MEDICAL BAG
Three cases of corpse revival, plus fish tank dangers and the boy with three penises
BODY BAGGED
A 20-year-old woman declared dead at her Detroit home opened her eyes at a funeral home just as she was about to be embalmed. An ambulance had been called to the home of Timesha Beauchamp. For 30 minutes, paramedics attempted resuscitation without success, then consulted a doctor who, based on information given him by the ambulance crew, pronounced her to be dead. However, at the James H Cole funeral home, she was found to be still alive over an hour later, inside a body bag. “Our staff confirmed she was breathing,” said the funeral home, who called an emergency medical crew. Geoffrey Fieger, a lawyer hired by Ms Beauchamp’s family to look into potential negligence charges, told reporters: “They were about to embalm her, which is most frightening, had she not had her eyes open... The funeral home unzipping the body bag, literally that’s what happened to Timesha, and seeing her alive with her eyes open.” He added: “They would have begun draining her blood, to be very, very frank about it.”
Ms Beauchamp has had cerebral palsy since birth and requires three breathing treatments a day. She had apparently undergone a seizure while at home performing her usual morning routine: eat, change clothes and have a breathing treatment. She was not breathing and her lips had lost colour, hence the assumption that she had died. At the time of writing, she remained hospitalised and in a critical condition. detroitnews. com, theguardian.com, 25 Aug 2020.
LIE DOWN, GRANNY
Russian grandmother Zinaida Kononova, 81, was pronounced dead after undergoing surgery to remove an intestinal obstruction. After being informed of the sad news, the pensioner’s family began planning her funeral. On 14 August, almost seven hours after her body had been taken to Gorshechensky Central District Hospital’s morgue, a worker “got the shock of her life” when she found the grandmother sprawled on the floor, having attempted to climb off the morgue table and escape. Hearing the commotion, an ambulance driver then arrived, hoping to discover what was happening. He described having seen the “frightened” morgue worker saying: “Grandma, lie down. Granny, be quiet.” Initially he thought the morgue worker had gone “crazy” and was talking to the dead, but then he saw the pensioner grabbing the woman’s hand and pleading for help.
Covered in blankets, Mrs Kononova was rushed to intensive care, while hospital staff contacted her niece Tatiana, telling her: “We have an unusual situation. She is alive!” Tatiana
rushed to the hospital, and, while happy to learn her aunt was alive, asked the doctors: “How could this happen?”
Apparently, Mrs Kononova had been registered clinically dead for 15 minutes. “She initially did not recognise me or recall that she had had surgery,” said her niece. “But she talked about her old knee problem.” A doctor and an anaesthetist later admitted that they had sent the grandmother to the morgue only one hour and 20 minutes after her ‘death’ instead of the stipulated two hours. The hospital’s head doctor, Roman Kondratenko, has been suspended pending an investigation, while Mrs Kononova’s relatives are planning to sue.
Acting hospital head Alexander Vlasov explained that the pensioner had undergone resuscitation measures for 30 minutes, with no response. “As a result, the resuscitation doctor established biological death,” he said. “The anaesthetist is very worried. She feels very bad and we are afraid for her. Every person makes mistakes.” mirror. co.uk, 24 Aug 2020.
WASHED UP
A 12-year-old Indonesian girl declared dead in a hospital “came back to life”. Siti Masfufah Wardah was officially pronounced deceased after suffering from diabetes and organ complications, but she awoke while her family were cleaning her body preparatory to the funeral, before dying again shortly afterwards.
The girl had been admitted to hospital on 18 August in the Indonesian province of East Java, and was pronounced dead at 6pm the same day. Her body was taken home at 7pm so that family members could begin the funeral preparations. “When her body was being bathed, her body temperature suddenly warmed,” her father Ngasiyo told a reporter. “And her closed eyes suddenly reopened. And we found her heart was beating again and her body moved.” Doctors were called and the girl was given respiratory assistance and oxygen, but she passed away again one hour later.
Almost 90 per cent of Indonesia’s population is Muslim, and part of Islamic funeral ritual stipulates that it is the family’s responsibility to wash the body according to specific rules.
So-called ‘corpse revival’, also known as Lazarus syndrome or return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC), occurs in patients who have ‘died’ of heart failure. 82 per cent of ROSC incidents occur 10 minutes after a person has been confirmed dead. mirror.co.uk, 24 Aug 2020.
For other recent cases of Lazarus syndrome, see FT389:6-7.
THREE’S A CROWD
Surgeons at a Mumbai hospital successfully operated on a young boy with three penises but no anus. One of the boy’s penises was able to pass urine while two of them had erectile tissue. Dr Paras Kothari, head of paediatric surgery at Sion Hospital, explained that the youngster was suffering from diphallia, a condition so rare that just 100 cases have been reported since 1609.
Another Sion Hospital doctor, Dr Vishesh Dixit, described how there had been “a huge soft bony mass and tissue to which the penises were attached. However, the anus was absent. Two years ago, after his birth, the doctors in Uttar Pradesh had created an incision on the lower left side of his stomach, in a procedure called colostomy, to let the excreta pass through a tube. The two functional penises were fused into one by wrapping a mass of skin around them. Further, an anal path was created through the boy’s rectum to facilitate the passage of excreta.” Further surgery was necessary to close the incision in his stomach. Dr Kothari added: “The incision through which he currently passes excreta will only be closed after the anal path that has been created by us heals and is capable of function.” ibtimes.com, 27 Aug 2015.
TOXIC FISH TANK FUMES
A family of five were rushed to hospital when they became seriously ill after Katie Stevenson and husband Mark cleaned out their fish tank. When cleansing agents came into contact with coral inside the tank, the coral began to give off palytoxin, “the second deadliest poison known to man”. Ten minutes later, the married couple and their three girls, aged one, seven and 11, all began coughing as their temperatures rose. When Mark’s temperature soared to 42°C (107.6°F), he dialled 111. Paramedics wearing protective masks arrived and cordoned off their home in Telford, Shropshire. Believed to be one of only a few recorded cases of palytoxin poisoning in the UK, it led to the adults’ hospitalisation for one week (their daughters were allowed home after a day). “It was terrifying”, said Katie. “The whole A&E was isolated. They said if we’d gone to sleep we wouldn’t have woken”. Metro, 8 Aug 2019.