In this gripping episode of Pushing Up Lilies, join me, Julie Mattson, as we dive into the chilling world of cyanide poisoning. Known for its bitter almond smell, cyanide is one of the most deadly and fast-acting poisons. I'll share haunting real-life cases where this lethal substance was used to end lives, exploring the science behind how it works and why it's so deadly. Together, we'll uncover the sinister motives behind these poisonings and discuss how forensic investigators like myself piece together the clues to bring justice for the victims. Tune in as we unravel the deadly secrets hidden in this silent killer's history.
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0:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies.
0:08 I'm your host, Julie Mattson.
0:10 Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly True Crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
0:24 Do I have some stories for you?
0:26 Are you ready?
0:31 Hey, guys, hope y'all are having a wonderful week.
0:34 It's been a busy week for me.
0:37 The medical examiner's office has been a little bit crazy.
0:41 We had 13 deaths over the weekend that had to be ruled on by the medical examiner.
0:48 Not all of them are brought into the medical examiner's office and not all of them get an autopsy.
0:56 We kind of call it an inquest now.
0:58 And of course, our doctors are way more educated than we are and they're the ones that make the decision about whether or not someone gets a full autopsy or what we call an external exam or what we call it in absentia in our office.
1:16 And that just means they don't look at the body, they only look at the medical records.
1:21 We used to go on every death, even if it was an elderly 99-year-old patient on hospice who died at home, quietly in bed, surrounded by their family.
1:33 We used to have to go in our office and I know some offices still do.
1:37 I know I've met people at conferences who say that they attend every death.
1:43 It used to be that way here.
1:45 But there's just so many deaths, we can't possibly do full autopsies on everybody.
1:52 And there's really no reason to, you know, if they're here from out of state and they pass away in Texas and their doctor is in Oklahoma.
2:01 Their Oklahoma doctor cannot sign the death certificate.
2:05 Our doctor would just review those records.
2:07 If somebody's got heart failure, they're overweight, they're diabetic, maybe they're a truck driver.
2:13 They don't eat the best in the world.
2:15 They're not at home to be fed a healthy diet.
2:18 They do a lot of fast foods and eat out a lot.
2:21 Those people of course are at higher risk, and they frequently do die when they're on the road.
2:27 Unfortunately.
2:29 And so that does happen.
2:31 I've had people in truck stops, men and women who are in the cab of their semi and die parked at a truck stop while resting between trips.
2:44 It's really sad.
2:46 I've gone into those scenes before sometimes too where there's animals in there, it's kind of cramped, you know, there's cats and dogs sometimes and those cabs are small anyway.
2:58 I don't know what got me off on that subject.
3:00 But it just has been crazy.
3:02 And I guess my point is that we can't possibly autopsy everybody.
3:08 And it's kind of crazy because some people are adamant, they definitely want an autopsy.
3:13 They want to know exactly what happened to their loved one.
3:16 And even an autopsy may not tell you exactly what happened again.
3:22 If you have a lethal arrhythmia, you're not always going to be able to detect that on autopsy and someone may be perfectly healthy and it's just difficult to tell.
3:32 But what I wanted to talk about is, you know, we talked a little bit about arsenic last week and it got me thinking about all the different poisons.
3:40 You know, when we watch all these shows on TV, all these murder shows, it seems like people are slipping each other insulin and arsenic and cyanide and all these different poisons.
3:54 Since we talked about arsenic last week, I thought we would just talk a little bit about cyanide this week.
4:00 And I learned a couple of things that I didn't know.
4:02 And I think you might find interesting and who knows?
4:05 You may have already known it.
4:06 You can exhibit signs of cyanide poisoning within one minute after inhalation and within a few minutes after ingestion, it burns the stomach and prevents the body from using oxygen.
4:25 It is a very painful death.
4:27 And a lot of times when we think about poisonings, we think, oh, you know, you're going to die fast and it's not going to be painful, you're just going to kind of go to sleep and not wake up.
4:38 But that is not the case with this.
4:40 It is like a burning, painful death.
4:44 Now, upon being heated, it produces corrosive or toxic fumes.
4:50 It releases highly flammable toxic hydrogen cyanide gas on contact with water or damp air.
4:58 And also in fire.
5:00 This is something that we think about often in fire deaths.
5:04 And cyanide is one of the most famous poisons.
5:08 It's not uncommon again, you know, to watch an episode of forensic files or snapped where somebody has decided to off their loved one by slipping them a poison that they know is not going to be detected on a normal toxicology screen.
5:27 You know, with all the forensic shows that are on TV.
5:30 Now people have this knowledge and it's kind of scary because knowledge is power.
5:36 Although I love talking about different ways that people commit murder or, you know, even suicide, I'll tell you about a case later where cyanide was used for someone trying to kill themselves.
5:49 But it's just interesting how all these shows on TV have really taught people what works, what might work, how to die slowly, how to die painlessly.
6:02 And the internet will give us all the information that we need.
6:07 I've been on scenes where someone googled, where should I shoot myself in the chest so that I will die I mean, although it's sad that they were so desperate in that moment that they went to their computer to try to Google the best way to kill themselves, to make sure that it works.
6:27 It helps us a lot in our investigation when there's a computer that's open to the screen where they've been Googling, whereas we may not suspect it otherwise, I know that I did have a gentleman one time that actually left his suicide note on his computer screen that was open on a desktop that was in his hotel room while he was traveling for work.
6:49 Computers give us a lot of clues.
6:51 But anyway, that being said, the internet is a good way for people to look up ideas.
6:58 And I mean, I'm not saying go look for ideas by any means, but we just have so much knowledge and its power and knowledge can be very dangerous, especially in the hands of the wrong person.
7:12 As we know, cyanide is found in many safe to eat plant foods like almonds, lima beans, soy and spinach.
7:25 Personally, I love all those things.
7:28 I'm one of the weirdos that loves lima beans and almonds.
7:32 I always feel like I'm eating somewhat healthy if I have almonds as a snack.
7:36 I love edamame.
7:38 And you know, we all had the soy burgers that were like not even anywhere near hamburger meat when we were in school in the cafeteria, and they were good.
7:49 I liked them and even the, the TV dinners, you know, I liked those nonmeat patties.
7:56 A lot of that is soy, but also in spinach.
7:58 And again, I love spinach.
8:01 I could eat my weight in spinach cyanide can be found in certain nitrate compounds used in medications as well.
8:11 Celexa and Tagamet nitrates aren't as toxic because they don't really release the carbon nitrogen ion, which is what acts as a poison to the body.
8:24 That's what's in these medications.
8:26 And so we are exposed to small amounts of cyanide every day and we probably don't even realize it again if you're eating Lima beans and we'll go over some other things here in a little bit.
8:38 But all these things do have small traces of cyanide that aren't really harmful but could be in large amounts.
8:47 Cyanide is even a by-product of metabolism in the body and is exhaled in low amounts with every breath.
8:55 Interesting.
8:56 I actually, I guess never thought of that.
8:59There is a small amount exhaled every time you breathe out no matter what you eat.
9:07 Deadly forms of cyanide include sodium cyanide, potassium cyanide, cytogen, cyanide and hydrogen cyanide.
9:18 There are several different forms and symptoms of exposure are overall weakness, nausea, confusion, headache, difficulty breathing, you could have seizures, you could have loss of consciousness and eventually go into cardiac arrest.
9:41 A lot of people who are just ill and have a lot of underlying medical problems may experience these symptoms and no one would be the wiser if they had been poisoned by cyanide, especially if like I said, they have underlying health problems.
9:59 You're not always going to suspect that.
10:01 Now a lot of the shows on TV will show you how someone gets sick and as hospitalizing gets better and comes home and gets sick again.
10:09 Those people are being chronically poisoned, like over and over and over time and we talked about this with arsenic.
10:18 There, whoever it is that is trying to kill them is doing it slowly and basically pretending to be the caregiver, pretending to care to make themselves look good and then mourning the death like they didn't have anything to do with it.
10:34 Now how severely you're affected is going to depend on a lot of different things.
10:40 It's going to depend on which type of cyanide you were given the dose.
10:47 Some is going to depend on your body size.
10:50 We all tolerate different shrinks of different medications based on our size.
10:55 That's why we don't give a five-year-old the same dosage of medication that we give a 30-year-old and length of exposure.
11:03 How long has someone been given cyanide?
11:07 Again?
11:08 How big of a dose you're not going to get as ill with small doses over time.
11:13 But eventually, if someone's truly trying to kill you, you're going to get that push, that's going to cause the symptoms to worsen and could result in death.
11:24 Now, you can experience acute poisoning and acute, I'm sure a lot of, you know, this, but I'm going to say it anyway, acute poisoning is going to have immediate and often life-threatening effects.
11:37 Many times.
11:37 Acute poisonings are large doses given all at one time and those are going to have immediate life threatening.
11:46 Often life threatening, not always but often life-threatening effects.
11:51 Now, chronic poisoning, what I talked about a minute ago is if somebody's just kind of giving you a little bit at a time, sneak it into your drink, sneaking it in your food, doing it slowly and basically watching you suffer.
12:06 It's just like when you have a chronic illness, like C O P D, you're slowly going to get kind of more and more ill, you're going to be on medications to try to keep the symptoms at bay so that you can live your life happily and not be miserable.
12:22 But it's still a chronic illness and it's not going to completely go away.
12:28 So chronic poisoning results from exposure to smaller amounts of cyanide or any poisoning over an amount of time.
12:38 Acute poisoning is rare and it's often from unintentional exposure.
12:45 And there are different ways that you can be exposed to cyanide, and we'll talk about that shortly.
12:52 Chronic exposure can occur if you're exposed to 20 to 40 parts per million of hydrogen cyanide gas over a substantial period of time.
13:04 Again, you know, we see all these shows where people are sick and they continue to get worse and the doctors can't figure out what's wrong and they never really get a true diagnosis, but they have seizures and nausea and vomiting and can't keep food down and all these worsening symptoms, headaches, they can't figure it out and then they just gradually over time increase in severity.
13:31 Some people that are being poisoned chronically may have headaches, drowsiness, nausea, vomiting, vertigo where they feel dizzy, bright red, flushed, skin, dilated pupils, clammy skin, slow shallow breaths, a very weak fast pulse, and convulsions, undiagnosed and untreated.
13:59 It will lead to slow irregular heart rate, decreased body temperature.
14:06 And then you may notice that someone's face and extremities and lips are blue, which you know, we're going to normally see in somebody that has been deceased for a while.
14:16 But that is something that we may see and then coma and eventually death.
14:21 And again, if these people present to a hospital and there's no suspicion and no history of foul play within the family, then many times it's going to go undetected because the typical toxicology test is not going to test for cyanide or arsenic or even heavy metals.
14:43 Now, although rare, it's typically the result of smoke inhalation or accidental poisoning.
14:51 When someone is working with cyanide, there are a lot of people who use it in the workplace, which I can't imagine being exposed to it every day, but sometimes people are accidentally poisoned at work with chemicals and cyanide would be one of those.
15:11 Now, accidental exposure can occur in the metal industry or people who work in plastic manufacturing companies or people who work in the fumigation field or even people who work in the field of photography.
15:29 It's used in photography during photo development, you know, I didn't know at the time.
15:35 But when I was in high school, I was editor of our yearbook.
15:38 And many times when we took photos back in, you know what I call the olden days, we took photos, and we actually used the dark room and used potassium cyanide as a fixer to actually develop our own photos.
15:54 And it did have a funny smell.
15:56 I never really knew what was in the liquid.
15:58 It was kind of already mixed for us.
16:00 We were just kind of taught how to use it.
16:01 But it's very interesting that people who develop their own photos, which does still happen, may be exposed to these chemicals and different companies that have to do with photography.
16:15 Chemists can also be at risk if Cyan that is used in labs and you can also be at risk if you use excessive like, and I mean excessive amounts of nail polish remover containing organic cyanide compounds.
16:34 I know a couple of times I've seen that TV, show my strange obsession and people are like eating things like nail polish and drinking acetone.
16:44 I cannot imagine.
16:45 I mean, they are definitely poisoning their bodies.
16:48 I think I saw one where they ate toilet paper or ate like cushions out of a couch.
16:52 Very interesting.
16:54 But people drink things like bleach, and I mean, that's a real thing.
16:58 It's called Pika.
17:00 And it's scary because a lot of people don't really know what all those chemicals are that are listed on all these bottles.
17:07 About all these household products that we use every day.
17:11 You can ingest excessive amounts of certain plant-based foods such as apricot kernels, cherry rocks, which is basically like the cherry pit and peach pits.
17:25 And that could cause you to develop symptoms of cyanide poisoning.
17:31 Ok Y'all, this is what kind of surprised me because I know when I was a kid, like we ate peaches all the time.
17:38 They're only good at certain times of the year.
17:40 And I feel bad for anybody who's never had a good peach or a good nectarine.
17:46 My poor husband grew up in North Dakota and when I met him, he had never had a nectarine.
17:51 It was unbelievable to me because I literally grew up eating nectarines.
17:56 I mean, they are delicious.
17:58 They are, they're just so good.
18:00 If you haven't had one like you need to, which I just can't imagine.
18:05 But again, like he was 50 before he'd ever had a nectarine.
18:09 I was talking about him one day and how good they were and he's like, what even is that?
18:12 And so I packed one in his lunch and he's like, oh my God, this thing is amazing.
18:15 The juice is like running down my arm and I was like, yeah, it's like literally to die for.
18:20 But the kernels of apricots and the pits, not really the pits or the big seed inside the peaches, but the little seeds inside the big seed are what is poisonous.
18:33 You do have to ingest excessive amounts to actually die from it.
18:39 But, you know, growing up, my mom used to always say, don't bite into the peach seed or be sure and throw the seed away or, you know, sometimes the pit is actually busted open like I don't know why, but sometimes it'll have a crack in it where you can see the little seeds inside of the big pit.
18:59 And my mom was always like, don't eat those.
19:01 And I felt like she was just messing with me all like all these years.
19:04 Seriously.
19:04 I was like, ok, my mom is just checking with me.
19:07 She doesn't want me to break a tooth or something.
19:09 But no, I guess she had that knowledge that it was actually poisonous, and she probably didn't realize how much I had to have for it to actually kill me.
19:17 But blood tests, the methemoglobin level is what's checked if there's concern for smoke inhalation injury.
19:27 And the blood carbon monoxide level is going to indicate how much smoke inhalation occurred in cases where there may have been exposure to cyanide plasma or blood lactate level.
19:41 Results are usually not going to be available in time to diagnose or treat acute poisoning before someone really starts to, you know what I call circle the drain and maybe pass away because they've been given a large amount at once.
19:59 But if they do suspect it, at least that test may later confirm the poisoning and can help lead the police in investigating the case to see who may have given it to them.
20:12 It's definitely worth doing even if you feel like the person is not going to survive.
20:17 Because those tests are important.
20:20 Again, if they're not done at the hospital, they're going to be done at the medical examiner's office.
20:25 You know, our office does not charge for autopsies.
20:28 I'm not 100% aware of what other medical examiners offices do.
20:34 I do know that in cases where we don't do an autopsy, there's always an option for family to find a private pathologist that can do an exam for them, and they do charge.
20:45 It's just these specific tests have to be done in order for it to be detected.
20:51 You know, we get calls all the time where people think, you know, my sister poisoned my mom, or my brother poisoned my uncle.
21:00 And you know, the thing is, you know, it may be too late if you don't report it until after they die because at that point, it's never been investigated and there's not a real suspicion.
21:11 Now the police can open up an investigation, but you better have some good strong evidence or something to let them believe that there is a real reason to open up an investigation.
21:22 The treatment is mainly identify the source if ingested cyanide, if it's like ingested and you swallow it, you may be given activated charcoal and that's actually going to absorb the toxin and clear it from your body.
21:40 In those cases, they're going to give you oxygen either 100% via a mask or you may require intubation so that your system can be oxygenated enough so that you don't become hypoxic and risk any kind of brain injury or organ damage.
22:01 There are some anecdotes and there is a cyanide antidote kit which contains three medications.
22:11 There's an Ami nitrate which is inhaled over 15 to 30 seconds and then a sodium nitrate which is given I V over 3 to 5 minutes and then a sodium Thiosulfate, which is given I V over 30 minutes.
22:27 That's going to be one of the antidote kits and it's going to contain all three of those medications.
22:34 There's also hydroxy coalmine Cyanokit.
22:39 I don't even know if I'm saying that right.
22:40 But it's called a Cyanokit and that is going to detoxify the cyanide by bonding with it to produce nontoxic B12.
22:53 It's going to neutralize it at a slower rate and detox the liver prevention again, like sometimes you just don't know you're being poisoned.
23:04 It's hard to prevent it, but take precautions against house fires, avoid space heaters, and don't smoke in bed.
23:14 I can't tell you how many times that's been the cause of a death.
23:17 You know, I've fallen asleep before with just a drink in my hand and then all of a sudden startled and woke up and spilled it all over me.
23:26 And that's what happens when people are s smoke.
23:28 They fall asleep, drop the cigarette, but they're not so lucky.
23:31 They didn't just get the couch wet.
23:32 They caught the couch on fire, but cyanide is going to be released when everyday items found in homes combust and that's electronics, synthetics, upholstery pipes, wood products, cyanide gas is going to be released in a fire because of all those things that combust that we have in our homes every day exposed to the heat and releasing that gas, childproof your home.
24:02 Of course, against toxic chemicals.
24:06 Keep them out of reach of Children, not just because of the potential for cyanide poisoning, but any kind of poisoning follow safety regulations at work.
24:17 And this is the thing again, the peach pits kind of got me because I thought my mom was just jacking with me my whole life.
24:23 I was like, ok, she just doesn't want to have to take me to the dentist and pay to have my tooth fixed.
24:27 So she's lying to me and telling me that it's poison.
24:30 Yeah, they contain Amygdale that can create poisonous cyanide when digested in a single pit.
24:39 Now again, is unlikely to cause poisoning, but several unprocessed pits can at least produce mild symptoms.
24:49 And I did read stories about people who were like, dying of cancer and thought, you know what if it does kill me, I'm going to try it and maybe ingest 10 pits and it didn't kill them again.
25:03 It's going to depend on how big the pit is.
25:06 How big are the seeds inside?
25:07 How much do you weigh?
25:08 Do you have any underlying medical problems?
25:10 It's going to depend on a lot of different things, how it affects you.
25:15 But cherry pits and we used to get calls on stuff like this all the time when I worked pediatric triage, and I did that from home.
25:23 People would reach me when they called their pediatrician to ask questions about their sick child.
25:29 Cherry pits do contain cyanide.
25:32 However, if it is intact and you don't bite into it and you just swallow it, which I know we've all done, it's going to go in one end and out the other.
25:42 It is not going to hurt anything.
25:44 It is not going to break up in your stomach and cause you to be poisoned.
25:50 It's not like swallowing a battery.
25:52 It's going to go in and come right back out one, even if you bit into it is not going to kill you.
25:59 Cherry pits are small, but the cyanide does have a faint bitter almond odor.
26:06 And sometimes you notice that on the breath of people who have been given cyanide or who have taken cyanide.
26:15 I don't know if y'all remember because you may not all be as old as I am.
26:18 But 30 years ago in Chicago, there was a case where a killer injected Tylenol gel capsules with cyanide and he took him out of the package, injected the gel caps resealed the package and put the package back on the pharmacy shelves.
26:40 Now, the reason that they believe that he or she did it that way was to cover up the taste.
26:49 If it's injected inside a gel cap, you're not going to taste it because you're going to swallow the gel cap hole.
26:57 It's going to be inside.
26:58 It's going to break down in your stomach when the capsule disintegrates just to reseal it.
27:04 You know, and when that happened 30 years ago, now this all ended in 1982 but seven people died and no arrest was ever made.
27:16 But the strategy was effective because what happened is, again, the gel casing blocked the bitter taste of the poison.
27:26 That's kind of how these people ended up getting poisoned.
27:29 They couldn't taste it.
27:30 You can imagine how much liquid is in a gel cap.
27:34 If that cyanide was super strong.
27:36 I think one of the victims was a child.
27:40 It's not going to take as much to kill them as it would.
27:43 Others, there is a story about Aruz Khan, and I don't know if y'all have heard about him but he was in Illinois.
27:53 He died July 20th of 2012.
27:56 Ok.
27:56 The ironic and weird thing about this is Khan had just won the lottery.
28:03 That's a song right.
28:04 When the lottery died the next day, he just won the lottery.
28:08 So he won like a million dollars after taxes.
28:11 This is what sucks.
28:12 The check was only like $425,000.
28:15 But nonetheless, hey, I'd take that he wins.
28:18 The lottery gets a check dies unexpectedly that night during the night.
28:24 Now he was overweight, but he was only 46.
28:29 If this call had come to our office, we have a 46-year-old with no real medical history who's a little bit overweight but just won the lottery.
28:38 I don't know, we've all seen enough TV to know that we're going to suspect something suspicious.
28:44 I mean, who did it?
28:45 Right.
28:46 That's the first thing we're all going to say to ourselves, his cause of death because he was overweight and there were no signs of suspicion.
28:54 No foul play.
28:56 No recent falls.
28:57 No recent trauma was ruled heart disease.
29:02 This is why heart disease and cardiovascular disease, and coronary artery disease are the leading cause of death in the United States.
29:10 And I know it is prevalent, but in a lot of cases like these deaths are ruled, we're going to assume somebody's got cardiovascular disease.
29:20 It's never been diagnosed.
29:21 He's overweight.
29:22 He's maybe somebody's diabetic.
29:24 They have hypertension, they have high cholesterol, they're a little bit overweight.
29:29 They don't eat great.
29:30 They're found deceased even though they're young.
29:33 If there's no signs of trauma, no suspicion of foul play.
29:37 Our doctor is going to do what you call an external exam.
29:41 Look over the body, make sure there's no track marks, make sure that, you know, they review the history and see that there were no drugs or alcohol present at the resident.
29:49 No history of overdoses, no suicide attempt.
29:53 They're going to pretty much say this is due to heart disease.
29:57 But however, standard toxicology only checked for common exposures like carbon monoxide, and he had no alcohol, and he had no drugs in his system.
30:12 They did do a tox on him and then just an external exam after the tox came back negative, they ruled it cardiovascular disease and this happens a lot.
30:23 Y'all, I know we talked about this but it can slip through the cracks if there's no suspicion and very, very easily.
30:29 Now the family did notice that when they found him, there was bloody froth from his mouth.
30:36 The family mentioned that, and the case was reopened after the brother petitioned for some further testing.
30:43 Smart brother.
30:45 But he wanted a more expansive series of toxicology testing.
30:50 Now, they did mention that the wife had prepared Indian lamb curry to celebrate the lottery winning, but not before.
30:59 And that's a question we ask, you know, what did they eat last?
31:02 Could have been a food allergy, you know, a little bit weird, but I mean, it could have been.
31:07 And so we do ask that, and the wife was like, yeah, I made this curry, you know, he loves it and we were celebrating, there was what they called before they found him deceased, which is a classic symptom of cyanide poisoning.
31:22 And I didn't know this either is a death scream.
31:25 They heard him scream loudly and apparently that death scream before you die of cyanide poisoning is very common.
31:36 Interesting.
31:37 But I guess that the family also or the wife thought to mention that to the police when they were talking about the froth, the case was reopened after the brother petitioned for that to take place and it was ruled a homicide.
31:52 But guess what, there were no charges filed.
31:56 They could not find anybody specific to pin it to.
32:01 He had a daughter from a previous marriage, and she actually got two thirds of the lottery winnings.
32:07 And then his current wife received one third of the lottery winnings.
32:14 He had already been buried but not embalmed.
32:17 And I think we talked about before.
32:19 Certain religions don't like to embalm.
32:22 I know that when my grandma passed away years ago, the law was if you bury somebody within 24 hours of death, you don't have to embalm.
32:31 But in this case, for religious reasons, he had not been embalmed.
32:37 The risks of losing evidence were less his body was exhumed and there were lethal amounts of cyanide in his blood because the blood had not been removed in the embalming process.
32:50 And super interesting story again, was ruled a homicide.
32:56 There's no reason to think that he would have taken cyanide after he just won the lottery.
33:01 Somebody did it.
33:03 But apparently, they didn't really suspect the daughter or the wife enough to actually convict them and they both pretty much walked away with the money.
33:13 I found that very interesting, but both of those stories were in Illinois.
33:18 I want to talk more about cyanide poisoning because I found some others that I think you'd really be interested in.
33:23 But the peach pit thing y'all that still is just crazy to me.
33:27 Let's talk about more of that next week.
33:29 Poisonings are kind of interesting again because we don't always know what's going on behind the scenes.
33:36 You know, we see people on the street every day that seem happy and we really don't know what goes on in their home life.
33:44 I see friends sometimes with bruises on their arm and I just want to be like, are you ok?
33:49 You know, that's why when we triage people in the emergency room, are, are you safe?
33:53 Do you feel safe?
33:55 Is there anything that we can do while you're here to keep you from going home with somebody that you feel like can hurt you or is trying to hurt you?
34:03 Those are questions we ask and it's not necessarily because we suspect anybody of anything in particular.
34:10 It's just, that's your safe place and that's your opportunity to get help.
34:17 If you suspect something's going on or someone's hurting you, that's your chance to break away and be protected.
34:25 Keep that in mind.
34:26 If anything is going on, then that's the place that you want to mention it.
34:30 And that's why they ask those questions.
34:32 We'll talk more about cyanide poisonings next week and then we'll get a little more into other poisonings.
34:38 I hope that the weather is amazing where you're at.
34:42 It's been just, almost hot here.
34:44 It got super cloudy today and I thought for sure that it was just going to come a downpour, we got a little Sprinkle and that's it.
34:49 But I think it's supposed to get nasty tomorrow.
34:52 I'm hearing high winds and hail.
34:55 I don't want my cars to get hail on, but I'm not one of those people that's going to put a queen size mattress on it in my front yard.
35:02 But hey, I don't know, my garage is too full of junk to put my cars in it anyway.
35:08 I hope you have an amazing week.
35:10 I would like to mention that this coming week.
35:14 I will be recording another episode with my friend Tina on good nurse, bad Nurse.
35:21 And there is, I think, some new news about the story that we covered on the episode last time I was a guest host.
35:29 And so she had reached out to me just a couple of days ago and asked me if I would be interested in coming back on her podcast to talk about some new issues regarding the case that have come up.
35:42 Super excited about that.
35:43 I'll be recording that next week, and it will probably air a couple weeks after that.
35:47 I think she stays ahead pretty well.
35:50 But yeah, good nurse, bad nurse.
35:52 Be sure and take a listen to her again.
35:54 Just have an amazing week.
35:56 Try to stay safe, try to stay dry.
35:58 I look forward to talking to you all next week.
36:00 See you later.
36:01 Bye.
36:03 Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
36:06 If you like this podcast and would like to share with others, please do me a quick favor and leave a review on Apple podcast.
36:14 This helps to make the podcast more visible to the public.
36:17 Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at PushingUpLilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.