MEDICAL BAG
Another round of self-inflicted surgery for eaters of batteries, coins and spoons, plus forgetful contact lens wearers and unfortunate orgasms
LONG-LOST LENSES
A video by California ophthalmologist Katerina Kurteeva went viral after she posted it on Instagram. It showed her carefully removing 23 old contact lenses from a patient’s eye. The elderly patient is believed to have had them stuck in her eye for months or possibly years, as some of them had been there long enough to turn green. “I have carefully separated all the contact lenses and counted a total of 23. I had to use a very fine surgical instrument, a jeweller forceps, to separate the contact lenses,” said Kurteeva. “They were essentially glued together after sitting under the eyelid.” Her patient said she often forgot she had contact lenses in when she went to bed and kept adding new ones in the morning. This was not actually a record though: in 2017, 27 lenses were extracted from the eyes of a 67-year-old British woman. odditycentral.com, 12 Oct 2022.
ASSORTED BATTERIES
A 66-year-old woman admitted to St Vincent’s hospital in Dublin was found to have swallowed 55 AA and AAA batteries when she was X-rayed, the highest number ever reported as being ingested by one person. The X-ray showed “multiple batteries” distributed through her stomach and intestines, but as all were intact and there was no obstruction or perforation, medics decided to let nature take its course. Over the subsequent week the patient passed five of the batteries, but with no sign of the rest emerging the surgeons decided to operate. They extracted 46 from her stomach and “milked” the remainder from her colon into her rectum where they were removed “using an anal retractor and a long forceps”. irishexaminer.com, 15 Sept 2022.
SPOONFUL
In the Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh, India, 32-yearold Vijay Kumar was admitted to hospital suffering from stomach pain. When X-rayed, the cause was found to be 62 steel spoons, which Kumar admitted swallowing over the course of a year. Surgeons operated and removed the accumulated cutlery in an operation lasting two hours. Also in India, a 36-year-old man in Rajasthan, admitted to hospital with abdominal pains, was found to have a large metal lump in his stomach made up of 63 small value coins. These were extracted over two days using an “endoscopic procedure” after which the man was referred for psychiatric treatment as he admitted to swallowing coins whenever he felt depressed. india.com, 29 Sept 2022.
SICK
Kindt Clinics in Amsterdam, which treats phobias such as fear of heights, aversion to needles and claustrophobia, is advertising a job for someone who can vomit at will. One of the common phobias the clinic deals with is a fear of vomiting, and they need someone to take part in sessions with patients where they will vomit when required to allow the patient to face their phobia. The part-time post is to replace the clinic’s previous vomiter, who has retired, and the ad and has received more than 100 applications. “Now I can finally share my art: vomit on command! If the clinic is still looking for people, I would like to register here,” wrote one applicant. nltimes.nl, 4 Sept 2022.
ORGASM ALLERGY
Medics have discovered 60 cases of men who are allergic to their own orgasms. For up to two days after ejaculation, sufferers can experience fever, a cough, sneezing, muscle weakness, hives and itchy eyes, and some suffer problems with mood, speech, concentration and memory. Researchers have named it post-orgasmic illness syndrome and believe it is an allergic or autoimmune response to the men’s own sperm. Andrew Shanholtzer, from Oakland University, California, said that the syndrome usually starts with an injury or infection in the testicles that allows tiny amounts of sperm to leak into the bloodstream, causing the body to mount an immune response against it. He says that “many health providers do not know about it, let alone the public. It is more than likely that it is underdiagnosed.” Shanholtzer and his team have successfully treated a 27-yearold man who had suffered from the syndrome since he was 18 and had given up on romance. They gave him the long-acting antihistamine fexofenadine, which reduced his symptoms by 90 per cent and enabled him to resurrect his love life. Times, 12 Oct 2022.