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Medical Mysteries, Bizarre Cases

Weird condition caused by brain damage:

Mindscapes: First man to hear people before they speak

"I told my daughter her living room TV was out of sync. Then I noticed the kitchen telly was also dubbed badly. Suddenly I noticed that her voice was out of sync too. It wasn't the TV, it was me."

Ever watched an old movie, only for the sound to go out of sync with the action? Now imagine every voice you hear sounds similarly off-kilter – even your own. That's the world PH lives in. Soon after surgery for a heart problem, he began to notice that something wasn't quite right.
Click to expand...

http://www.newscientist.com/article...ar-people-before-they-speak.html#.UdXEM_ksmSo
 
Maisie Harris to leave Great Ormond Street for first time

A two-year-old girl born with a condition which means her brain forgets to tell her to breathe is about to leave hospital for the first time.
Maisie Harris from Gillingham, Kent has been at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London since being transferred from Medway Maritime at three months old.
She has congenital central hypoventilation syndrome (CCHS), also known as Ondine's Curse.

A new, portable ventilator has enabled Maisie to go home.
The machine knows when she is able to take her own breaths and when she is likely to have a CCHS episode and require support.
It has batteries and a carry case, so Maisie, who is three on 23 October, will be able to go on outings with her family and go to school when she is older.

Staff on Great Ormond Street's Miffy Ward held a party for her on Friday, before she leaves hospital on Monday.
"We cannot wait to bring Maisie home and enjoy being a normal family," said her mother Rachel Bridger, 23.
"It's felt as though we have been in hospital for a lifetime.
"Everyone here has become like a second family to us - they know Maisie inside out.
"She knows her own mind but she is a really happy little girl - she's hardly ever upset.
"I don't think it will take her long to get used to playing with her toys at home and sleeping in her own bed for the first time."

Maisie, who featured in BBC2's Great Ormond Street series last year, also has malacia of the airways, so her airways are floppy like the top of a balloon and do not hold their shape properly.

Consultant Colin Wallis said: "We have been working on ways to allow a greater number of long-term ventilated children to go home.
"The family home is the best place for a young child to grow and develop, and Maisie will now be able to go out and about with her family, make new friends and experience everything the outside world has to offer."

Dr Wallis treated Ms Bridger when she was younger. She also has CCHS, although her condition is less complex.
She and Maisie's father Andrew Harris, 26, have been trained on how to use her ventilator and will be supported by a team of local carers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-24400785
 
I found the alternative / popular label "Ondine's Curse" intriguing. Here's Wiktionary's explanation for its origin:

According to French and German mythology, the nymph Ondine / Undine discovered that her husband had committed adultery. Because he had promised his every waking breath to her, she cursed him that so long as he was awake he could breathe, but if he ever fell asleep he would stop breathing and die.
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This is interesting, as I've long suspected (remember: not a doctor) something similar as the cause of many SIDS (and possibly SADS) deaths.

I'm sure someone's looked into this possibility, and it would be interesting to see any actual research on it. Might go trolling through ScienceDirect later.
 
Why was Welsh village among first to use Ether?

Those slate quarries had a poor reputation for Health & Safety so I expect there were frequent calls for amputations. The mystery is who sent the ether from the USA.

Rev. Aelwyn Roberts, retired vicar of Llandegai, is sometimes called the Welsh Ghostbuster. He has also written the seminal work on Privies of Wales.

"I am a vain person. I have always wanted to be the author of a classic. The book was written and very well received." said Rev. Roberts. :)
 
Reversing walking corpse syndrome: Cotard's Syndrome trigger found - and it's a household cold sore cream

Drug commonly used to treat herpes virus used by those with renal failure has been linked to syndrome that leads people to believe they are dead

Pharmacologists have discovered one of the mechanisms that triggers Cotard's syndrome, a condition causing people to feel as if they have died, or parts of their bodies are dead or no longer exist.

People in the grip of a Cotard's delusion can also believe they have 'lost' their blood and internal organs, such as their brain, and cannot respond to any rational reasoning with them that they are in fact alive.

Acyclovir, also known as Zovirax, is a drug commonly used to treat cold sores and the herpes virus, as well as chicken pox and shingles.

Just one per cent of people who use the drug will experience some psychiatric effects, including Cotard's.

A link between renal failure, using the drug and Cotard’s has now been highlighted by pharmacologists pooling data from hospital admission records and Swedish drug databases.

In a study published in Journal of the Neurological Sciences, Swedish pharmacologists identified eight people with acyclovir-induced Cotard's from data collected.

The link was made after a woman suffering from shingles began showing symptoms of Cotard delusions after using acyclovir as a treatment, New Scientist have reported.

The woman ran into a hospital in an extremely anxious state, author of the research Anders Helldén from the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm said. After receiving dialysis, the woman explained that she had felt anxious because she had been overwhelmed by a strong feeling that she was dead.

Within a few hours her symptoms began to ease, until she felt that she was “pretty sure” she wasn't dead, but remained adamant her left arm did not belong to her. After 24 hours, her symptoms had disappeared.

Blood analysis later revealed that acyclovir, which can normally be broken down in the body before being flushed out by the kidneys, can leave low levels of breakdown product CMMG in the body.

Blood tests of those who had Cotard's symptoms showed much higher levels of CMMG. All but one of those tested also had renal failure.

Helldén and co-author of the study Thomas Lindén, of the Sahlgrenska Academy in Gothenburg, found that lowering the dose of the drug or removing it all together appeared to stop the symptoms.

“Several of the patients developed very high blood pressure,” Helldén said, “so we have a feeling that CMMG is causing some kind of constriction of the arteries in the brain.”

Helldén believes that this discovery provides a theory of how to effectively turn Cotard’s on and off, although further research is needed.
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The Independant
 
kamalktk said:
20 years old, with the body and brain of a 9 month old.
"She has been examined by some of the most prestigious medical institutions in the U.S., however no formal diagnosis for Brooke’s condition has been given, leading doctors to term her condition Syndrome X."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...tml?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490
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Update on this one, she has died. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/maryland-20-year-dies-aged/story?id=20712718&singlePage=true
 
Shades of Frankenstein!

Severed hand kept alive on man's ankle

Chinese doctors have saved a man's severed hand by grafting it to his ankle, it is reported.
Xiao Wei lost his right hand in an accident at work but could not have it reattached to his arm right away.
Instead, the hand was kept alive by stitching it to Mr Wei's left ankle and "borrowing" a blood supply from arteries in the leg.

A month later, surgeons were able to remove the hand and replant it back on his arm, according to Rex Features.
According to the report, Mr Wei's doctors from the Changsha region say he will need to undergo several other operations but they are hopeful that he will regain full function of his hand.
"His injury was severe. Besides ripping injuries, his arm was also flattened.
"We had to clear and treat his injuries before taking on the hand reattachment surgery."

Mr Cairian Healy of the Royal College of Surgeons in England said although procedures such as these were rare, they were not inconceivable.
"The Chinese are pretty experienced in microsurgery," he said.
"And the concept of saving a severed part of the body by attaching it to another part of the body to give it a blood supply is well recognised.
"The ankle is a hard place to graft though. Usually surgeons would go for the armpit because the blood supply is better."

He said there were many reasons why a surgeon might not want or be able to reattach a hand to its rightful home straightaway.
"The patient might not be fit enough for the surgery. It can take a skilled surgeon between eight and 15 hours to reattach a hand."

The vital factor is keeping the hand alive.
On ice, it may survive slightly longer, but Mr Healy said few surgeons would contemplate replanting a hand that had been detached for more than a few hours because the muscle inside it would be dead.
He said that, sadly, not all replantations are a success. Some patients do not like the end result and may later opt for amputation because of side-effects, such as pain and stiffness.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25405543
 
Woman Can Write But Can't Read

http://gizmodo.com/internet-commenter-syndrome-the-woman-who-can-write-bu-1496461544

One fateful Thursday morning, a kindergarten teacher and reading specialist—known only as M.P. for the sake of anonymity—found that the same attendance sheet she'd been using for years suddenly appeared to be covered in hieroglyphs. Not only that, she quickly realized that everything she logically knew to be covered in writing was entirely incomprehensible to her. Though she wouldn't find out til later, M.P. has been the victim of a stroke that left her with an incredibly rare neurological disorder—one more commonly known as "word blindness."

Of course, problems reading may have been the first symptom, but it wasn't the only thing she was having trouble with. In a case study published today in the journal Neurology, M.P.'s doctors describe how, over the next few days, her thinking had slowed and she was having trouble finding the correct words. After checking herself into the emergency room, M.P. was officially diagnosed with alexia without agraphia; in other words, she'd lost the ability to read but could still write and understand language with total clarity.

It seems that the stroke had created a disconnect between her brain's "language zone" and her visual cortex. So though visual inputs to her language zone were disrupted, other sensory inputs (auditory, for example) remained fully intact, explaining why she could still write and understand spoken English. And M.P. made incredible use of the fact that her other senses in relation to language were still in tact. The case study explains:

But where conventional wisdom had failed her, innovation did not, and M.P. soon discovered that her other senses might prove beneficial. Her discovery was this: when shown a word, M.P. could decipher it letter-by-letter with the help of tactile cues such as letter tracing. "She sort of picked up this tactile approach—truthfully—herself," her mother says with pride. "She's the one who reinvented the wheel!"

To see this curious adaptation in practice is to witness the very unique and focal nature of her deficit. Given a word, M.P. will direct her attention to the first letter, which she is unable to recognize. She will then place her finger on the letter and begin to trace each letter of the alphabet over it in order until she recognizes that she has traced the letter she is looking at. "That is the letter M," she declares, after tracing the previous 12 letters of the alphabet with her finger while deciphering a word in front of her. Three letters later, she is able to shorten this exercise with a guess: "This word is 'mother,'" she announces proudly.

Of course, none of this is quite the same as traditional reading, and it's still heartbreaking that M.P. can no longer enjoy the activity she'd loved so much as to turn it into a career. She's certainly making the most of a bad situation though—she's currently raising money for stroke research and is even in the process of writing a memoir about her experience. And at the very least, M.P. can always take comfort in knowing that there's an entire army of people out there raising awareness for "word blindness." Every internet comments section, for example.
 
Didn't that happen in a Stephen King book?
 
Yes, The Dark Half. Let's hope the kid doesn't decide to be an author of pulp thrillers.
 
Who, What, Why: How common is skin pigment condition vitiligo?
Who, What, Why
The Magazine answers the questions behind the news

One of the aspirant catwalk stars on America's Next Top Model has the skin disorder vitiligo. How common is the condition?

Chantelle Young, 19, is one of 14 contestants on the forthcoming series of the modelling talent show presented by Tyra Banks. She is the first in the show's history to suffer from the clearly visible skin condition - vitiligo leaves patches of skin with no pigment.
"I have something that's very profound about the way that I look. A lot of people have a story and a background but mine is painted on my body," she said.

But how common is the condition? "A conservative estimate is 1% of the population, regardless of race," says the Vitiligo Society in the UK. "That figure has been around for the past 25 years.

But the society says that many dermatologists now think a figure of 2% may be closer - with more diagnoses as the condition is more widely publicised. A considerable amount of publicity came from knowledge of Michael Jackson having the condition.

"In some cases the psychological consequences can be quite horrendous," says a spokesman for the Vitiligo Society. "Some people are able to cope with it, others just can't."

Dermatologist Dr Shari Lipner, of New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical Center, agrees with the figure of 1%. Under-reporting of the condition is a factor, she says, because patients are embarrassed to come forward. "It may be more common than we think."

The condition is obviously much more noticeable in darker-skinned people, says Lipner, and, particularly if the depigmentation is on the face or hands, the psychological suffering can be worse.

The condition is not curable but can be treated, says Lipner. Steroid skin creams are one of the most common options. Other treatments include light therapy or use of an excimer laser, a form of ultraviolet laser. Another cream containing calcineurin inhibitors is also used. "You can get some of the pigmentation back in some patients," says Lipner, "but not in all patients." Camouflage cosmetics are often used to cover up the affected patches.

The cause of the condition is not known, says Lipner, although some suspect it is an autoimmune disorder - that the immune system attacks pigmentation cells for an as yet unknown reason.

The depigmentation on Chantelle Young's face is almost entirely symmetrical. Despite the striking effect, this is not unusual, "There are different types, but it commonly is symmetrical," says Lipner.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazin ... r-27628870
 
Tia McCarthy: 'My feeding tube was my lifeline - Now I eat scallops and venison'
9:56am Tuesday 24th June 2014
By Tara Russell, Feature Writer

LIKE any other teenager just home from school, Tia McCarthy shouts to her brother, Finley, to bring her a homemade jam tart from the kitchen.
It may be a familiar scene played out in family homes across the county, but mum, Sue, looks like she couldn’t get any happier than this moment.

But Tia isn’t like most 15-year-olds.
For the first decade of her life, no food or drink passed through the schoolgirl’s lips because she refused to eat or drink anything in a rare case that baffled the medical world.
Instead she was fed through a tube in her stomach.

But now the teen remarkably eats everything – and she has expensive taste – her favourite food is salmon, seabass, venison and scallops. 8)
She even rates the family meals out of ten just like on TV show, Come Dine with Me.
Mum Sue, said: “She’ll practically eat anything now. It is just amazing.
“It took so much longer than I thought, but I think as she has got older, she has become more able to understand the fact that she has to eat in order to survive and so she really tries.”

Born 12 weeks prematurely weighing just 2lb and 3oz with a rare congenital disorder, oesophageal atresia, affecting just one in 40,000 children, Tia spent most of her first year in hospital.
Tia’s oesophagus and stomach were unconnected so doctors had to perform a miracle operation moving her stomach into her chest.

Though Tia does suffer from multiple disabilities including perception disorder and autistic tendencies, there was no medical reason why Tia couldn’t eat food after the surgery and the condition baffled everyone across the world.

It meant mum Sue had to plug Tia into a machine every night to pump liquid food through a tube directly into her digestive system.
Sue explains: “The tube became part of Tia. That was the only way we could get food into her.”

Driven to despair that her daughter had never eaten a morsel, mum Sue, 49, took her to pioneering medics at a specialist clinic in Austria.
There, she was starved for three weeks in a bid to cure her but though she began drinking, the then seven-year-old still refused to eat.
“It just didn’t work for her at all. She doesn’t feel the hunger thing so it made no difference she was just getting thinner and thinner.”

But five years ago aged ten and while on a trip to Spain, Tia suddenly started to show an interest in trying food. Sue gave her yoghurt and remarkably she accepted it.

Gradually bit by bit she begun eating smooth food like mousse, ice cream, soup, custard and semolina, but was still kept on her drip at night which pumped nutrients into her stomach.

But she suddenly started becoming more interested in food and she began trying different solid foods.

etc...

http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/1129626 ... de/?ref=nt
 
I'm posting this under the heading "medical mysteries" because it's a mystery to me, but perhaps it won't be to others. I'll defer to the mods if they wish to move this post elsewhere.

In April 1991, I spent several days in hospital following an emergency appendectomy. During my stay, I discovered that the patient in the next bed had undergone the same operation just 24 hours ahead of me. I mentioned this coincidence to one of the nurses on the ward. She said she had worked on that ward for several years and had noticed a pattern with emergency appendectomies. These cases tended to appear in clusters: a handful of patients would turn up within the span of a few days and then there would be no cases for several months. Then, once again, several cases would arrive over a few days' time only to be followed by another drought of several months' duration. The nurse could offer no explanation for this pattern.

A few months later, I went to see my then GP for my annual check-up and I mentioned this pattern to her. She said she had noticed similar patterns with other health problems. She had observed that fatal heart attacks often tended to occur during the spring (this was to be the case with my own mother several years later), and that patients with gallbladder complaints often appeared in her office within a few days of each other. Like the nurse, she could not explain this pattern.

It seems odd (at least to me) that non-communicable diseases should appear in clusters. Perhaps there's nothing Fortean about this phenomenon and it's all coincidental. If it isn't, I would be curious to know the reason for it.

Any thoughts?
 
GingerTabby said:
It seems odd (at least to me) that non-communicable diseases should appear in clusters. Perhaps there's nothing Fortean about this phenomenon and it's all coincidental. If it isn't, I would be curious to know the reason for it.

Any thoughts?
Click to expand...
No immediate thoughts, but thanks for raising this interesting situation!

It's probably just down to statistics, so perhaps a statistician could offer some insight.

But looking at it the other way, if such diseases occurred at regular intervals, we would be asking "How does the disease know when it's time to strike again? And how does it select its victims?" ;)
 
Good point about statistics, Rynner. Perhaps it`s just as simple as that. I hope so, because I wouldn`t want to entertain the thought of diseases having a consciousness. :eek:
 
Plymouth teenager's eyes turned yellow and liver turned green until she was saved by a stranger
By Plymouth Herald Posted: July 11, 2014
By SIAN DAVIES Health Reporter

A TEENAGER’S liver turned green and swelled to twice its original size when she was suffering from a disease so rare doctors still don’t know exactly what was wrong with her.

Rebecca May, 19, had a transplant seven months after noticing her eyes were yellow, leading doctors to find out she had a rare liver condition.
The former Devonport High School for Girls student went to Derriford Hospital every week for six months as experts tried to work out what was wrong.
She got the call to say there was a new liver waiting for her on December 29 last year, spending a month in hospital recovering from the transplant.

Rebecca, known as Becky, said: “I went to my GP about something else but [he] had noticed my eyes were yellow. The doctor was pretty concerned that I might have hepatitis and did a blood test straight away.
“I came to a special jaundice clinic at Derriford Hospital once a week, where they tried to investigate the most obvious reasons why my eyes might be yellow, at first they thought whatever I had might be reversible.”

Finally it was decided that Becky should be put on the organ donor list – and her listing was backdated six months.
She was first listed on December 5 2013, and received a phone call on December 29 to say there was a liver waiting.
Becky said: “The caller said an ambulance would be round in an hour to pick me up, but it was there within 10 minutes.
“We actually beat the liver to the hospital in the end. The liver was split – which means I got the large right lobe and a child was given the smaller left lobe. They both grow to become fully functioning livers.”

Becky was taken to King’s College Hospital, in London, where the seven-hour operation began at 7am on December 30.
Her liver was green because of all the bile she wasn’t managing to process. Becky remained at King’s for 12 days, and then was transferred to Derriford.

She said: “The first few days I wasn’t allowed to get up and couldn’t eat. When someone has a split liver they can’t eat for four days to protect the connection.
“When I left hospital it was a case of trying to get my strength back, but it took me a while because I had lost most of my muscle mass and slept so much in hospital.
“But I realised how lucky I am – I just though that I could be dead – so I’d better get up and do stuff.

“I’ll be on immune support medication for the rest of my life to make sure the liver doesn’t reject, and I have just come off steroids which they give younger people to make sure it doesn’t reject.
“I don’t really know how I managed to get through it all. I wanted to protect my family and friends so I tried not to talk too much about it.
“My friends were 17 when I got ill and I thought that they might not be able to deal with it, but my boyfriend Sam got most of my moaning.”

The bubbly 19-year-old, who will begin a degree at Plymouth College of Art in September, said: “I’m really looking forward to starting at university – this time last year I didn’t think I would be able to.
“I got ill just before my 18th birthday so I couldn’t go out and have a drink to celebrate.
“But I’m never going to be able to do that now, which bothers me, but when you put it in perspective it doesn’t really matter.

“When they first mentioned the word ‘transplant’ I was terrified. The thought of being operated on freaked me out. Because I didn’t really know what was wrong with me I didn’t know if the transplant process would be the same as for other people.”

Becky said the experience has inspired her to make sure she has a successful future and doesn’t lead a “mediocre” life.
She said: “It’s more important to me now to get what I want out of life and not just plod along. I don’t want to be mediocre anymore.

“I’m in the process of writing a letter to thank my donor’s family and show them that I’m making the most of it. I’m so thankful – I’m only alive because of someone else.
“And a family that are grieving - that they could think of someone else at that time is amazing.”

Katie Ramos, 35, is a liver transplant and HCC nurse at Derriford Hospital, and has worked closely with Becky throughout her treatment. Katie said: “It took so long to work out what was wrong with Becky basically because she is the first one to have it. We still don’t really know what it is because it’s so rare.
“She has been remarkable the way she has dealt with everything, and the donors should be thanked for their gift to people like Becky.”

etc... [Info on Organ Donation]

http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/Plymout ... story.html
 
Virus I caught while walking my dog left me without a pulse
Mark Serwotka, head of the Public and Commercial Services Union, talks of the devastating illness he contracted while walking his dog
By Anna Roberts
7:10AM BST 07 Sep 2014

Mark Serwotka has no pulse. He is being kept alive by a revolutionary £130,000 device strapped to his waist, after contracting an unknown virus while walking his dog.

The devastating illness led the father of two to suffer heart failure, and he is now awaiting a transplant. In the mean time, the battery-powered gadget keeps him alive by pumping blood around his body.

Mr Serwotka, one of between 140 and 150 people, to have one of the devices, refers to it as his “new heart”.
Life hooked up to it is difficult for Mr Serwotka: he cannot bathe or shower, or travel on the train in case the coil gets snagged and pulls out.

“You can wonder 'why me?’. But I’m one of those who thinks the glass is half-full, rather than half-empty, even when it’s only a quarter-full,” Mr Serwotka, head of the Public and Commercial Services Union, said in an interview with the Guardian.
The device, called a ventricular assist device (Vad), also means he can walk a couple of miles, something he did not think possible 12 months ago.

The exact cause of the virus that has left his organs, including his heart, with significant scarring is not known. But Mr Serwotka, who lives in Surrey with his wife, Ruth, and their children, Imogen and Rhys, believes he contracted it while on a walk with his Labrador, Scampi, in 2010.

The dog “ran off in the woods and he came back stinking” and he washed the dirt off. He thought nothing of it until the next day, when his face and legs had started to swell. His GP prescribed antihistamines, but a week later, he suddenly felt his heart “going crazy”.
He was rushed to hospital, where doctors found his heartbeat was 220 beats per minute. A normal resting heartbeat for an adult should be between 60 and 100.

Tests found heavy scars on his heart, which suggested the virus had attacked his organs.
It meant his heart was too weak to pump blood around his body, and he was fitted with pacemaker, which gives an electric shock if his heart starts to beat irregularly.
It was similar to the one fitted to Fabrice Muamba, the footballer who collapsed on the pitch in March 2012 after suffering a cardiac arrest.

“The doctors at the London Heart Hospital told me they thought it was a severe allergic reaction to whatever [Scampi] rolled in which had caused my body and also my heart to swell,” he said.

Mr Serwotka went back to work, but last summer, his conditioned worsened considerably.
“I couldn’t walk 50 yards without being sick. I would retch 20 times a day,” he said in an interview.
He was referred to Papworth – the specialist heart hospital in Cambridge where, following tests, he was given a devastating diagnosis.
He was told he needed a heart transplant but could not have one as it was bound to fail because his lungs had become so ravenous for blood that they were exerting huge pressure. Separately, his kidneys had also started to fail. :shock:

As a last resort, he was fitted with the Vad. Doctors hope that over the next few years it will ease the pressure from his lungs, allowing him eventually to have a transplant.

To fit the device, doctors had to cut through his sternum and bend his ribs during a risky, six-hour operation.
“And when you come round, you’ve got four chest drains beside the bed draining your chest and your lungs of all the gunk, you’ve got this Vad, and a tube coming out of your abdomen,” he said.
“Then I woke one day and suddenly felt amazingly well, as if everything had cleared.”

Now back at home, he said he found it difficult to live with the bulky device attached to his stomach but could now walk for a couple of miles.
“When I’m watching telly, I plug myself into the mains to charge the batteries. When I’m driving, I use the cigarette lighter,” he said.

Although viruses are common, experts say it is rare for them to escalate in this way. The main risk to humans is toxocariasis from dog waste, which can cause eye, brain and respiratory problems.

Dr Marion Sloan, a Sheffield GP, said the illness could have initially been triggered by pesticides in the field.
However, she said the scars on Mr Serwotka’s heart suggested the cause of his illness was a virus.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healt ... pulse.html
 
Bloody hell, he's my union leader and generally considered a top bloke. I had no idea.
 
From a man without a pulse to a girl with no blood...

'Greatest gift' as girl, born with no blood, starts school
Four years after astounding doctors by being born with a haemoglobin level of "flat zero", and surviving, Maisy Vignes is a normal little girl who is impressing teachers
By Agency
1:19PM BST 18 Sep 2014

A little girl who was born with no blood in her body has started school, four years after making a miraculous recovery.

Maisy Vignes's entire blood supply was absorbed by her mother, Emma Vignes, 31, during pregnancy. But she survived, much to the bafflement of medics, who said it was "unheard of".

It was feared that Maisy, born six weeks premature in December 2009, would be left brain damaged after being starved of oxygen in the womb.
After two weeks in intensive care, during which she received three blood transfusions, she met all developmental milestones and is now, aged four, impressing teachers at school.

Mrs Vignes, a former hotel receptionist, said: "It was an unbelievable situation - none of the consultants had ever heard of something like it happening before.
"There were previous cases of children being born with tiny amounts of blood, but Maisy had a haemoglobin level of a flat zero.
"There were cases recorded of people surviving with a haemoglobin level of four, but for any human to survive after having no blood at all was unheard of."

Mrs Vignes, who is married to Mook, 31, a graphic designer, experienced a problem-free pregnancy until the 34th week.
She said: "I had a feeling something was very wrong. I was experiencing worrying bloating and Maisy had stopped moving completely.
"I attended an appointment at hospital the next day and before I knew it the consultants were telling me I needed to go for an emergency cesarean section. I was wheeled down to theatre before I had a chance to tell anyone. :shock:

...

Mrs Vignes said: "We were warned that Maisy might have brain damage because she was effectively starved of oxygen.
"The big milestone was to see whether she would start talking before 18 weeks. If she did, it would be a good sign that her brain was developing in the right manner.
"When she said her first word - 'dadda' - at 15 weeks, it was a huge relief and a very emotional moment."

...

Mrs Vignes gave birth to the couple's second child, their son Ellis, four months ago. Despite fears that the phenomenon would recur, the delivery at Waterford Regional Hospital, where Maisy was cared for, was problem-free.
She said: "I was surrounded by doctors in the delivery suite because everyone was terrified it would happen again. As it turned out, Ellis was born perfectly healthy, a week overdue.

"As far as I know, there have been no other cases like Maisy's recorded anywhere in the world. She's become the subject of lectures and journal articles, and all the doctors ask about her when we go back into hospital.
"She's an amazing little girl and we're so happy together as a family. We don't plan to have any more children for the time being - we've been through quite enough."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/child ... chool.html
 
Frankly amazing!

Mrs Vignes, who is married to Mook, 31, a graphic designer...
Click to expand...

Mooksta, is that you?
 
'Groundhog Day' student trapped in bizarre déjà vu time loop for 8 years
A 23-year-old British man has become the victim one of the strangest cases of déjà vu ever recorded in medical history

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The astronomical clock from the town hall in Old Town Square, Prague Photo: © Iain Masterton / Alamy
By Sarah Knapton, Science Editor
10:21AM GMT 20 Jan 2015

A student was forced to drop out of university after a bizarre case of chronic déjà vu left him unable to lead a normal life.
The 23-year-old even stopped watching TV, listening to the radio, or reading newspapers or magazines because he believed he had seen it all before.
He told doctors that he was "trapped in a time loop" and said he felt as if he was reliving the past moment by moment.

Details of the case have been revealed in a report published by the Journal of Medical Case Reports.
Doctors are baffled because the man does not suffer from any of the neurological conditions usually seen in people who normally suffer frequently from déjà vu - which is French for "already seen".
It is thought that panic attacks may have triggered the phenomenon. The condition may also have been exacerbated by LSD.

Report author Dr Christine Wells, a psychology expert from Sheffield Hallam University, said it could be the first case of a person experiencing persistent déjà vu stemming from anxiety.
Although most people experience occasional feelings of déjà vu, more frequent and intense forms are usually only seen in people who have seizures in the temporal lobe, a condition called temporal lobe epilepsy.
However brain scans showed no sign of seizures or neurological conditons. The man also underwent a series of psychological tests to check his memory which failed to show any major issues either.

The student, who has not been named, first complained of symptoms of déjà vu early 2007, shortly after starting university.
He had a history of feeling anxious, particularly a fear of germs, which led him to wash his hands very frequently and to shower two to three times per day.
But his anxiety worsened when he began university. Anxiety and low mood led him to take a break from his studies, and he then began experiencing déjà vu.

The early episodes sometimes lasted only for minutes, but other attacks could be extremely prolonged, the case study reveals.
For example, while on holiday in a destination that he had previously visited he reported feeling as though he had become 'trapped in a time loop'.
He reported finding these experiences very frightening. He returned to university in 2007 and he described the déjà vu episodes as becoming more intense.
In 2008, he was referred to specialists for neurological examination. Tests for epilepsy were normal and he was treated with a range of medications.

etc...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/sci...in-bizarre-deja-vu-time-loop-for-8-years.html
 
I actually suspect that things like this are very common when extreme anxiety, for want of a better word, is involved.

Probably not documented because psychiatrists tend to ignore anything the patient says that doesn't fit into their world view.
 
OneWingedBird said:
I actually suspect that things like this are very common when extreme anxiety, for want of a better word, is involved.

Probably not documented because psychiatrists tend to ignore anything the patient says that doesn't fit into their world view.
Click to expand...
If it's not in ICD10 or DSMV it isn't recognised.
 
My Grandad had a very similar thing when he was in early stages of Alzheimer's.

He'd always had a rubbish memory, but after he was diagnosed he gave up reading the paper or watching TV as he was absolutely convinced he'd read or watched them before.
 
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