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Medical Mysteries, Bizarre Cases

That's a WTF! :eek:
Her head grew normally, but everything else stayed baby-sized.
Really sad.
 
'I thought I didn't have to eat, because I was dead': Soldier was left a 'walking corpse' after an 18th century medical condition convinced him he was a ZOMBIE
  • Married father-of-two Warren McKinlay began starving himself to death
  • Soldier from Essex, 35, he believed he was already dead and a 'ghost'
  • Cured after meeting a British soldier who also had Cotard's syndrome
  • Sufferers believe they are dead, or parts of their body no longer exist


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...condition-convinced-ZOMBIE.html#ixzz4RajrNaZ3
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Love it how nobody not even Psychiatrists, (apart from a handful), had ever heard of Cotards 15 years ago. Now it's in the Daily Mail. I'm drawing up a list of even more obscure early 20th century syndromes to make it to the pages of the tabloid press.
 
'I thought I didn't have to eat, because I was dead': Soldier was left a 'walking corpse' after an 18th century medical condition convinced him he was a ZOMBIE
  • Married father-of-two Warren McKinlay began starving himself to death
  • Soldier from Essex, 35, he believed he was already dead and a 'ghost'
  • Cured after meeting a British soldier who also had Cotard's syndrome
  • Sufferers believe they are dead, or parts of their body no longer exist


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...condition-convinced-ZOMBIE.html#ixzz4RajrNaZ3
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Although it is fairly uncommon to rare at the moment. It has a really narcissistic component to it and I expect to see lots more in this age of selfies, twitter, etc.
 
Although it is fairly uncommon to rare at the moment. It has a really narcissistic component to it and I expect to see lots more in this age of selfies, twitter, etc.

I'd put it on the OCD spectrum as it doesn't respond well to anti-psychotics.

You heard it here first kids.
 
Yesterday I discovered a slight pain to the right of my right eye. Looking in the mirror I could sees a slight bruise there, and the eye itself was slightly red. Yet I couldn't remember getting a bang that would have caused it.

Today it looks worse! There's a reddish-purple bruise above the eye, mostly over the upper eyelid, but not reaching the eyebrow, and there's also a bruise below the eye at the top of my cheek. What could cause a bruise like that? I don't recall any recent fall or walking into a cupboard door, etc. The last fall I remember was almost 3 weeks ago
( http://forum.forteantimes.com/index...-death-approaches.25458/page-112#post-1637558 )
and there was no black eye after that!

Whatever the cause, it seems to have erased any memory of it...
 
Yesterday I discovered a slight pain to the right of my right eye. Looking in the mirror I could sees a slight bruise there, and the eye itself was slightly red. Yet I couldn't remember getting a bang that would have caused it.

Today it looks worse! There's a reddish-purple bruise above the eye, mostly over the upper eyelid, but not reaching the eyebrow, and there's also a bruise below the eye at the top of my cheek. What could cause a bruise like that? I don't recall any recent fall or walking into a cupboard door, etc. The last fall I remember was almost 3 weeks ago
( http://forum.forteantimes.com/index...-death-approaches.25458/page-112#post-1637558 )
and there was no black eye after that!

Whatever the cause, it seems to have erased any memory of it...
Might be an insect bite.
Get it checked out.
 
Might be an insect bite.
Get it checked out.
Not many insects around at this time of year.

Also there are quite a few spiders here...

...perhaps it's a bite from a poisonous spider! :eek:
 
Not many insects around at this time of year.

Also there are quite a few spiders here...

...perhaps it's a bite from a poisonous spider! :eek:
Happens.
 
It certainly does - we've had a few false widow spiders this year.
 
:eek: Just :eek::eek:

A sixteen-year-old girl went into surgery to have her appendix removed - only to find a miniature brain growing inside a tumour on her ovary.

The child from Japan - who has not been identified - left doctors baffled when they found the 10cm-wide tumour, containing a 3cm-wide brain, and clumps of greasy matter hair, all covered by a thin plate of skull bone.


Upon closer inspection, it was found to be a smaller version of a cerebellum - which usually sits underneath the brain's two hemispheres, the Daily Mail reports.

The extraordinary case was revealed last week in a study released by Nara Medical University in Japan.

The tumour was removed three months later and she is recovering well.

NZ Herald
 
She had her brain removed? How awful.
 
This is a bizarre, even unique case:
Canadian woman survives six days without lungs while waiting for transplant
Nick Allen, Washington
28 January 2017 • 1:38pm

A Canadian woman's life has been saved in an unprecedented operation which saw doctors removing her lungs for six days while she waited for a transplant.
Melissa Benoit, 32, who was born with cystic fibrosis, had a severe bacterial lung infection and was dying when she was admitted to Toronto General Hospital.
Both of her lungs were taken out and a small portable, artificial lung was connected to her heart.

A team of 13 operating staff, including three thoracic surgeons, took part in the efforts to remove Mrs Benoit's organs in a procedure which took nine hours.
The risks included bleeding into an empty chest cavity, whether her blood pressure and oxygen levels could be supported afterwards, and whether she would survive the operation.

After her lungs were removed Mrs Benoit's condition stabilised and a pair of donor lungs became available six days later, at which point she received the transplant.
Mrs Benoit, a mother-of-one, said: "Having this transplant saved my life. If I didn't have it I would have died," she said.
"I wouldn't be here to see my daughter grow up, I wouldn't be here to grow old with my husband. These are things that I want so badly in life and I wouldn't have made it."

Surgeon Dr Shaf Keshavjee said: "This was bold and very challenging but Melissa was dying before our eyes.
"We had to make a decision because Melissa was going to die that night. Melissa gave us the courage to go-ahead."

The operation took place in April 2016 but was only publicised nine months later.
Her family said Mrs Benoit had often told them she would want to try everything possible to live for her husband Christopher and two-year-old daughter Olivia.

Thoracic surgeon Dr Marcelo Cypel said: "Her new lungs functioned beautifully and inflated easily. Perfect." :)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...es-six-days-without-lungs-waiting-transplant/


 
Head transplant...

http://www.itv.com/news/2016-09-20/...e-for-a-better-life-and-to-evolve-technology/

So many questions…!?

For a start, where do you get a living healthy donor body willing to be decapitated for the recipient head to be stitched to…!?

More here:

The Audacious Plan to Save This Man’s Life by Transplanting His Head - What would happen if it actually works?

Like a little white Lazarus with red eyes, the paralyzed mouse was walking again.

A few days earlier, the mouse had been sprawled on an operating table while two Chinese graduate students peered through a microscope and operated on its spine. With a tiny pair of scissors, they removed the top half of a fingernail-thin vertebra, exposing a gleaming patch of spinal-cord tissue. It looked like a Rothko, a clean ivory rectangle bisected by a red line. Cautiously—the mouse occasionally twitched—they snipped the red line (an artery) and tied it off. Then one student reached for a $1,000 scalpel with a diamond blade so thin that it was transparent. With a quick slice of the spinal cord, the mouse’s back legs were rendered forever useless.

Or they would have been, except that the other student immediately doused the wound with a faintly amber fluid, like the last drop of watered-down scotch. The fluid contained a chemical called polyethylene glycol, or peg, and as the students stitched the mouse back up, the chemical began to stitch the animal’s nerve cells back together.

Two days later, the mouse was walking. Not perfectly—its back legs lurched at times. But compared with a control mouse nearby—which had undergone the same surgery, minus the peg, and was now dragging its dead back legs behind itself—it puttered around brilliantly, sniffing every corner of its cage.

If peg ever proves effective in humans, it will be a near-miraculous therapy: Despite spending many millions of dollars on research over the past century, doctors have no way to repair damaged spinal cords. But that’s not the only reason the man directing this research—a surgeon in Harbin, China, named Xiaoping Ren—has been garnering attention in scientific circles.

Repairing spinal cords is just one part of a larger, much more audacious project that Ren and a surgeon in Italy are leading. Clues to their plan can be seen on the walls of Ren’s lab. Had the mouse on the operating table raised its red eyes, it would have seen three seemingly unrelated posters. The first shows two mice: a black mouse with a white head and a white mouse with a black head. The second shows a monkey with thick zigzag stitches circling its neck, like a choker necklace. The third shows a tiny Russian man in a wheelchair.

The common connection is their heads. The half-black/half-white mice look Photoshopped, but in fact Ren’s team surgically switched their heads, decapitating each mouse and grafting its head onto the body of the other. The monkey poster is the “after” shot of a primate head transplant performed in Ren’s lab in January. And now Ren is preparing to perform a head transplant on another primate, a human being—and the Russian in the wheelchair has volunteered to go first.


CONTINUED HERE:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...s-mans-life-by-transplanting-his-head/492755/
 
More here:

The Audacious Plan to Save This Man’s Life by Transplanting His Head - What would happen if it actually works?

Like a little white Lazarus with red eyes, the paralyzed mouse was walking again.

A few days earlier, the mouse had been sprawled on an operating table while two Chinese graduate students peered through a microscope and operated on its spine. With a tiny pair of scissors, they removed the top half of a fingernail-thin vertebra, exposing a gleaming patch of spinal-cord tissue. It looked like a Rothko, a clean ivory rectangle bisected by a red line. Cautiously—the mouse occasionally twitched—they snipped the red line (an artery) and tied it off. Then one student reached for a $1,000 scalpel with a diamond blade so thin that it was transparent. With a quick slice of the spinal cord, the mouse’s back legs were rendered forever useless.

Or they would have been, except that the other student immediately doused the wound with a faintly amber fluid, like the last drop of watered-down scotch. The fluid contained a chemical called polyethylene glycol, or peg, and as the students stitched the mouse back up, the chemical began to stitch the animal’s nerve cells back together.

Two days later, the mouse was walking. Not perfectly—its back legs lurched at times. But compared with a control mouse nearby—which had undergone the same surgery, minus the peg, and was now dragging its dead back legs behind itself—it puttered around brilliantly, sniffing every corner of its cage.

If peg ever proves effective in humans, it will be a near-miraculous therapy: Despite spending many millions of dollars on research over the past century, doctors have no way to repair damaged spinal cords. But that’s not the only reason the man directing this research—a surgeon in Harbin, China, named Xiaoping Ren—has been garnering attention in scientific circles.

Repairing spinal cords is just one part of a larger, much more audacious project that Ren and a surgeon in Italy are leading. Clues to their plan can be seen on the walls of Ren’s lab. Had the mouse on the operating table raised its red eyes, it would have seen three seemingly unrelated posters. The first shows two mice: a black mouse with a white head and a white mouse with a black head. The second shows a monkey with thick zigzag stitches circling its neck, like a choker necklace. The third shows a tiny Russian man in a wheelchair.

The common connection is their heads. The half-black/half-white mice look Photoshopped, but in fact Ren’s team surgically switched their heads, decapitating each mouse and grafting its head onto the body of the other. The monkey poster is the “after” shot of a primate head transplant performed in Ren’s lab in January. And now Ren is preparing to perform a head transplant on another primate, a human being—and the Russian in the wheelchair has volunteered to go first.


CONTINUED HERE:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...s-mans-life-by-transplanting-his-head/492755/

Poor mice :(
 
PEG is used as a wood preservative and also as a laxative. And now a way of fixing severed nerves?
:huh:
 
When a bark-like wart grew on 10-year-old Sahana Khatun's face four months ago, her father was not worried.

But after they began to spread, he became more concerned, travelling south from his village to the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka to get medical help.

Now doctors fear Sahana may be the first female to ever be afflicted by so-called "tree man syndrome".

If their diagnosis is right, she becomes one of a tiny group worldwide with epidermodysplasia verruciformis.

It is a rare genetic disease that produces scaly, bark-like growths which particularly affect the hands and feet.

Only a few people - all men - are thought to have the disease....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-38810723?ocid=socialflow_twitter
 
I find epidermodysplasia verruciformis endlessly fascinating. I just want to pick at it.
 
PEG is used as a wood preservative and also as a laxative. And now a way of fixing severed nerves?
:huh:

Reportedly this is because of the biochemical universality of Polyethylene glycol's excipient characteristics.

An excipient is a substance formulated alongside the active ingredient of a medication, included for the purpose of long-term stabilization, bulking up solid formulations that contain potent active ingredients (thus often referred to as "bulking agents", "fillers", or "diluents"), or to confer a therapeutic enhancement on the active ingredient in the final dosage form, such as facilitating drug absorption, reducing viscosity, or enhancing solubility

So it's a channel-enhancing nanoscopic cell-splicer.

From within the main text of the head-swap article:

Cells within the spinal cord don’t grow back, but chemicals such as peg (PEG) can fuse cells, breaking open their membranes and forcing them to glom together into a larger, hybrid cell.
 
Solving this medical mystery required attention to more than pathology testing, biochemistry, etc. It seems to be that a specific pattern of eating behavior was the missing puzzle piece needed to explain this recurring, and recurrently fatal, children's illness.

Deadly Fruit: Cause of Mysterious Brain Illness in India is Found

The mystery of why hundreds of children in an Indian city become sick every summer with a deadly brain illness has been solved, researchers say.

According to a new report, the cause of the illness appears to be the lychee fruit, which is grown widely in orchards in the city of Muzaffarpur, where the illnesses occur. Critically, the children who get sick often eat the fruit on an empty stomach, which contributes to the development of the illness, the researchers said. ...

Since 1995, there have been reports of children in Muzaffarpur suddenly falling ill and having seizures, usually in the morning hours, according to The New York Times. Often these children would slip into a coma, and about 40 percent died, the Times said. Outbreaks of these illnesses usually begin in mid-May and end in July, around the same time that lychee fruits are harvested.

Despite many earlier investigations, researchers struggled to confirm the cause of these illnesses.

In the new study, the researchers analyzed nearly 400 cases of children who developed this mysterious brain illness in 2014, and compared these cases with about 100 children who didn't have this illness.

An analysis of blood and spinal fluid samples from the children with the brain illness showed that the children did not have signs of an infection, nor were they exposed to pesticides. But most of these children had consumed lychee fruit shortly before becoming ill. In fact, the results showed that children with the brain illness were nearly 10 times more likely to have eaten lychee, and six times more likely to have visited a fruit orchard, in the 24 hours before they became ill, compared with children who didn't develop the illness.

What's more, a study of urine samples showed that two-thirds of the sick children had evidence of exposure to two toxins found in lychee seeds called hypoglycin and methylenecyclopropyl glycine. These toxins are found in higher levels in unripe fruit.

Because many people can eat lychee fruit and not become sick, the researchers suspected that another factor was involved: eating the fruit on an empty stomach.

Results showed that children who developed the brain illness were twice as likely to have skipped their dinner, compared with those who didn't develop the illness. Many of the sick children had very low blood sugar levels, and other signs of problems with their metabolism.

The researchers said that when children skipped their evening meal, their blood sugar levels dropped. When this happens, the body would normally start to metabolize fatty acids to produce glucose. But toxins from the lychees disrupted the metabolism of fatty acids, leading to extremely low blood sugar levels and brain inflammation in the children, the researchers said.

The need for these two events to occur together could explain why only some children in the area developed the illness, even though many children ate the fruit. ...


SOURCE: http://www.livescience.com/57709-lychee-brain-illness-children-india.html
 
Incidentally, can anyone recommend a good book on bizarre illnesses and ailments?
 
This brave mum is having surgery because her skull is too small for her brain
By CturnerHerald | Posted: February 22, 2017
Video:

Lucy Phillips was just 26 years old when she was told she had a rare condition which means her brain is too big for her skull.
Over the past two years, she has undergone several surgeries in the hope of relieving the excruciating pressure building up in the base of her brain and spine, but nothing has yet worked.

The now 29-year-old is hoping to raise awareness of her condition, Chiari malformation, which is where the lower part of the brain pushes down into the spinal canal putting pressure on the brainstem, spinal cord, and obstructing the flow of fluid.

Lucy began getting shooting pains in her body and became increasingly tired – she had thought she was overworked having just opened her own salon, Purity, in Plympton.

Doctors put it down to sciatica and gave her a prescription for diazepam, but she began deteriorating and was sent for an MRI scan.

The mum of two said: "Doctors thought I had MS after the scans as I had similar symptoms.
"It got worse and worse, I had tiredness, it felt like someone was stabbing me and as if spiders were running over me. There was constant ringing in my ears and I always had a thumping headache.
"Then a neurologist said they were confident I didn't have MS but no one really knew much about Chiara malformation – my GP gave me a leaflet and told me the signs and symptoms of the condition would go away within a few weeks.
"My nerve endings were being blocked because the tonsils of my brain were pushing into my spinal chord which gave me intense pressure behind my eyes and in my head."

It took eight months for specialists to find out what was happening to Lucy, and she was finally put into the care of Mr Hayden, the consultant neurologist at Derriford Hospital.

"No one had answers; I was scared and wouldn't let my children see me poorly – I wouldn't want them to remember me in that state," the young business owner added.

Lucy's first surgery was decompression where the back of her skull was opened – surgeons removed the muscles under neath her brain and chiselled a 50p piece out of her skull to allow for her brain to sit further up rather than pushing down on her spine.
After the seven hour procedure, Lucy stayed in hospital for a week with a drip in the back of her brain.

She had thought the major surgery had worked – but she began to get a build up of spinal fluid, meaning she would need further operations and investigations to relieve the pressure.
Lucy then had three lumbar punctures at the base of her spine to drain the excess fluid, but they were unsuccessful.

The Plympton resident was re-admitted to Derriford for a two day inter cranial test on February 19. Lucy had a hole drilled into the top of her skull and a wire threaded into her brain to monitor the pressure, which was thirty to fifty times higher than a regular person's when she moved her head.

Lucy was told the condition would have formed she was a foetus, and that type one Chiari malformation symptoms don't usually show until late teens up to 30s.
Lucy said: "A lot of things make sense now - when I was a teen in the navy I would have back spasms and couldn't move, but I never got my head scanned.
"During both of my pregnancies with Oscar and Charles I was poorly but no one knew what was wrong.
"It [Chiari malformation] can be passed down – it is a bit of a concern. Oscar has had a scan but has no signs yet and doctors are pretty confident he doesn't have it.

"It does affect our home life and the children ask why I'm always poorly.
"My body wont let me do little things anymore and I can't function in the mornings – I get up super early so I can at least say morning to them."

Lucy will find out on March 1 when her next surgery will be; she is due to have an invasive lumbar– peritoneal shunt where a tube will be inserted behind her ear, fed down her spinal chord and into her stomach.
Consultants hope this will finally relieve the pressure in Lucy's brain long term – but it will take her between three and six months to recover from the major op.

Now, the brave mum of two is hoping to raise awareness of the rare condition and has urged people to carry on and not give up in finding the right help.
Lucy praises the Ann Conroy Trust for helping her through her diagnoses – they were there to answer her phone calls, explain medical terms from hospital letters and give guidance about the condition which she hadn't been able to find elsewhere.
Lucy and staff at her salon in Ridgeway raised over £1,200 for the charity who put the funds back into helping those living with the brain malformation.

Lucy says the support she has received from friends and family has been amazing, and has thanked the girls at her salon for keeping it open in her absence.

Read more at http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/ply...0152874-detail/story.html#Ug9qPybQhPcehmtY.99

http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/ply...or-her-brain/story-30152874-detail/story.html
 
Yesterday I read about a baby boy who has something like this. He had lots of operations and is now thriving, bless him.
 
This brave mum is having surgery because her skull is too small for her brain
By CturnerHerald | Posted: February 22, 2017
Video:

Lucy Phillips was just 26 years old when she was told she had a rare condition which means her brain is too big for her skull.
Over the past two years, she has undergone several surgeries in the hope of relieving the excruciating pressure building up in the base of her brain and spine, but nothing has yet worked.

The now 29-year-old is hoping to raise awareness of her condition, Chiari malformation, which is where the lower part of the brain pushes down into the spinal canal putting pressure on the brainstem, spinal cord, and obstructing the flow of fluid.

Lucy began getting shooting pains in her body and became increasingly tired – she had thought she was overworked having just opened her own salon, Purity, in Plympton.

Doctors put it down to sciatica and gave her a prescription for diazepam, but she began deteriorating and was sent for an MRI scan.

The mum of two said: "Doctors thought I had MS after the scans as I had similar symptoms.
"It got worse and worse, I had tiredness, it felt like someone was stabbing me and as if spiders were running over me. There was constant ringing in my ears and I always had a thumping headache.
"Then a neurologist said they were confident I didn't have MS but no one really knew much about Chiara malformation – my GP gave me a leaflet and told me the signs and symptoms of the condition would go away within a few weeks.
"My nerve endings were being blocked because the tonsils of my brain were pushing into my spinal chord which gave me intense pressure behind my eyes and in my head."

It took eight months for specialists to find out what was happening to Lucy, and she was finally put into the care of Mr Hayden, the consultant neurologist at Derriford Hospital.

"No one had answers; I was scared and wouldn't let my children see me poorly – I wouldn't want them to remember me in that state," the young business owner added.

Lucy's first surgery was decompression where the back of her skull was opened – surgeons removed the muscles under neath her brain and chiselled a 50p piece out of her skull to allow for her brain to sit further up rather than pushing down on her spine.
After the seven hour procedure, Lucy stayed in hospital for a week with a drip in the back of her brain.

She had thought the major surgery had worked – but she began to get a build up of spinal fluid, meaning she would need further operations and investigations to relieve the pressure.
Lucy then had three lumbar punctures at the base of her spine to drain the excess fluid, but they were unsuccessful.

The Plympton resident was re-admitted to Derriford for a two day inter cranial test on February 19. Lucy had a hole drilled into the top of her skull and a wire threaded into her brain to monitor the pressure, which was thirty to fifty times higher than a regular person's when she moved her head.

Lucy was told the condition would have formed she was a foetus, and that type one Chiari malformation symptoms don't usually show until late teens up to 30s.
Lucy said: "A lot of things make sense now - when I was a teen in the navy I would have back spasms and couldn't move, but I never got my head scanned.
"During both of my pregnancies with Oscar and Charles I was poorly but no one knew what was wrong.
"It [Chiari malformation] can be passed down – it is a bit of a concern. Oscar has had a scan but has no signs yet and doctors are pretty confident he doesn't have it.

"It does affect our home life and the children ask why I'm always poorly.
"My body wont let me do little things anymore and I can't function in the mornings – I get up super early so I can at least say morning to them."

Lucy will find out on March 1 when her next surgery will be; she is due to have an invasive lumbar– peritoneal shunt where a tube will be inserted behind her ear, fed down her spinal chord and into her stomach.
Consultants hope this will finally relieve the pressure in Lucy's brain long term – but it will take her between three and six months to recover from the major op.

Now, the brave mum of two is hoping to raise awareness of the rare condition and has urged people to carry on and not give up in finding the right help.
Lucy praises the Ann Conroy Trust for helping her through her diagnoses – they were there to answer her phone calls, explain medical terms from hospital letters and give guidance about the condition which she hadn't been able to find elsewhere.
Lucy and staff at her salon in Ridgeway raised over £1,200 for the charity who put the funds back into helping those living with the brain malformation.

Lucy says the support she has received from friends and family has been amazing, and has thanked the girls at her salon for keeping it open in her absence.

Read more at http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/ply...0152874-detail/story.html#Ug9qPybQhPcehmtY.99

http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/ply...or-her-brain/story-30152874-detail/story.html

Weird I actually know a guy with this condition.
 
Weird I actually know a guy with this condition.

I think I might have met someone with that in the 80s, he had a very strangely flat head, in the sideways dimension, that he was waiting for an operation for... never really asked him about it.
 
I think I might have met someone with that in the 80s, he had a very strangely flat head, in the sideways dimension, that he was waiting for an operation for... never really asked him about it.

The guy I know looks normal,. he just suddenly started passing out and was eventually scanned. They are still looking at options.
 
The guy I know looks normal,. he just suddenly started passing out and was eventually scanned. They are still looking at options.
Trepanning would sort that out.
 
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