MEDICAL BAG
Spoon-swallowing, nail-hammering and a beany penis are among this month’s problems
NAILED IT!
Medics examining a pregnant woman who arrived at the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan, bleeding heavily from the head found that the cause was a two-inch (5cm) nail hammered into her skull. The woman said that she had been advised by a local “healer” to recite specific chants while hammering a nail into her head to ensure that her unborn child was a boy. “She said that a woman in her locality did the same and gave birth to a boy even though the ultrasound had shown her unborn child to be a girl,” said a doctor. The woman already had four daughters and was desperate for a son as her husband had threatened to leave her if she had another daughter; she had not, though, had an ultrasound scan to reveal the child’s sex before taking this drastic measure. After taking an X-ray, doctors determined that it would be impossible for the woman to have hammered the nail in herself, but rather than go to police, they posted the X-ray online. This alerted the authorities, who are now searching for the woman, who left hospital after having the nail removed without giving her name, or identifying the healer or the person who hammered the nail into her skull. thedailybeast. com, 9 Feb 2022.
He had swallowed an eight-inch spoon as a bet while drunk
SPOON SURPRISE
An unnamed man from Xinjiang in China turned up at Meikuang General Hospital after a punch to the chest caused him excruciating pain and trouble breathing. While being examined he casually mentioned that he had a spoon stuck in his oesophagus, which might be contributing to his discomfort. It seems that, a year before, he had swallowed an 8in (20cm) stainless steel spoon as a bet while drunk, claiming he could swallow it, then pull it up again with a string tied to the handle; but he failed, leaving the piece of cutlery stuck in his throat. Rather than going to hospital, he decided to see if it got in the way of him eating and drinking, and when it didn’t, he just got on with life until the punch dislodged it. “I was shocked. I have never seen anything like this,” said Dr Yu Xiwu, who removed the spoon. “When we admitted the patient, his oesophagus was already infected.” Dr Yu and his team took two hours to coax the spoon back up the man’s oesophagus using endoscopy equipment. The patient made a full recovery. dailymail.co.uk, 11 Jun 2019.
BLOOD MONEY
A 31-year-old security guard named only as Li was lured to southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region by a fake job ad and was kidnapped by a gang who initially tried to force him to work in their online fraud operations. When he refused, they then sold him to another gang in Cambodia who imprisoned him in Sihanoukville city and used him as a “blood slave” under a threat of selling him to organ harvesters. Every month they reportedly extracted 27oz (800ml) of blood from him to sell online to private buyers. This is considerably above the normal amount for a blood donation, which is around 16oz (470ml). While the human body can replace the blood volume within 24 to 48 hours, it takes up around 10 to 12 weeks to replenish the red blood cells, so it is recommended that you wait at least eight weeks between making blood donations to allow this to happen. Li said he was kept captive with at least seven other men, but that he had more blood taken from him than the others as he had type O negative blood, which can be used in anyone, making it
“quite valuable”. Eventually, his blood was so depleted that the gang could no longer extract it from his arms and started taking it from his head and neck instead. By the time Li managed to escape with the help of one of the gang members he was suffering from multiple organ failure and his arms were heavily bruised and covered in needle marks. He is reported to be making a good recovery in hospital. scmp.com, 17 Feb 2022.
CHEATING IMPLANT
After spending 11 years at medical school and repeatedly failing his final exams, an unnamed student at the Mahatma Gandhi Medical College in India resorted to an extreme approach to pass on his last permitted attempt. As exam cheating is a serious problem in India, universities employ “flying squads” of invigilators who can step in and investigate students suspected of cheating. A member of the university squad, Dr Vivek Sathe, was frisking the student before the exam and found a forbidden mobile phone in his pocket, turned on and linked to a Bluetooth device; he could not find the connected device, though. Under interrogation, the student admitted to having a skin-coloured microreceiver implanted in his ear by a surgeon, probably a bone conduction hearing aid that vibrates and transmits the resulting sound to the receptors of the inner ear via the bone it is attached to. Dr Anand Rai, who was a whistleblower in a major Indian exam-rigging scandal, claimed that this was easy to do and had been used in exam scams since at least 2013. hindustantimes.com, 22 Feb 2022.
PENIS PERILS
When Daniel Barry, 32, woke up with a larger than usual erection, he was initially pleased, but the excitement wore off when he started to feel dizzy and unwell, particularly when he examined his penis with the light on and found that the additional size was down to a red, pus-filled lump on the end. Googling this he realised he had been bitten by a false widow spider and was panicked to find that the online prognosis was that his penis was likely to fall off within seven days. Fortunately, a visit to the doctor, who thought there was probably a spider in his boxer shorts when he put them on, put his mind at rest, and some antibiotics dealt with the lump. Sun, 21 Dec 2021.
• A paper in the British Medical Journal in June documented the first case of a vertical penile fracture during sex. The injury occurred when the victim’s partner accidentally sat on his member and crushed it, causing a 3in (7.5cm) vertical tear in the shaft resulting in swelling and bruising that made it look like an aubergine. Fortunately, swift medical treatment enabled the victim to resume sexual activity within six months with no lasting effects. Sun, 3 July 2021.
• The journal Urology Case Reports recently featured a somewhat startling case report on a 30-year-old man from Michigan who took himself to A&E when he got six kidney beans jammed in his urethra and was unable to remove them. He had inserted the beans with the intention of expelling them when he ejaculated, but this had failed to happen. He said this was something he had done successfully several times before, but with fewer beans. He had attempted removal with a pair of tweezers, but had not succeeded and, as the beans were preventing him from urinating, he had sought medical attention.
Doctors removed most of the beans, which each measured 15mm (0.6in) by 7mm (0.3in), by applying numbing cream and squeezing them out, and the remainder with surgical implements. Fortunately, only minimal trauma was caused and the man was able to leave hospital the next day.
The report’s authors said that the desire to insert things into the urethra like this sometimes resulted from psychiatric illness or, bizarrely, attempts to “relieve urinary obstruction”, but also mentioned the sexual practice of “sounding”. They cited a sounding case in which a man in Saudi Arabia had kept a pair of tweezers in his urethra for four years, but admitted that research in this area is lacking due to its “taboo nature”. nypost. com, 13 Aug 2021.