The Gory Details (Gross)

Gory Detail #21: "Bleeding out the Eyes"

Let's face it, some diseases are just more fun than others. Take the flu for example. Boring! The sufferer lays around in bed sweating and sleeping. Yawn. Compare that to a good case of leprosy where whole body parts, the nose for example can die and fall right the hell off. Gotta love that. Of all the gross things that can happen when diseases strike, nothing tops hemorrhagic fevers. Let's take a look.

Hemorrhagic fevers are a whole class of diseases. Most of them strike only rarely and in out of the way parts of the world, so we'll focus on the big one. Ebola. It is caused by a virus and to understand it we need to know a little bit about how a virus works.

In high school text books, the outer wall of a cell is usually described as being this protective barrier keeping the cytoplasm, nucleus and all other things cellular safe from the outside world. This is not exactly true. The cell wall is also something of a slut, letting just about anything in if only they know how to ask. The surface of a cell is covered with protein binding sites. Anything that wants into the cell need only have the matching proteins. This is sort of like the docking hatch on the space station. If the docking rings match up, anybody can go through. Viri make their living by matching up to an unsuspecting binding site and firing its own genetic material into the cell. The cell, unaware it has been duped, makes about a zillion copies of the virus, killing itself in the process.

Most viri are specialized. HIV for example, feeds on immune system cells. Others thrive on bronchial cells or other body parts. The magic of Ebola is that it binds to binding sites found on all cells. This is fun right away as people newly infected with Ebola "catch a cold" in their whole body at once.

It doesn't end there though. Ebola is very aggressive, replicating far faster than the immune system can keep up. This means, as the disease progresses, dead cells begin to build up in the body and entire body systems begin to shut down. That's when it gets nasty.

At first, it might be mistaken for a bad cold. Chunks of stuff come up when you cough and you get sensitive to light. Quickly though, it becomes clear something more is wrong. Spidery lines and bruises show up on your skin as blood vessels begin to fail, urine turns orange and then red as the kidneys start to bleed.

Within a few days, you are literally coming apart, raw patches develop where the skin has rotted through, you barf blood, you may go blind as the blood vessels in you eye burst filling the eyeball with blood. Most sufferer die when they "bleed out" of an organ. Something finally ruptures to the point that you bleed to death. If it happens to be the large intestine that bleeds out, and it often is, the results can be...messy.

The fortunate, or unfortunate depending on how you look at it, thing about Ebola is that it is only spread by direct contact with the bodily fluids of the ill. I don't know about you, but I almost never play with the bodily fluid of anyone who is peeing red. There continue to be outbreaks in Africa where some funerary rite include removal of the organs of the deceased. The largest outbreak came when a man, thinking he had the flu, went to get a flu shot. In order to conserve rare medical supplies, the same needle was used to inoculate dozens more people. They all contracted the illness.

Another curious thing is that no one knows where Ebola lives in nature. Extensive studies by the CDC, WHO and other health agencies has failed to find Ebola in the wild. It can and has been contracted by other primates. In one instance a batch of monkeys, brought to the U.S. to become lab animals, proved to be ill with Ebola and had to be exterminated. Still, these animals are not the natural home of the virus. Myself, I suspect the hippos. I've never trusted hippos. Something about guys who swim around in their own poo. Yech.

What troubles me is the practice of removing organs of deceased. Doctors from the CDC, studying the bodies of victims describe having difficulty identifying organs because the whole abdomen has partly dissolved, sort of an organ goulash. How do you get the organs out of body eaten inside and out by a virus? Can you see the family looking into the body cavity of a loved one?

"Hmm." Says dad. "This is going to be difficult."

Mom nods grimly then turns to the eldest daughter. "Honey will you bring me the soup ladle and a strainer."

And you were worried about the flu vaccine shortage. Now get out there and write.

If you've enjoyed this article, please consider supporting me on Patreon.