Posts tagged ‘odd news’
It may not be the most appetizing reading before a hearty holiday meal, but the New England Journal of Medicine is devoting part of its Thanksgiving issue to a giant hairball — and not the feline kind.
The prestigious journal details the case of a previously healthy 18-year-old woman who consulted a team of gastrointestinal specialists.
She complained of a five-month history of pain and swelling in her abdomen, vomiting after eating and a 40-pound weight loss.
After a scan of the woman’s abdomen showed a large mass, doctors lowered a scope through her esophagus.
It revealed “a large bezoar occluding nearly the entire stomach,” wrote Drs. Ronald M. Levy and Srinadh Komanduri, gastroenterologists at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois.
For the uninitiated, a bezoar is a hairball.
“On questioning, the patient stated that she had had a habit of eating her hair for many years — a condition called trichophagia,” they wrote.
“It seemed like she’d been doing this for several years,” Levy told CNN.
The woman underwent surgery to remove the mass of black, curly hair, which weighed 10 pounds and measured 15 inches by 7 inches by 7 inches, the doctors said.
Five days later, she was eating normally and was sent home.
A year later, the pain and vomiting were gone, the patient had regained 20 pounds “and reports that she has stopped eating her hair.”
Reached at his home in Chicago, Levy said he had no idea whether the journal’s timing of the publication on Thanksgiving was intentional.
Either way, he said, it would not affect the gastroenterologists’ holiday dinner plans — “We don’t get fazed by much.”
Source - The New England Journal Of Medicine
BEIRUT, Lebanon - The season’s first hailstorm Tuesday was a blessing in disguise for cluster bomb-infested parts of southern Lebanon, triggering blasts from previously unexploded bomblets. No injuries were reported.
After a long dry spell across Lebanon, hailstones as big as walnuts hit villages and struck undiscovered bomblets scattered across the landscape, the state-run National News Agency reported.
Dalya Farran, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Mine Action Coordination Center (MACC), confirmed that many cluster bombs exploded when they were hit by hailstones in villages near the town of Marjayoun.
[Via - NewsDay]
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Four-year-old Long Branch Elementary School student Zacari found himself in the home of a different family and in the middle of an unusual mix-up Tuesday, WJXT-TV in Jacksonville reported.
After school Tuesday, a grandfather went to Long Branch to pick up his grandson but wound up taking Zacari home by mistake.”I went to his house,” Zacari told Channel 4.Zacari’s mother, Latoia Gillis, said “They don’t have the same name. They don’t even look alike.”Apparently,to the 77-year-old grandfather, the boy did look like his grandson, and the man put Zacari on his bike and rode home.”We were riding a bicycle, and he had to pick me up and put me in the middle,” Zacari said.
“All the way from Long Branch to Main Street on a bicycle with a man who is 77 years old?” Gillis said, still in shock.Zacari said that when they got to the man’s house, it was the man’s wife who realized the mistake.”She said, ‘You got the wrong kid,’” Zacari said.Back at the school, Zacari’s aunt had come to pick him up and was panicked to learn her nephew was already gone.”
I was thinking the worst. I was crying. I was shaking,” said Zacari’s aunt.Fortunately, the man who picked up the 4-year-old was on his way back to the school with an unharmed Zacari.Zacari’s family said it wants to make sure another such mix-up never happens again.”I just want it to be a wake-up call. I’m very lucky to have my son back,” Gillis said.
Gillis said that at the beginning of the school year, she filled out a form that included a list of names and contact numbers of the people with whom her son was allowed to go home.A school district representative said protocol was not followed in Tuesday’s mix-up, and that the teachers involved would face disciplinary action.As a result of Zacaris’s ride with a stranger, district policy was immediately changed. Pre-K teachers will be required to check identification before allowing people to collect their youngsters from school.
[Via - WSBTV]
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