strongly and going hysterical. Yes, yes, absolutely. I was crying. I mean, it was such an emotional, you know, just so emotional. Like I said, she came out just looking so pathetic. And of course I mean pathetic in the sense of just helpless and broken, you know, I already said it. And so it was just, it was really, it was really heartbreaking to watch, but then also so uplifting and relieving.

15:22 It is real, a real dichotomy, you know. Yeah. So Jessica was rushed to the hospital. She suffered severe bruising, dehydration and circulatory damage to her foot. Surgeons worked to save her leg, ultimately amputating only a single toe. Jessica would carry a scar on her forehead for the rest of her life, a tiny dent left by the pressure of the well walls. But the bigger scars would be less visible. Jessica's parents, Sissy and Chip, were hailed as heroes. But the reality behind closed doors was different. The media circus was relentless. Offers flooded in. Interviews, endorsements, movie rights. And with them came judgement. Locally in Midland again, a place that says we take care of it ourselves, not everyone was supportive.

16:08 Whispers blamed Sissy for negligence, blamed Chip for poor judgement. Small town rumors, cruel and inevitable, the young couples marriage buckled under the weight of fame and trauma. Within a few years, they quietly divorced. Jessica grew up out of the spotlight, shielded as much as possible. She said she doesn't Remember Remember the rescue at all. The only scar that reminds her it happened. Sorry, it's only the scar that reminds her it happened. When she turned 25, she gained access to the trust fund established in her name, once valued near $1,000,000. Market downturns, including the 2008 recession and crash, left it a fraction of its former size.

16:50 Jessica used it to buy a modest home. Nothing flashy, nothing Hollywood. She married, had children of her own. Live quietly Today. Jessica McClure Morales, which is her married name, is a private woman grateful to live a life. Most people don't recognize her end. When asked if she believes that she's a hero, she says I was just a baby. Yeah, which I think was. Really hilarious it's. Like duh. Nope, Nope. I fell in a well, I'm. Not. Yeah. Unfortunately, not everyone touched by Jessica's story survived. Robert O'Donnell, the paramedic who pulled her from the well, suffered years of PTSD and depression after the rescue.

17:35 Unable to escape the flashbacks, unable to rebuild a peaceful life, Robert died at his own hand in 1995, just eight years after the rescue. His hero, his heroism, saved Jessica, but the memory of those 58 hours cost him everything. Wow. Well. And that's actually amazing to me because he saved her life. And he actually, if I remember correctly, he was selected strictly based on his size because he was the smallest. They wanted to get someone there as fast as possible. And so the smallest person is the one who went. Did it say in there what it, what was the PTSD issue?

18:17 I mean, I I wonder what it was that affected him that way. It didn't really go into it, it just said that he struggled for years after the rescue. He found it nearly impossible to return to normal life, haunted by what could have gone wrong. Oh sure, in 1995, the world lost him to suicide. A reminder that sometimes the trauma of saving a life can cost your own. Yeah. Wow. Well, in trauma, people, I think, look at trauma as being only something that was a negative thing, but it has to be a negative thing to be a trauma. It can be a very significant positive thing as well, but in a traumatic sort of way. Like that, that, yes, she survived. And as they talked about that, the marriage of her parents did not happen.

19:03 And I look at that too and think they were 17 to 18 years old, for heaven sakes. Yeah, Like, I mean, I Remember Remember how I was when I was 17 or 18 and to be going through all of that and I remember as a parent making decisions that certainly could have ended up equally terrible. I didn't have a kid in a well, but I mean. I fell into an ice fishing hole. My my best little girlfriend. We were four years old. She fell into I don't know if you remember, and maybe you never saw it because it was old, old, old, but Payson downtown used to have a canal that run ran in front of the stores on Main Street. It was a walking street, and it had actual canals that ran right in front of the stores. And there'd be bridges you'd get between, you know, over the canal.

19:48 And one time my friend Hannah fell into that canal, and my dad had to race forward like 3 or 4 bridges so that he could, you know, reach down and catch her as she came out from under that bridge. It was horrifyingly scary. I'm sure. And she survived, and nothing. She survived. And does that mean that my dad or her dad or whoever was there, I, at 4 years old, had been negligent? No. It meant that a child was curious and did a curious thing and it ended up in an accident that could have been horrible. Yeah. You hear, you hear all the time, all the time. These stories of. I just turned my head, right. I just looked away for a second. I went. To the bathroom, for heaven's sakes. I went to the bathroom, right?

20:31 It, it actually reminds me. It's a similar sort of thing. Babies and children who die in hot cars, right? One change in routine. Mom always takes the kids to daycare on Monday, But this Monday, mom has something. Dad's taking them to daycare. One simple change. Dad says, I know I'm taking them to daycare. Dad gets in the car. Dad decides to stop at Starbucks. Dad gets into his routine, goes to work, it comes out hours later to a dead kid, right. Like and there yes, there are cases where it's been intentional, it's been homicide, but the majority of them are not the majority are just accidents. And it it scares the hell out of me. I mean, less so now that my kids aren't little and I they have other concerns, obviously, but not of them slipping and falling into a pond necessarily.

21:19 Or not a pond, but. Not being able to get out. Yeah, Canal. Yeah, exactly. I feel really, really terrible for her parents, and small towns can be brutal. I wish that her town, their town, had been kinder to them and more supportive instead of gossipy and unkind and judgmental and that sort of thing, you know? Yeah, it's such an easy thing to fall into, I think talking about something like that. And then if we look at how she survived for all that time, I remember that they had talked about trying to get her some food or water. But again, based on her age, they didn't think that they were worried about her drowning really because of not being able to drink it properly.

22:01 And they couldn't start IB, of course, or anything like that. And so as I remember, they tried a couple things to get her some water but she she couldn't grab it because we're arms were or something. I can't remember exactly but if you recall. OK, let me think about it, 'cause I don't want to tell it, right? Was it her arm or her leg that was basically bent all the way up? Her leg because her foot was basically up by her. Ear Yep, that's right. That's. Right. Yeah. And so I imagine if her foot was up like that, even if she had her arms up, I don't think she could have moved anything to her mouth. I imagine she was very wedged, yeah. Yeah, she was because I remember seeing pictures and also at the time them showing the diameter of a tube and putting a doll in there and just showing how tight it was and how it would be impossible. The fact that there for other kids that saw it and responded was huge too.

22:51 Even though her outcome she stayed in there for so long didn't change. If they didn't know where she was and she was searching it would it could have delayed things for hours and hours even further and gone beyond her. Because it's fairly well known that a person can survive for 72 hours without water. But when you're talking about an 18 month old person who has no real reserves, that's a different thing than an adult person who has some reserves, right? One of the things things also that I want to talk about is how resilient babies are and children are and the fact that she was able to self soothe and kind of protect herself from whatever panic or that sort of thing might might come up along by singing songs from Winnie the Pooh and babbling to herself and you know, all of that sort of thing. And I just, you know, if that had been, if that had been an adult, I think that the odds are very high that they would panic and they would not self soothe, right? And they would put themselves in further danger because of that panic and that fear.

23:59 Yeah, and the good thing about her age is she didn't know all the possibilities. Right. Which helps a lot, like you said. Basically what you're saying is that she she didn't know about being claustrophobic. She didn't know that being wedged that way was likely to have at least part of her leg lost. She didn't know all of those things. And that, I think, can really help if the possibilities are unknown. I think it's a little easier not to panic thinking about all the possibilities. And I remember them talking about how she was singing the lullabies to herself that her mom used to sing to her or sang still did. I mean, she was not used to I she sang to her and I imagine that's one of the reasons they knew she was OK is when she would start making sounds again because she would stop making sounds for a while and they hoped that she had fallen asleep versus died, but they didn't know until she started making sounds again. Also, I was thinking about it too. Can you imagine the sounds that must have been around her and how how magnified they were underground? Some of them would have been muffled, but some of them would probably have been magnified as well. One of the things that they were working out was how far below her did they need to dig to make the horizontal tunnel and how far away from her the vertical tunnel without compromising everything else.

25:25 And they couldn't put anything into support it. They couldn't do anything. I remember that being a huge discussion going how do we do it and give her the best chance of survival, even just getting to her. Yep, exactly. And just the yeah, we talked about the paramedic, I believe it was Robert O'Donnell and how it was so stressful for him and I'm. And he wasn't even the one doing the drilling and you know, that sort of thing. He was just, like you said, the smallest person to go down into that newly dug. So just the stress of, well, I'm sure being the the one responsible for her ultimate survival, right?

26:05 Because you're the one that has to pull her out and get her up to safety. If you don't, that's on you, right? And even, I mean, even if let's say the new, sorry, I guess well got well that they dug, even if that had collapsed unrelated to anything that Robert had done, it's still probably would have been, you know, what did he do to 'cause that? And I can imagine that that, you know, like I said, that's kind of where he got caught up and is all the possibilities that could have happened if it had gone wrong. And I feel really sad that he could not just be happy with the outcome that did happen. Because it just, it just makes me sad.

26:45 I'm I, I'm kind of speechless, which is terrible for a podcast, but it just really makes me really sad because, you know, that's something to be proud of and that's something that is amazing and truly miraculous. And it's just a bummer. Well, and also in a totally non judgmental way, not like we're like what a jerk. We're not doing it it. I can't even imagine. And also thinking of it from his point of view, he had to go down this hole and cross the ways and if it had collapsed, he would have died. So there was that part too, which probably was, I mean, it had to have been on his mind, but I imagine his, his desire to save Jessica was a higher priority.

27:27 And just, I mean, I guess talking this part out of it, I can see how this would be very difficult if he had. I don't know if he was old enough to have his own kids. I can't remember how old he was, but also if they had. I imagine as a paramedic, if it was eight years later, I doubt he was a 15 year old paramedic, so he was probably children. I don't know if he had children. Yeah, and if he had his own kids, that would also lay another layer on it. That's one of the reasons I couldn't work Pediatrics or NICU, because I had small children when I first started nursing. And I knew I was already concerned enough because I think of, oh, OK, this could happen. This could happen because I'm a nurse and I already know all of that. But if I had watched it in the hospital and watch kids to come from things that I didn't want to have to be worried about that for my own children, I, I just felt like I couldn't do it. It wasn't a fit for me.

28:21 But there's so many layers on this. Yeah, OK, so I looked it up and the saddest part about Robert's tragic death that I'm quoting a Facebook page for Baby Jessica. The saddest part of Robert Roberts tragic death was that he left behind two young sons, Chance and Casey O'Donnell. Yeah, so that's a bummer. That is. Jessica McClure captured the world's heart because she fell into the unimaginable and somehow lived to tell the story. She wasn't the 1st and she wasn't the last, and she won't be the last. There's something about a cry from beneath Earth, something ancient, something primal that pulls at us even now. So I want to share a few other stories. Stories of survival, of heartbreak, and how sometimes, despite everything, we keep reaching for the light. Before baby Jessica, there was Kathy Fiscus. Have you ever heard of the story of Kathy Fiscus? The name sounds familiar but I can't place it right now. OK, in 1949 in the small town of San Marino, CA, 3 year old Kathy was playing with friends in a field. There, like in so many places, shaped by human hands and forgotten by time and old well waited, uncovered, open, waiting.

29:30 Kathy fell in. The well was 14 inches wide, wider than Jessica's but just as deadly. Rescuers worked feverishly for nearly two days to reach her while the entire West Coast listened listened live on the radio. So this was live broadcast on the radio because it was 1949 rather than CNN. But it was the first time America followed a disaster unfolding in real time. Millions waited, prayed, cried. But when they finally reached Kathy, it was too late. She had died hours before rescue crews had even arrived. Kathy's death shattered her town and changed America. Wells were sealed. New emergency protocols were imagined. But as you know, memory fades. And by 1987 in Midland, TX, another forgotten well would wait. Yeah, wow.

30:15 To know that that lid was off most of the time, I don't think people would have thought that the hole that Jessica went into would even be big enough to cause a problem, maybe break an ankle or something. But right. That's what I was to say. Maybe even like, yeah, like a sprain, A groin or something, right? Yeah, but but why would a kid be there? Why would you? All the things and it's just a second of I, I just keep coming back to my daughter. And I think I've shared this with you Crystal before, but not our listeners, that when she was about Jessica's age, well, probably smaller because she wasn't really crawling yet. So she would have been maybe eight or nine months old.

30:56 And she was at my sister's house. My sister was watching her. I had come over. It was after work and so we were just visiting. Juliana was taking a nap on my sister's bed. My sister surrounded her with pillows because she was still not really moving that much, whatever age that was for her. And I went in there and we had to go and she had had an hour or whatever I thought was long enough, and so I went in to check her. The child was hanging from her head between the wall and the bed. Oh, jeez, Just hanging there, not crying, doing nothing. And I was. Oh, my gosh. And so I grabbed her. She was happy as the clam. She just, hey, what, You know, she just was all gibbly. Gibbly, Yeah. Gibbly she was so Gibbly Gibbly Gibblets giblets she. Was just laughing and and visiting with me and stuff and I was just like you were just hanging from your head kid. And she was perfectly fine.

31:48 There was no bruising, there was nothing. I have no idea how long she was hanging there, not very long because I had checked her when I got there, but literally it could have been an hour because I checked her when I got there she was sound asleep. So I went and visited with my sister and there she was just hanging there and no one was at fault. I mean, we didn't expect her to be able to move and I still don't know how she did, but there she was hanging and and not even just move, but get to the point that she was hanging by her head and it was just wild. Yeah. And it wasn't. Nobody did anything wrong. It was, it seemed, reasonable. All of it, Yeah. What's the word I'm looking for? It was just a freak accident of a freak. Appearance and fortunately it turned out OK. Yeah, thank goodness.

32:30 Did you have any other examples? I do. I have. I wanted to talk about also the Chilean miners. 60 years after Kathy's fall, another survival story unfolded, deeper, darker, but filled with the same desperate hope. On August 5th, 201033 miners were working underground at the San Jose Copper mine in Chile when the earth shook, tunnels collapsed, walls caved in and the miners, ordinary men, fathers, brothers, found themselves trapped in nearly sorry excuse me, nearly 2300 feet beneath the surface. For the 1st 17 days, 17 days, no one even knew if they were alive.

33:16 Families camped outside the mind mouth. Flags flew, candles flickered, songs of survival and prayers of hope filled the desert. Finally, after 2 1/2 weeks, a drill broke through. Attached to the drill, a simple note scrawled in in thick red letters. Estamos bien en El refugio Los tresu dente. We are well in the shelter. The 33. Yeah. Is it? Did I say right? No, but well, I tried it's. Not German, what do you know? What followed was one of the most astonishing rescue operations.

34:01 Remember, they were down there for 17 days and there were, gosh, I just forgot the number of how many there were. That's embarrassing. 30 something I forgot 33. I just said the 33. Silly girl. So what followed was one of the most astonishing rescue operations in modern history. Small capsules built to fit through narrow shafts designed to bring up the men one by one through a 2000 foot climb in near darkness. After 69 days underground, all 33 men were pulled to the surface alive. Yeah, and the whole process. Oh, I'm sorry, I was going. To say miracle born from pain.

34:42 Right. And the whole process of getting them things to survive and, and water and air and. I mean they didn't even reach them for 17 days. They didn't even. Yeah, that's right. They. Didn't even know they were alive. And actually, I don't even know. Finally after 2 1/2 weeks. See, I I'm not even following my own facts. Good heavens. Getting all my numbers mixed up. Yeah. So after 2 1/2 weeks. So 2 1/2 weeks is 7 + 7 is 14. When 28 days? No, 18 days. Oh, it's the same. OK, this is all done. We don't math. OK, so they were there 2 1/2 weeks before anybody knew they were alive.

35:24 It's wild. And you know, I have another story I want to tell you that's a little bit different, but it's another. You could consider it a survival story. But you know, sometimes survival stories don't end in rescue. Sometimes they just. Yes, please. May I interrupt because I remember one of the things being talked about with the 33 is frankly, how much effort are we going to put into this? Right. Because it was Because. What are the odds? Right. There were such a low chance that that these folks had survived and there there was a lot of money spent and of course, time and resources and things. And at a point they're going, what are the odds that they're alive? It's probably very low.

36:06 They probably aren't. So we're just going to go and find their bodies. But then people said yeah, and we need to go find their bodies. Yeah, we need that closure. Go ahead, I just remember that being a discussion. No, that's OK. Again, you know, sometimes, sometimes survival stories don't end rescue. Sometimes it just didn't mystery. And I think we may have talked about this another time. I honestly can't remember. But this is about Brandon Swanson, who drove into a shallow ditch late one night in Marshall, MN, in May 2008, who's 19 years old. And he called his parents for help. Sounding calm, embarrassed even, but not panicked. They stayed on the phone with him as he tried to walk toward a landmark they both knew. For almost 45 minutes, Brandon chatted lightly. I'm almost there.

36:52 I see the lights. And then suddenly he said, oh, shit. And the line went dead, and Brandon was never seen again. Extensive searches turned up nothing. No sign of struggle, no clothing, no remains. It was as if he had simply vanished. Many people believe he fell into an unmarked well or fluttered, fluttered, flooded cistern hidden in the fields. Others believe the ground simply swallowed it up a hidden river or steep ditch. Brandon's story reminds us that not all rescues come in time, and not all cries are heard soon enough. Yeah. Forgotten wells are truly a hidden epidemic. Since baby Jessica's rescue, dozens of children around the world have fallen into abandoned wells, cisterns and shafts. Not all were as lucky.

37:42 Regulations improved after 1987, but forgotten wells still dot rural landscapes, unmarked, unsealed, unwaiting. Each year, stories still surface. A toddler in India pulled from a bore well after 58 hours. A child in Tunisia, lost inside a collapsed irrigation shaft. Farmers falling into cisterns hidden by overgrowth. The Earth keeps its secrets well, and the Earth doesn't always give them back. I have one more that's a little bit different. Again, this is about Alfie Evans. Sometimes the trap isn't beneath our feet, sometimes it's inside our own bodies. Alfie Evans, born in Liverpool in 2016, suffered from an undiagnosed neurological disorder that left him in a semi vegetative state for over a year.

38:30 His parents fought doctor's court, even political debates and ethical questions. At its heart, it was the story of two parents refused to stop fighting for their child's next breath. Alfie passed away in April 2008, but not before his story changed medical law and but and not before he made the world look again at the fight between survival and suffering. Just come across stories about more than a girl in a whale. It's about all the moments when humanity holds its breath, reaching it, reaching down into the dark with nothing but hope. Sometimes we pull them out, sometimes we don't. But we should always try because that's what survival demands. Not perfection, not victory, just the stubborn refusal to let go.

39:17 And I think that's exactly what you were kind of alluding to with those Chilean miners, right? We can't just assume that it's a tomb. And I did not mean to make that rhyme. And I think that's one of those miraculous stories because 3333 people is a lot of people, a lot of people. And for all of them to survive for what was it 60 something days on, on, I don't know what then, you know, 69 days and maybe they had food with them. I imagine 69 days is a lot of days. Nobody had that much food. Yeah, true, because this is AI got lunch boxes. I didn't actually, I didn't actually look into their full story as far as like. Like how they survived.

40:05 But yeah, it's, it's crazy. Yeah. And if I remember that's there was some either active or recently active air tube that they were able to get some stuff down or they were able to dig something big enough to put some supplies down and some air. Because that's the other thing they were worried about is what fumes were building up in the in The Cave that could be killing these folks. Because even if they were alive at the beginning, could they have survived all of the gases that are happening under the earth all the time? So interestingly enough, when they were first found and they sent up the note, the 33 of us are in the shelter. The 33 of us in the shelter are well, they started sending letters through it says doves, quotation mark doves. I'm not sure we know what doves are in the old time miny, old time, old timey, good timey mining, but I'm not sure. I doubt they're actually birds because it's in quotation marks. But.

41:04 They never Canaries anyway. True, you're right. Canary full mine dumb though. Then Then later they were able to send down or send in. I don't know if it's the only power was a fiber optic line which enabled phone calls and video conferencing. Doctors also passed down a biometric belt which allowed the miners to monitor and transmit their vital signs using wireless technology. Once they were discovered, the men quickly established a regular meal schedule, including breakfast, lunch, dinner and an afternoon tea. Supported by a 500 Watt power line, they installed lights to simulate day and night to diminish the impact of their eventual return to the service. Physiologists set up obligatory exercise schedules to keep the men fit for their trying passage of the escape shaft, which they may have to hold the same posture for as much as an hour.

41:51 The miners began to help with the drilling process, taking shifts to clear away debris that fell into the tunnel of the mine. They entertained themselves by setting up small quote UN quote casino where they played cards, Domino's and dice games. They also were able to install a live feed of games like Chile's friendly match against Ukraine using a small projector. I have no idea how they did that because that was before I believe that was before they were found. Let's see, despite maybe maybe that was after they were found just. Yeah, they had to have known where to send it. Well, and the crazy thing too is when you talk about being underground and and they sent the lights, which almost seems silly. They need one of the biggest challenges is the mental piece. And if they were on there and they had no idea that we was trying to help them, even if it was a shorter period of time, I can't even imagine the mental stress and strain that it would take just to be OK.

42:53 Just to not really lose your mind down there in the dark and have no hope and maybe not even really knowing what direction they needed to be going or moving. Should we dig up? Should we decide dig sideways? Do we just wait here? What do we do? Because they had to have had some sort of tools, but I wouldn't have thought everything they, certainly everything they needed wasn't available. Here's an interesting fun fact. At one point they sent up 8 hours of their favorite jokes on film. Oh my God, what again, this is this is similar to to baby Jessica and it actually contradicts what I said earlier because they just just chose to keep hope and not just hope, but to maintain as best they could their their mental health. It's such a beautiful story about survival instinct. And it takes a pretty powerful person to be able to do that. And maybe the fact that there were 33 of them, they could whip each other into shape.

43:54 But if a person was down there by themselves, I would be surprised if they would be mentally OK when they got out. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Because you hear about. Things or even if they would get out. Yeah, and you hear about things in prisons where the person is in solitary for X period of time and they start losing it all together. Even even though they knew that they were air quote safe, they still didn't have the stimulation, didn't have anyone to talk to. And if it there was light issues or cold issues or whatever like that, people will lose it all together and they're in a situation like that. Yeah. So listeners, we would love to hear any stories that you have that are stories of how one moment changed your life forever or how one accident changed your life forever. Or even how you just have a survival story. Or even just, yeah, just a survival story, or if you have stories of people in your neighborhoods or just send us stories if you'd like to, you can send those to field notes, FIELDNOTES at our M4 pod.com.

45:04 So that's OUR letter M the #4pod.com. Again, that's field notes at our M4 pod.com. Excellent. I'm looking forward to seeing some of those things. Thanks for that, Crystal. It's nice to have those little, little vignettes, if you will, about things that people have survived. And as you said, some of the stories don't include survival. And every time I think these things happen, we have an opportunity to learn something, whether something about ourselves, about the will to live, about ways that we maybe we want to be prepared. You listen to stories about people have been buried in the snow and you're supposed to take a giant breath and put your arms out as far as you can to make your space as big as possible. And there's other things that I if I were in the snow area anymore, I should know.

45:55 But there are techniques in those spaces and times that if a person is aware enough when something's happening, then they can do it. My question for myself would be, would I even think of it or just go wow? I think the propensity would be to scream, which is letting air. Out. Instead of pulling it in right. Well, I think I've talked. I, I think I said this before, I marvel at some survival stories because like I broke my ankle a couple years ago and it hurt a lot and I cried a lot, even like barely touching. It hurts so bad. And then you hear stories of people who like walk 15 miles on a broken leg and a broken ankle and a broken arm.

46:42 And I'm just like, I don't think I could do that. I mean, I've, I don't want to be put in this situation either, but obviously I've never been in a life or death situation to that extreme. But I just, oh man, I, I marvel at that having experienced exactly what that feels like. I know what it feels like to have a broken ankle, you know, a trimaliolar fracture, which means breaks in my ankle as well as my tibia broken. I know how that feels. And so the idea of I was transported by ambulance on a stretcher. I didn't have to walk anywhere until I got home, but that's a different story. I, I can't even, I can't even imagine walking five feet on that ankle, let alone 15 miles or whatever.

47:22 You know, it just, I mean, my hat's off to them because I just don't know if I could do it. I don't know if I if I would do it. When I feel like there's some people that have a stronger survival instinct than others, just by nature and attitudes, they come into things and just know, well, I got to do it. So here I am. Yeah. And, well, don't know how that would happen. I mean, obviously, you know, with a lot of pain, it can, it can really stop things. And also our survival can decrease if we're in a lot of pain because we're in that whole panic moment and our bodies are hyper, hyper acting, if you will. Yeah. Yeah, and that can make a difference too. Another thing that can make a difference, I was just thinking is if it's my child that's in danger, like I'm going to have a whole different reaction if it's my child than if it's myself. I even had a whole different reaction. And then I think I would for myself with my brother who passed away 19 years ago.

48:16 Almost. Yeah. I just, I don't know, it's, it's fascinating survival. Obviously we're not sponsored by them or anything, but if you like survival stories, come back to our podcast for more of them. But there's also a show called I Survived that is quite good and is all about survival stories, believe it or not. I know it's hard to tell from the title, but that's what it's about. What? It's a descriptive title. Well, thanks, Crystal. I look forward to our next recording, our next interesting episode of our M4 podcast. I do too. All right, if you've made it this far, clearly you like a little mayhem with your medicine. Or you just enjoy hearing us ramble about weird medical mysteries. Either way, we'd love you for it. So hit that follow or subscribe button wherever you're listening.

49:01 And toss us a rating or review while you're at it. Helps other curious weirdos find the show. And we know there are a lot of you out there. Oh so many. Come join the chaos. Thanks for listening to Medicine, Mystery, mayhem, and sometimes Murder. Do you have an idea for an episode of this podcast? Just want to say hi? You can get in touch with us at our M4 pod. That's OURM thenumberfourpod@gmail.com. We read every e-mail, and sometimes we even respond just like real professionals. Because we are. Old friends with new twists and lots of body bags.