School Teacher Left Paralyzed By Deadly Illness | Diagnosis: Unknown | Real Responders

a seventh grade teacher is suddenly stricken with agonizing stomach symptoms her family is terrified there were nights I would cry myself to sleep because there was nothing I could do the violent and terrifying symptoms are Relentless her body begins to shut down I thought she was going to die right then and there doctors are baffled by their patients rapid deterior a could she die without the mystery ever being [Music] [Music] [Music] revealed in a St Louis suburb seventh grade math teacher Donna Bley arrives at the school parking lot but something is terribly wrong oh watch out I realized that my feet were so numb that I could hardly feel the pedals I was really concerned that whenever I would break that I maybe wouldn't even have my foot on the brake and wouldn't know it so I was I was [Music] scared you okay yeah I could to when Donna tries to make it to her classroom her body is not cooperating oh my God God this was the weirdest thing okay my legs were swelling up to the point that my my pants that I was wearing were getting tight I was losing feeling in my hands and in my feet all right you guys take out your notebooks you cop throughout the day Donna fights through the pain are you guys copying this down she does not want to let her students down one of the things that uh drove Donna was her love of teaching she has a genuine love of teaching and learning I think it's just a part of her I think she needs to be around children I think she needs to be around students tomorrow we're moving on to pooms got to make sure to show your work Donna struggles to get through her usual lesson plans and she is in no mood to discipline unruly students in math class Oh Donna is suddenly stricken with excruciating stomach pains Julia go get what could be attacking her body with such violence it's okay just sit down I really thought as many other staff members did that she had acquired an illness at the very beginning we thought she had like a flu virus that's what we thought she [Music] had Donna's symptoms come and go for several days but she can't figure out how a common flu could be making her with this sick her stomach pains are excruciating and they attack without warning this when I go into school I have to walk up a flight of stairs and being the way my legs were I literally crawled up the stairs my principal saw me and he said Donna what are you doing here and I said I'm trying to do my job and he took one look at me and said go home hi let me have your Donna barely has enough energy to make it home hey honey she still thinks she is feeling the lingering effects of a potent but common illness hey sweetie hey she has no idea that her life is in danger you want to come with us I thought it was a sinus infection uh it got a little bit worse as far as getting uh sharp pains in my stomach and uh then I thought it was the flu but Donna's husband Jim and 16-year-old son Steve can see her illness is far more serious than she thinks in my all she just was not feeling it was like she had this flu that would not go away and she started getting progressively worse and it it was obvious it was not just a cold could something at Donna's School be making her sick Donna's husband Jim is extremely worried about his wife Donna has never been sick like this before how you feel e around the table just a few weeks previously Jim and Donna were enjoying a summer camping trip in a barbecue with Jim's Family in rural Missouri Jim and uh my brother-in-law Richard would take turns barbecuing and everything and we just had a good time we enjoyed one another laugh at one another's jokes and really enjoyed going out with the kids and uh well just being very very happy honey are you okay but a few weeks later the mysterious symptoms return it is apparent that her health is rapidly deteriorating could Donna have been bitten by something in the country could the food she ate on her trip be making her sick if that's true why isn't anyone else in the family ill all of a sudden there was a extreme physical change with her body and I began to think something is really pulling her down or draining her body and that's when several people start saying oh she has cancer she must have cancer and she doesn't want to talk about [Music] it Donna finally decides it's time to see a doctor her symptoms may seem common stomach pains nausea vomiting all signs of a flu but why would she be so sick and why is she losing feeling in her legs my family doctor wasn't really sure what it was so he sent me to a stomach doctor Donna is comforted that Jim is willing to go to all of her doctor's appointments everything looks good everything is normal Jim went with me to all the visits and wanted to make sure that he knew what was going on as well as I did and wanted to make sure that he knew what medicine I was taking so what we're looking at here Donna's gastroenterologist has a simple answer for her she has an illness called IBS or irritable bowel syndrome the IBS symptoms were very similar as far as the cramping in the stomach and the pain and and he said it would come come and go and that's what I was going through it was coming and going so the symptoms seem to fit some pressure Donna may have to take medication when her symptoms flare up but IBS is not life-threatening that's point to explain to you exactly what I was relieved that that okay we found what it was I've got some pills now to cope with it and I'll just learn to live with it and do the best I can the rest of my life and I was satisfied [Music] Donna's satisfaction at finding an answer however is shortlived thank you about a month later her symptoms return and they're stronger than ever wait a minute all she was was lie on the couch if she wasn't lying on the couch she was in the bathroom getting sick and I would have to listen to her moan from downstairs I mean there were nights I would cry myself to sleep because there was nothing I could do to help her out I just lied in my bed listening to her it's hard to pinpoint and say there's one certain thing that tells you you're dying but I just had the feeling that I was dying Donna believes her symptoms are far too excruciating for a simple case of IBS she fears she may never recover from her illness what I I called my mom just to I needed somebody to talk to and basically I was calling to tell her goodbye look I didn't say I wouldn't take you okay okay well she call me no she's crying on the telephone because she felt so horrible and I said Donna you belong in the hospital I I do I Jim was reluctant to take her to the hospital um so anyway Jim he wanted to see if the medicine would kick in but Donna was in so much pain he had no choice he called back in about 10 15 minutes and said I'm taking Donna to the hospital and all I said was well thank god get somethinge could Donna have another illness that doctors can't pinpoint something that could take her life this quickly let me go with I want to go with my wife I want to go with my wife I don't understand what's wrong with her you know I I just don't know what's going on please I Live 5 minutes from St Anthony's hospital and I was hoping to God she'd still be alive when I got up there why you breathing now youa Donna's body is quickly shutting down she starts to have violent seizures she deteriorated so quickly um she lost control control of even her ability to breathe I felt that she would die emgen compion up some abdomino pain she was so sick uh she was in critical condition and there were many times where we thought she may not make it the emergency room is sent into a frenzy she went into cold blue that meant she had died she has no PS Now do the hospital staff's worst fears are realized Donna's heart stops beating and doctors call an emergency code blue Donna is dying doctors work to revive Donna's lifeless body the odds of her surviving are slim if doctors are not successful they may never find answers to a puzzling question what suddenly killed Donna Bley I think that's an interesting thing this one piece will make 52 layers watch on mobile devices or the big screen all for free no subscription required in a St Lewis Hospital Donna Bley clings to life just hours earlier her heart stopped twice and both times doctors had to revive her with life-saving equipment it was very frustrating for the staff because we didn't know what we were dealing with and we didn't know why she was as sick as she was this girl presented to the emergency how could doctor's original diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome be so far off what kind of life-threatening illness could mask itself as a mild conditional pain Donna's husband Jim is distraught at her bedside and her sons are devastated by her condition sing your mom's hooked up to all these machines and all these wires and all these cords and plugs and everything are just coming out of of of her mouth and her nose and and it's like I mean what are you supposed to think when you see your mom in a situation like that and I remember feeling very helpless doctors look over Donna's charts and runs several tests for Clues but it's still not quite clear you know we were testing for a variety of conditions we were trying to see if she had a condition known as sepsis which is a overwhelming infection of the bloodstream from a source somewhere in the body her chest x-ray showed um what we call infiltrates our haziness in the lungs but these symptoms don't lead doctors any closer to a [Music] diagnosis we were really baffled uh about this case she had a variety of symptoms that we couldn't pigeon hole in a single diagnosis even though doctors don't find the cause of Donna's illness she makes a miraculous recovery Donna is relieved when doctors tell her she shouldn't feel permanent effects from her seizures or heart failure she is released from the hospital only weeks after her brush with death they really didn't think that there would be any damage um at that point they just wanted me to get stronger and wanted me to be able to go home [Music] while Donna takes time off from teaching to recover Jim tries to nurse her back to health oh no no I was going to bring this to you Jim was very concerned and he would come home after school or after his meetings and come in and takes me something to eat I did thank you little bit she just to be very happy with what was going on in the house and he did all the cooking that Donna is relieved that her old symptoms have not returned you after I got home I was still very weak I didn't have the stomach cramping I didn't have the vomiting um things seem to be clearing [Applause] up now several months after her brush with death and almost a year after her initial symptoms Donna is back teaching seventh grade Mass saw you give drugs to Jason but the stress of her job drains her I saw you no school started and she was coming home exhausted every day and I mean even exhausted for her I mean she's run down at the end of days but I mean this was just she come home and all she did was lay on the [Music] couch Donna was recovering at home but now at school she is feeling the effects of her agonizing pains I told her that I saw you giving drugs to one of my her job is made more difficult by a problem student you Ain catch me doing nothing like that by no B we both have been teaching middle school and I know Middle School behaviors and I know a student can be hyper and angry one day and the next day they're calm down and L and you're their best friend go to the principal could the stress of work be causing her symptoms you better go there right now I'm on my way she didn't have as much energy she looked pale she looked very weak I assumed maybe it was stress at school it just seemed to be worse than it was before I talked to my mom cuz I was getting upset again it was all coming back daughter Donna you are burning up daughter she was in so much pain at times and I said exactly where is your pain and she showed me like down in her stomach and I said well that looks about like when I before I had my hysterctomy she said try going to your gynecologist maybe there we need to go that route your fever is just too high you have got Donna's mother had the same stomach pains before she was diagnosed with ovarian cysts could Donna's illness be genetic go just go meet the her family hopes her gynecologist will finally solve the mystery of her strange symptoms drit [Music] M she just looked generally ill uh very sick appearing uh which was a great concern to me and I thought is there something serious going on there does she have cancer hey Donna how you feeling doctors have now ruled out the possibility that Donna's only illness is irritable bowel syndrome but they have no idea what else could be making her so ill you can do that usually people with irritable bowel or otherwise healthy they don't look like somebody that has some chronic illness that's wearing you down whereas in her case I was she was worn down within days her doctor tells Donna he may have the answer how are you doing Donna they found a cyst on my one ovary so we decided to go ahead and U do a hysterctomy with the finding on ultrasound that wasn't getting better uh we thought well we better go in and make sure that she doesn't have anything bad going [Music] on doctors aren't sure whether the cyst is the answer to Donna's long illness is it possible the cyst is cancerous but before they can operate Donna is taken to the hospital in severe pain very high temperature she had had lowered her blood pressure she had a high fever and we thought either something had ruptured uh or she got infected from whatever was in there get the compress stay with her she had so many seizures it was at least eight that you know on the floor then and then she had seizures downstairs so I mean it was a lot of seizures okay Donna was extremely ill when she came to us she would come in and out of her confusion once in a while she would be with it and seem to know what was going on at other times she did not no previous history of seizure disord Hospital staff try to control Donna's fever just days before her operation Donna's illness has become life-threatening once again her condition was accelerating her she was becoming more ill and unstable keep her head turned to one side so she won't aspirate okay what strange illness is draining the life from Donna her doctors must solve the mystery soon soon or it may destroy her forever for 2 days high fevers and seizures have left donaby unconscious and battling for her life her husband Jim is by her side as she slowly regains Consciousness Jim Jim oh honey I woke up and Jim was sitting there and I said what's going on and I thought I'd just slept for a couple hours and he said sweetheart it's Wednesday he really scared me they Jim has spent two days and nights at Donna's bedside I was very thankful that Jim was at the hospital with me he had been there quite a bit since I had lost two days hi Donna how are you doing Donna is scheduled for surgery the following day you know you've been resting a couple of days doctors ask Donna if she feels strong enough to go ahead with the operation they tell her that a two-day coma shouldn't prevent immediate [Music] surgery they were concerned about doing the surgery and I said just do it let's get it over with I wanted that cyst out because I just felt that's what was causing the problem now okay all right the surgery will go on as planned if the procedure is a success Donna's long fight with her mysterious illness could be over but doctor's fear it may not be that simple I was very concerned that she had some sort of chronic underlying illness that was severe like an ovarian cancer come on dog give me some retraction here so I can get the Sy off okay just kind of pull apart but her doctor is confused by what he finds she did have a very small assist on her ovary but his awful small assist caused all that [Music] pain the surgery is going smoothly she's but suddenly something goes terribly wrong at that point she was having difficulty with respirations keeping her blood pressure up there Donna's vital signs are dangerously low I thought she was going to die right then and there she was as sick as anybody that I'd ever seen and she was moments from Death Donna is stabilized but doctors can't figure out why she would suddenly crash close you think back was there bleeding did she get an infection why would she deteriorate that quickly from a very uh lowkey uneventful surgery [Music] and she's been a real puzzl doctors look over Donna's charts they are still baffled by her string of illnesses the internist and I had trained together in Internal Medicine and had the same Mentor who had taught us to look under every Rock and to turn up all the unusual things cuz that was his thing and that's the way train she had a very bad time Donna's doctors consider her bizarre mixture of symptoms like her chronic ill health and the overwhelming infection in her body then something just started clicking in my mind I said abdominal pain anemia and with my old training I said you know what about something just reminds me of one of these weirdo heavy metal poisonings Donna's symptoms are similar to ones they would see with someone being poisoned with arsenic could Donna have been poisoned but how arsenic symptoms are so common and typical of like the flu or possibly food poisoning that most Physicians tend to focus on that area to see if there's some sort of biological reason why uh you have these symptoms Donna hi can you wake up Donna we're going to take you off to the respirator to see how Donna once again fights off her sickness and makes a miraculous recovery come out aren't you her family is in the room when she has taken off her respirator a little for me okay great once more I remember seeing her hooked up to all the machines and it was very very hard to see that I didn't know what to think I didn't know what to do I didn't know where to stand and I think she'll be fine they brought both of my boys in and they said okay we're going to get your mom off off of this now and let her get her so that she can breathe on her own they said that the anesthetic had mixed with something in my system and it caused my system to shut [Music] down IAM I the following day Donna gets good news Donna got real good news Roar insist benign see any problem at all I think everything's I figured that you know we're in good shape now she's not going to be bleeding we got that out of there she's not going to have pain we want to do some more tests as a precaution heaval doctors tell Donna they would like to test her blood for heavy metals poisoning poison they ask if she remembers being exposed to any poisons hi hello how are you today she recalls buying rat poison for Jim's Garden yeah I want to get rid of the squirrel we had a problem with squirrels getting into our tomatoes and he suggested that we go and pick up some rat poison to put around and keep the squirrels could Donna have accidentally ingested rat poison we were grasping for straws because we couldn't come up with any we couldn't find anything we went ahead and ordered a heavy metal toxicity screen to look for poisoning or toxicity but the Test shows nothing the results come back negative netive there are no toxins in Donna's [Music] blood your chicken but as suddenly as Donna's illness brought her to the brink of death she just as quickly [Music] recovers after three more weeks in the hospital she is finally released I had no more symptoms I started feeling good I felt better than I had felt in years and I just figured finally the hysterectomy is what took care of it and I was going to be okay Donna's family celebrates her return from the hospital Donna and her husband were extremely loving an extremely gracious host and Hostess even Donna and Jim's relationship is getting a boost he went bought himself some sexy underwear and I was like this is cool he was doing this for me yeah what do you think um there wasn't a day went by that he did not tell me he loved me there wasn't a day went by that he didn't kiss me goodbye when he left in the morning and kissed me hello when he got home in the afternoon You Know M called the Bly family returns to their normal routines dad cooked breakfast on Sunday mornings dad made the dinner at night Mom did the laundry that's just the way they developed I guess is Dad assumed the cooking role and Mom assumed other roles so I'm going to make you Jim dotes on Donna he worries about controlling every aspect of her recovery you I open the refrigerator and I see this bowl of jello sitting in the refrigerator and I'm like hey Dad can I have can I have some of this Jello he's like well I I really made it especially for your mother I made this for your mom all I made this for your mom go sit [Music] down I told you that was the answer that after several months at home Donna is finally able to return to the job she loves teaching on the but Donna's classroom seems to bring out the worst in her it started hitting me again the same cramping the same vomiting the same symptoms I was I was devastated because I didn't know where to turn at this point turn to page 169 why is Donna getting sick again and why does it always seem to coincide with being back at school all right you guys I want you to do questions 1 through 25 she was feeling so horrible that she had no energy to even even walk I mean she was [Music] miserable I finally thought I've got to go to the doctor hospital my uh family doctor took one look at me and he said we are not going through this again so I ended up going to the hospital Donna is referred to a rheumatologist we are sometimes asked to see patients where it's not clear what's going on since the connective tissue diseases can present in a variety of bewildering ways so we were really trying to find one condition that might explain all of her symptoms Donna also has an unusual new symptom hair loss she must undergo several new [Music] tests Dr spyer came in and decided to do a spinal test they did ran extensive blood work on me we got your test results back he came back at at the end and he said you don't really fit the characteristics but we think you might have Lupus we just got the test back he tested lupus is an autoimmune disease and uh by autoimmune I mean uh a disease in which the immune system sometimes turns against our own bodies okay anything El but hair loss isn't usually a symptom of Lupus so Dr spiser must search for another reason Donna could be losing her hair we get turned out that the hair loss was actually a chronic thing and in fact a familial uh condition that she'd had for a long time with the new lupus diagnosis doctors think they have finally gotten to the bottom of Donna's problem they release her from the hospital but within days her mysterious illness rears its ugly head once again Donna Donna hey if doctors don't solve the mystery soon Donna boy may die honey Donna in a St Louis Hospital Donna Bley is losing her battle against a debilitating and mysterious illness Gotan fantastic about 4 five doctors for several months doctors have failed to figure out the cause of her ailment and her condition is now deteriorating her condition was that of being very confused she was verbal when I first saw her um but she became more and more confused and unaware of her environment she became almost flaccid her extremities were very weak she couldn't move them very well and she had difficulty breathing because of her musculature was so weak doctors have little time to get to the bottom of her [Music] illness a nurse Wheels Donna to her next test we usually don't go down with the patient but I was going to go down with her because she was so bad chart back there Nurse Garrett forgets Donna's chart in her room right here [Music] okay when she gets close to the doorway she overhears something shocking something she never thought [Music] possible and I remember just kind of bracing myself against this wall just falling back and I'm like got what do I do I thought this is why she's having seizure could a nurse have learned a critical clue to Donna's life-threatening illness nurse Garrett tells one of Donna's doctors about the vital piece of information she overheard get chart before I was taking he goes do you know what you could lose you could lose your license and you could be sued for malpractice and you could be sued for everything if this isn't true and uh I said I think it's true okay I'll Take Care thank okay based on this new piece of information Donna's physician orders an additional [Music] test but Donna's condition is getting worse though her mind is sharp her body is deteriorating she is losing feeling in her legs up to her hands she is so weak she can't even sign her name she went from being able to talk and eat to the point where she was not even able to breathe on her own I we're going to be doing that procedure in just a few minutes she gradually became paralyzed from the toes upward until everything below the level of her neck was completely paralyzed she could not breathe at all the muscles that moved the lungs were completely paralyzed too and she was on ventilator nurse let's go ahead and get this Electro doctors test to see the extent of Donna's paralysis it was frightening to watch a woman so young with young children be unable to do anything below her neck so that we had to do everything for her buing don't take just because of nurse Garrett's suspicions about Donna's illness she is also retested for heavy metal poisoning this time instead of testing Donna's blood or urine for poisons they will test her [Music] hair hair testing is very good for determining prolonged exposure your hair grows about an inch a month so that means anything during that month that you're exposed to is incorporated into the hair why would doctors test Donna again for poison especially after the first test came up negative something to drink when the results of the test come back the outcome is shocking it comes back positive Donna has been poisoned with [Music] arsenic the Arsenic levels in her hair increased and they increased dramatically every month up till and including the time time of her hospital admission if Donna was sick during the previous poisons test Why didn't it pick up arsenic the first time a heavy metals test can come up negative if you look at a compound such as arsenic it's out of your blood in about 2 days but arsenic stays in hair indefinitely doctors only tested Donna's blood before they didn't test her hair I was not suspecting it strongly enough to do that it was just one of many different possible explanations and in fact some of the tests were actually leading us away from the idea of heavy metal poisoning as being the diagnosis can Donna stay alive long enough to help find the person responsible for poisoning her she can't talk she can't verbalize but she was awake and you know in this paraly body and it was very difficult to communicate she couldn't [Music] speak detectives are contacted but it will be difficult to get any information about the poisoning from Donna detective we would start with letter A and go through each letter and when we get to the right letter if she could barely blink her eyes we had to go through and spell each word that twice for that the first thing talked to Donna about was to see if she had administered this to herself if she had attempted to Suicide to try to find out Donna as with any poisoning detectives first want to rule out the possibility that Donna could have done this to herself poon could her illness have gotten so bad that she wanted a way out of her misery you a to blink your eyes maybe one time for yes her doctors don't think so that was a yes the information showing that she had been exposed over a period period of time is very important it eliminates questions like uh suicide that was a yes it shows that she had been poisoned chronically for a long term got an alphabet chart here what I'm going to do with suicide ruled out detective gel continues the questioning I asked her if she thought she got the poison at home uh she indicated no if she got it from friends she indic at no if she got it from work and us in the board she basically spelled out that the school year before she uh had had some problems with a couple of young students who uh had talked about being involved in the drug culture okay could Donna have been poisoned by one of her students student that we might want to look at it seemed possible since her illness coincided with the school year I told her that uh I was is going to leave contact the principal at night get the address of these two young men and bring them in for questioning guys about something back at the Bly household Jim has a difficult job to do the doctors think he must tell his two sons their mom has been poisoned no nobody poisoned her they came to my brother and I and said we they found out what's wrong your mom's been poisoned with arsenic is is she going to be okay like Donna Jim also thinks a student might be responsible nothing here in the house that could be they said well you know she teaches summer school and she has a glass of water sitting on her desk he said I just have a feeling it's probably a student Donna is now under constant police surveillance once the blood test came back and confirmed that there was a poisoning involved we moved Donna to another intensive care in the hospital that could provide the same care that we were giving her but uh to uh protect her identity the following day detective GMO returns he has spoken with the kids at school and doesn't believe they're involved yes so you can hear me Donna's reaction to this news stuns detective green might have had anything to do with this poison she started crying uh she was upset clearly upset she said she didn't want me to leave that she wasn't in pain that there was something else I needed to know uh we've been to the school after months of violent pain does Donna finally know the source of her hellish torture but who would want to kill her and why from her hospital bed a nearly paralyzed Donna Bley communicates Vital Information to detectives information that could lead to those responsible for poisoning her with arsenic q r I think she might be the most unique case I've ever cared for because it was because her little body was a crime scene children kids at school Donna signals to detectives that she may have been poisoned by former students but detective gemel isn't so sure that spells kid are you spelling initial conversations with family members uh didn't indicate there were any confrontation with any students want to look at was it possible the poisoning could have been an accident could Donna have gotten it from something at home or in her classroom we went through the house and searched for anything that might have residue of arsonic on it uh we took some pesticides and herbicides some rat poison uh that was used in the in the backyard uh and in the house uh a number of other things can you hear me even though he can't pinpoint a suspect detective gel thinks it's unlikely Donna's poisoning was accidental I didn't believe that in a family of four one person could have accidentally ingested a lethal amount of arsenic at home and the others have no signs of arsonic in their system that's a yes active gel is stunned by what Donna reveals next you ready okay she spelled out for me that she was afraid Jim her husband was involved okay you're doing fine but if Jim really did try to kill her why didn't Donna accuse him first Donna are you saying that your husband possibly I think in her heart she knew he was involved but she was didn't want want to believe it and probably initially didn't want to direct me in that direction Donna is able to communicate with Detective grimel why she thinks Jim could be responsible she told me that uh a few days before school started that Jim gave her some milk to drink and that when she finished the milk in the bottom of the glass there was a pink residue she said she asked Jim about the pink residue in the bottom of the glass and he told her that's Sam's milk it sometimes does that how are you today Donna also explains how Jim could have gotten the Arsenic he suggested that we go to the feed store and pick up some rat poison to put around the tomatoes and keep the squirrels out and as a result I ended up picking out the first poison that was used on me Donald also thinks Jim may have been having Affairs a few weeks before her final hospitalization Donna overheard Jim on the phone talking about another woman she now realizes the new underwear Jim bot wasn't for her he was talking to someone talking about that he likes girls with long hair and how sweet they look and and just talking ways about this girl I'm going let the nurse know that I'm done here Donna also doesn't know that someone else in the hospital shares her [Music] suspicions when I came in I knew he was on the phone so I thought oh well I'll give him some privacy and started to turn around to go out till he finished and that's when I heard him talking real lby Debby to real to somebody and I knew it wasn't his wife and then he started talking about ARS NE could it be that the man at Donna's bedside throughout her illness is also trying to kill her it was nurse Garrett's suspicions that led doctors to test Donna a second time for [Music] poisons she immediately got in touch with the doctor that was on call that night and that nurse saved Donna's life that nurse saved Donna's life Jim the the lab report detectives questioned Jim for 12 hours and I know it didn't come from the kids at school they are getting nowhere I think it came from your kids until Jim cracks under the pressure is that what it was Mr bully broke down and started talking about how he was poisoning his wife and subsequently the prosecutor's office issued a warrant charging him with assult first degree in our Criminal action look I love my wife okay my mom came in to visit me in the evening and I used the letter board and I spelled out where's Jim and with that she came over to my bed and she leaned over and she said honey he's been arrested he confessed she got better you know Donna Bley wonders what Jim's motive could have been for trying to kill her she thinks it boils down to Greed and sex Jim wanted a different life I thought we had a good marriage apparently it wasn't as good as I thought and Jim wanted to get the insurance money and go on dating the other women that he had on the side and continue on with life without me in January 1994 Jim boy was convicted of first-degree assault and armed criminal action he was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in state prison Donna still struggles with the ravaging effects of the poison of course but she hasn't let the past scar her mentally I'm healthy I am remarried and I've got a wonderful husband and I've got a Wonderful Life and I'm I'm enjoying living if I had not been able to come back to teaching and start my life back over again I would have really felt that Jim had won everything and I kept that thought out of my mind because he was not going to win he had knocked me down but he was not going to keep me [Music] down [Music] [Music]

Channel: Real Responders

Views: 229,800

Keywords: diagnosis unknown full episodes, diagnosis unknown, real responders full episode, poisoning, poisoner, medical mysteries, medical deaths, medical mysteries documentary, medical documentary, medical crimes, hospital crimes, poisoning crimes, true crime poison, true crime, true crime poison murder, poison murders, thallium, ricin posion, rat poison murders, rat poison killer, donna boley poison, jim boley, donna jim boley

Id: AfD2MAFd4T4

Length: 50min 43sec (3043 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 02 2024