Weird news - Woman dies after wrong blood transfusion

Blood transfusion is a very common medical procedure, and needed for a host of services. Whether during an operation, or after an accident, or for numerous other such cases, blood transfusion is critical. However, blood is of several different types, and the body will reject blood of a different type. Hence, when going in for a blood transfusion, it is highly critical that the right blood type be selected. In this, there are some variables, some blood types are more common than the others, and some blood types can be used by others while others cannot be used - so there are terms such as universal donor, and universal recipient. However, given how routine blood transfusions are, everybody involved in this business knows what is involved and there is very little chance of error. So when an error happens, it is strange, and also deadly, such as this case in India (link to article):

45-year-old Sukanti Nayak of Hadabandhasahi locality in old town area was admitted to the medicine ward of the district headquarters hospital here yesterday afternoon and doctors advised her one unit of blood, hospital sources said. Acting as per the doctor's advice, the patient's husband Birendra Nayak went to fetch a unit of 'O' group blood from the blood bank in the hospital premises, they said. However, the laboratory technician at the blood bank allegedly handed over a packet of 'A' group blood which was administered to the woman by a staff nurse, they said, adding that the patient died after a short while last night.

Weird news - Parents of 3 year girl with huge tumor arrested

Any kind of illness in a child can scare a parent and cause them to take all kinds of action. The minimum would be to see a doctor and figure out what kind of treatment. This would happen even if the parents are busy, or if the weather or bad, or something similar. The care and concern shown by parents is something that is supreme. This is something that is present in a vast majority of parents, so it always seems weird when you see a parent who apparently does not show concern for their children. And given that children are incapable of looking after themselves, it is the responsibility of the parents to take care of their children, and if it seems that they are not really doing so, they will face criminal charges for not taking care of them. The children can also be taken away and kept in foster homes where atleast they will get better care.
In this case, authorities in a town in Oklahoma were called to a camper home where they found a 3 year old girl with a 17-pound tumor, and who died soon after being admitted to hospital. Now, a tumor can be deadly and fatal, but it does not happen suddenly. Tumors develop and get bigger over a period of time, and in any normal case, the parents would have been frantic with worry, getting medical attention for the girl. The tumor may have been treatable or may not have been, but atleast the child would have had a chance, except the lack of attention meant that she did not have a chance. And which is why the parents will face manslaughter charges (link to article):

The parents of a 3-year-old Oklahoma girl who died from cancer and had a 17-pound tumor face manslaughter charges for allegedly failing to provide medical care. Authorities in Lawton were called Jan. 3 to a camper home near Lake Lawtonka on Oklahoma State Highway 58, the Lawton Constitution reported. The child was unconscious but breathing when responders arrived. She was taken to a hospital where she died. The state medical examiner found the child had cancer. Comanche County Sheriff Kenny Stradley said she had a 17-pound tumor, although it was not immediately clear exactly where the tumor was located.

Weird news - Pakistani children paralyzed at night

Whenever we think that we have learned a lot about our body and what could be impacting it, we come up with something new that tells us that there is a lot to learn about maladies and the functioning of the human body. So, for example, we have learnt how to dramatically extend the life duration for somebody afflicted with AIDS or with many different types of cancers.
What happens when somebody gets afflicted with a malady for which doctors are not able to provide any help. Family members are clueless about what to do, and depending on the society they are based in, they may try to get faith help or help from outside the medical system. This happened to a couple of boys in Pakistan, who were getting called 'solar' kids because they were active during the day but went into a sort of paralytic state when the sun went down (link to article):

The ‘solar kids’ who are being treated for an illness which leaves them paralysed by sunset each day might be suffering from a neuro transmitter deficiency, said vice chancellor of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) Dr Javed Akram, who also chaired a meeting of a medical board called to discuss the children’s case. “In simple words, neuro transmitters in the brain have been disturbed. A similar case was reported in Japan and was named JPA, but that disease occurs in both male and female children. However, our experiences in Pakistan indicate that this case only occurs in male children and we are considering giving the disease a new name,” he added.

Weird news - Living with a needle in the ass for years

Once in a while, you will read a report about somebody having a medical examination and then having something removed from their body that was foreign to the body and yet was present there for years and years. It seems most unlikely, after all, how can something be present in the body for so many years and not come out, or not even be able to feel that foreign object in the body and so on. And yet there are cases where a person has got a bullet in their body for years and even decades and it was fine, until one day when it started causing problems and has to be removed. In this case, a person had a needle in their ass and after decades, the needle finally started causing problems and had to be removed (link to article):

Kiran Kumar, from Malayankeezhu in Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram, has been living with a sewing needle in his rear for the last 22 years. Kiran, now 34 years old, had gotten the needle pierced inside when he was in the sixth grade after he sat on it. It seems he was taken to a hospital then, but the doctors weren't able to find the needle. Nor did he undergo any further check up because there was no pain or discomfort. But two weeks ago, after 22 long years, Kiran felt immense pain in his rear and went to a private hospital for check up from where he was referred to Thiruvananthapuram medical college hospital. Doctors there found that the needle is the cause of pain and swelling and understood it was one and half inches deep inside his body. They couldn't find the exact location then.

Weird news - Cigarettes containing all sorts of stuff, including shit

You might have heard of defective medicines, those which are fakes made by those looking to make some quick money. A lot of these are sold over the internet, and are also sold in countries where the regulatory and law enforcement standards are a bit lax. If this seems horrible, see how this sounds. Imagine smoking cigarettes that contain all sorts of items such as human excrement, mould, or asbestos. Now, the manufacturer of cigarettes are not responsible for the addition of these items, they are only responsible for the normal addition of nicotine and tobacco, which can cause a number of health problems.
These come into cigarettes based on the manufacture of fake cigarettes, as per a study in Great Britain where analysis of cigarettes based on the stubs and packets found in rubbish bins found that as much as 30% of cigarettes are fake, and are more dangerous than normal cigarettes (link to article):

The survey in Birmingham by MS Intelligence, a Swiss-based brand protection company, found that 30.9 per cent of packets were either bogus or purchased abroad. The UK Border Agency has also intercepted items containing asbestos, mould and human excrement. A haul in Derbyshire found cigarettes made from the remains of crushed flies.

Weird news - Man dies after his penis is injected with silicone

The length of the male sexual organ is something that drives a large amount of spam on the internet, and is actually a huge part of the self-esteem of a large number of males. People will do all kinds of treatments to increase the length of the male organ, and this is something that is fraught with danger. The penis, the male organ, is very sensitive, and is a center for pain as well, so any mis-step in this area can be very dangerous.
Taking medicines or any other medical treatment is a dangerous step if you are not sure of the credentials of the person who is doing it, such as this case where young male got his penis injected with a silicone implant, and it was this implant that was the cause of death (link to article):

Authorities have filed homicide charges against a woman after she allegedly administered a silicone injection into the penis of a 22-year-old man, who suffered a fatal blood clot.
The victim, who died in May, had been seeking a penis enhancement, authorities said today.
Kasia Rivera, 34, of East Orange, was arrested today on manslaughter charges and unauthorized practice of medicine in the death of Justin Street, the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office said.

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Weird news - Hot chilli contest causes hospitalization of contestants

There are always people who like to think that they can handle all sorts of situations, and then end up in trouble that other people have to handle. And we are not talking about the hikers who end up lost and have to be evacuated by rangers from some isolated site and so on. In this specific case, the situation was that a contest was arranged where it could be said that things would turn nasty.
So, consider a case where a contest was arranged for something that most people would stay away from; namely dishes in the form of curries where the amount of spice was such that it would affect most people. People who took part suffered a great deal due to the dangerous nature of the curries, with even the Red Cross people standing by unable to provide help. External emergency services were required, along with hospitalization (link to article):

Two people have been taken to hospital following the "world's hottest chilli" competition at an Edinburgh Indian restaurant.
Emergency services were called to the Kismot restaurant in St Leonards Street on Saturday afternoon after some competitors became "very unwell".
The competition involves people eating the "Kismot Killer" curry.
The Scottish Ambulance Service is now calling for a review into how the event is managed.

Weird news - Getting infected due to a kidney donation, even after checking

Being affected by a kidney problem can be a severe issue, especially since it requires frequent attention and medical treatment. Getting replacement kidneys can be quite a problem, since there are long waiting lines for organ donation and there are also issues with regard to the body accepting the replacement organ. Also, based on previous cases where the replacement organ could be coming from a body / cadaver that had some sort of communicable disease, there is a check for some of the more common diseases before the transplant takes place.
But, one wonders about what can happen in the below case ? Here, when the donor (who was a living person) was checked for diseases, the person checked out fine. But, after the transplant took place, it was found that the recipient was suffering from AIDS, and investigation revealed that the transplanted organ was in fact responsible for the disease (link to article):

In 2009, a patient with hemodialysis-dependent kidney failure was given a new kidney from a living donor at a New York City hospital - known in the report as "Hospital A". There was no trace of any STIs (sexually transmitted infections) in the individual's medical history, neither was there any history of high-risk activity, such as injection drug use or sexual encounters with injection drug users.
The patient had received blood transfusions in 2006, but none before that date. 12 days before the transplantation procedure started, the recipient tested negative for HIV. After the operation the patient went through multiple hospitalizations, fevers, episodes of renal insufficiency, and evaluation of possible transplanted organ rejection. The recipient did not take part in any behaviors which might have increased his/her risk of becoming infected with HIV.

Weird news - A girl in the US being treated for eating soap multiple times a week

There are a number of people in the world who eat very strange things, such as the performers who come on TV who eat things such as tube lights, etc. And it is a normal concept in books where children who use abusive language or swear words are told to wash their mouth out by soap by their parents. The taste of soap must not be very nice, which is one of the reasons why the washing out of the mouth by soap must be encouraged.
So, how is that a normal girl eats soap 5 days a week, and which is now being treated by doctors (she also apparently eats washing powder, with a funny reaction being that her body must be very clean with all the soap and washing powder that she is eating) (link to article):

Tempestt Henderson, from Florida, eats up to five bars of soap a week and washing powder as well, the Daily Mail reported here. According to doctors, the toxic compulsion is a rare medical condition, PICA, which causes an appetite for substances that are largely non-nutritive.
People suffering form PICA have been known to compulsively eat metal, coins, chalk, batteries and toothbrushes. It can often be caused by a mineral deficiency, which explains why pregnant women often crave eating coal when needing iron. The doctor gave Tempestt intensive Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), to give her replacement thoughts that will prevent her from compulsively reaching for soap.

Weird news - 3 year old daughter goes to get rescue for collapsed dad, saves his life

How often can somebody expect that their 3 year old child can do something to save their life ? Seems a very difficult and chancy statement, but it happened in this case. You can train your children as much as possible, but whether it will ever work is a different matter altogether. And yet, when something like this happens, it seems remarkable. Consider the following case where the 3 year old daughter managed to recognize that her father was in danger due to some wrong medicines, and went to the nearby fire station, and got quick help for her dad. Something really remarkable, and validates all the teaching that the daughter got about how to get help in times of need (link to article):

Frank Tafoya told CNN affiliate KOVR that he "took a mixture of medication I wasn't supposed to at the time -- a bed-time dose -- and I guess I collapsed." Alesaundra did exactly what she was taught -- walking two blocks to reach Fire Station 243, a firehouse the family passes daily.
Once there, she told firefighters that her dad was "frozen" and wouldn't wake up, according to KOVR. "I've been here over 20 years," Capt. Robert Villalovoz said. "It's the first time I've had a 3-year-old walk up to the fire station."

Weird news - Hospital operates on maid to remove nails hammered into her body by her Saudi employer

The Middle Eastern nations such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc depend on maids, servants, and workers from countries such as Sri Lanka, India, Phillipines, etc. The amounts that these workers can earn in these countries is fairly high as compared to their earnings in their home countries, but the working conditions are fairly restrictive. They really don't have too many rights in countries such as Saudi Arabia, with the employer family controlling their passports and visas, and any problem resulting quickly in imprisonment and deportation.
This situation leads to employers starting to feel that they can do anything with impunity, such as this case (link to article):

Doctors at a Sri Lankan hospital operated for three hours Friday to remove 18 nails and metal particles allegedly hammered into the arms, legs and forehead of a maid by her Saudi employer. Ariyawathie left Sri Lanka on March 25 to work as a housemaid in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia after the bureau registered her as a person obtaining a job from an officially recognized job agency.
She was held down by her employer's wife while the employer hammered the heated nails, Ruhunuge told CNN. She apparently had complained to the couple that she was being overworked, Ruhunuge said.
Several countries across the Middle East and Asia host significant numbers of migrant domestic workers, ranging from 196,000 in Singapore to about 1.5 million in Saudi Arabia, according to a report published earlier this year by Human Rights Watch. Many of the domestic workers are poor Asian women from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Nepal. Widespread abuse has been documented by global human rights groups. Common complaints include unpaid wages, long working hours with no time for rest, and heavy debt burdens from exorbitant recruitment fees, said the Human Rights Watch report.

Man whose penis remained stiff for 21 days - not because of any Viagra, but because of a medical problem

Viagra is a wonder drug that has helped a number of men and their relationships, in cases where the man has not been able to be sexually able to sustain the relationship. In most cultures, being sexually virile is always considered to be something that men should treasure, and something that makes them more attractive. However, consider the case where a man suffered a medical condition known as 'priapism', where the blood flow in the make organ was not able to flow out, and hence the person remained in a painful condition for as much as 21 days (link to article):

A 55-year-old Kolkata businessman found out what it would perhaps be like to have an overdose of Viagra. The father of two, ended up with a prolonged erection that lasted for — hold your breath — a full 21 days.
While for normal individuals, penile erection subsides once sexual excitement has ceased, victims of priapism fail to return to a normal state. Prolonged erection usually leads to a permanent damage to the penis and could even cause death. It has to be treated within six hours, but doctors in this case managed to save his life.

Man's lung problems caused by bits of plastic spoon

For some time now, there has been a constant push that fast food is not healthy, with its focus on sugars, fried food, and non-healthy ingredients. However, even if a person knew all that and accepted it, here is another way in which fast food affected a person.
A person had been feeling ill all these years, and when he finally got some investigations and expert medical advice, he found that it was a fragment of a plastic spoon that had finally ended up in his lungs that was causing him the ill-health (link to article):

His doctor found the spoon after looking into his lungs with an endoscope, a medical instrument with a long, thin tube containing a light and a video camera.
"He explained that there was an object down there, and it had writing on it," Manley said. "It spelled out 'Wendy's' on one side and 'hamburgers' on the other, and I was a little floored."

Weird news: Soldier dies after receiving cancerous lung transplant

Modern medical science enables people to survive diseases that would kill them even just a few decades back. We have modern medicine, treatments for cancer, and transplants. Specifically about transplants, there are many different types of transplants. So you have blood transfusions, heart transplants, lung transplants, liver, kidney, and so on. You can now even transfer limbs to people. In an ideal world, there will be enough donors to make sure that whoever needs a transplant for medical reasons gets one; however, this is not the case. It is not easy to get enough donor organs, and hence hospitals and people needing donors are pretty desperate. There was a case earlier where a patient got an organ from somebody who had a severe disease, and the patient died soon after. Here is another case (link to article):

A leading UK hospital has defended its practice of using organs donated by smokers after the death of a soldier who received the cancerous lungs of a heavy smoker.
Corporal Matthew Millington, 31, died at his home in 2008, less than a year after receiving a transplant that was supposed to save his life at Papworth Hospital -- the UK's largest specialist cardiothoracic hospital, in Cambridgeshire, east England.
Papworth Hospital released a statement saying using donor lungs from smokers was not "unusual."

Using a powerful magnet in a heart operation

When a patient's life is at stake, medical personnel can do anything, take any measure to save the life of the patient. Consider the case of a patient who suddenly finds himself in mortal danger because of a needle in their heart. While sleeping, this guy suddenly had a sharp sewing needle piercing his body and getting to the muscles around the heart, with the tip actually entering the heart. The danger was that if the needle got into the blood stream (it was only 4 cm long), it could move to other portions of the body, causing damage wherever it went (link to article):

Turning in his bed, he felt a sharp pinch on the left side of his chest. It was a needle that had pierced halfway into his heart. "I suddenly woke up and saw a small portion of the needle protruding from my chest. But as I bent forward to pull it out, the needle penetrated further in," said the Jammu resident.
With each contraction, the needle was sliding deep inside the heart. It is difficult to locate a thin 3-4 cm long needle in the huge chunk of muscles. We couldn't cut open the thick layer of muscles around the left ventricle, as it would have caused a lot of trauma to the heart. We decided to enter the heart through the usual procedure. We were lucky as the tip of the needle had pierced the wall of the left ventricle. When I peeped inside the valve in the left side of the heart, I could only see the tip of the needle," said Dr Mishra. As a major portion of the needle was still stuck in the muscles, Dr Mishra decided to use a magnet to pull the needle inside the valve. "We could get a grip on the tip of the needle with our surgical instruments. That is why, decided to use a magnet to pull it out slightly before extricating it," said Dr Mishra.

Woman impregnated with wrong embryos, gives birth

Medical science has promised a lot of people in need of help; for childless couples, the prospect of being able to have children through in-vitro fertilization or through the help of a surrogate mother is a huge deal. However, once in a while, there are errors that happen. In this case, a couple was implanted with their embryo by a fertility clinic through in vitro fertilization, and was then informed that they had been implanted with the wrong embryo (a news that would have been horrifying to the couple, who were hoping to get a child through this technique). The couple finally decided that they would give the baby after birth to the natural parents, and, now the woman has finally given birth, and they are going to carry out this promise (link to article):

The couple said a fertility clinic implanted another couple's embryo into Carolyn Savage's uterus -- in essence, she became an unwitting surrogate for another family. Ten days after the procedure in February, they received a call from the clinic's doctor: "Carolyn is pregnant, but we transferred the wrong embryos."
They met with the baby's genetic parents and the DNA-related mother of the child came along for one doctor's appointment. In their statement after the birth, the Savage family congratulated the biological parents of the baby.

Such a decision requires a huge deal of courage and selflessness, and it is great to see that the couple have decided to go ahead with this decision.

Superbug kills man at an extremely fast speed

Once in a while you hear about bacteria or viruses that can kill a person inspite of the best efforts of doctors, and you wonder about how there can be diseases that can kill people like this; and then you remember about hearing of some diseases such as Ebola where the rate of death is more than 80% of those infected, where the disease actually ends because it has killed too many people before the disease could spread to more people. But how many times have you heard of a bug that could kill people in an incredibly short period of time ? Well, read on (link to article):

A flesh-eating superbug claimed the life of a British father just four hours after he was hospitalised with leg pains. The Daily Mail reports Richard Johnson, 54, died from a rare infection known as necrotising fasciitis in November last year.
The infection moved through Mr Johnson's body so quickly that doctors could actually see it spreading up from his leg to his abdomen as they operated, an inquest into his death was told. The rare infection occurs in the deeper layers of skin and is typically caused by many types of bacteria entering an open wound, especially after major surgery. While commonly known as a flesh-eating bug, the bacteria don't actually eat tissue, instead destroying skin and muscle by releasing toxins.

How horrific it must be to know that you have a condition that will not allow you to last through the day, and how horrible it must be for doctors and for family members to know that you are going down, and there is nothing that they can do.

Doctors take 1 Kg of hair out of a girl's stomach

Wonder how many people have heard of Rapunzel's syndrome ? People would have heard of the fairy tale of Rapunzel who had very long hair and it was with the help of this hair that her price managed to rescue her from her prison on the top of a tall tower. However, in medicine there is an ailment called Rapunzel Syndrome where girls under the age of 15 are known to swallow hair. This is a condition that requires psychiatric treatment since in many cases, the girls deny that they eat hair. In a case in India, the doctors admitted a girl who had trouble eating, who used to vomit; they found a lump in her cancer that turned out to be a lump made up of 1 Kg of hair (link to article):

VADODARA: When this 13-year-old patient walked in the hospital complaining of abdominal pain and vomiting, doctors thought that she was suffering from some routine stomach disorder. Post-diagnosis, the rare ailment left the doctors stumped. Her reports revealed that the patient had a big lump of hair in her stomach measuring 50 cm.
This syndrome is usually observed in girls below 15 years and in such cases the patient has to be operated upon to remove the lump from the stomach. "The patient came to us with pain in upper abdomen, vomiting and was unable to eat anything. We investigated her, got a CT scan and endoscopy done. The diagnosis revealed that the patient had a big ball of hair in the stomach, giving impression of hard lump," said a paediatrician Samir Brahmbhatt.

A strange ailment, but it is good that the doctors were able to remove the hair, it will be even better if they are able to prevent the girl from swallowing more hair.

Radioactive woman sparks scare in Airport

In these heightened times of high security, especially after planes were used as instruments of mass killing in the WTC attacks, the state of checking at airports is very intense. And the talks of a dirty bomb comprising of dispersal of radioactive substances make checking for radioactive substances a necessary action. So imagine the state of panic at an airport in Vladivostok where a security alarm was set off after detection of radioactive substances:

Authorities evacuated the airport terminal in Vladivostok, in Russia’s far east, after a flight arriving from Seoul set off a radiation alarm.
The alarm was called off when security officials pinpointed the source -- a woman who had just received radiation therapy, Interfax news agency reported on Thursday.

Treating with radioactive substances for medical reasons is not unknown nowadays, so this was not something totally out of the world. However, it may be possible that the airport was not prepared for something like this. Maybe the next time, advance information should be sent so that such panic does not ensue.

Being able to prevent cancer in your babies

For some years now, science has been promising many changes in the field of medical sciences. This includes determining problems in many different areas, trying to find solutions for them, and so on. One area that has raised ethical issues is about the field of applying genetic cures in the field of embryos. There is a fear that eventually, without resolving such ethical debates, these advances in the field of science will be used to select 'designer' babies. The following is an example of a case where advances in medical science were used for a good cause:

A woman has conceived Britain’s first baby guaranteed to be free from hereditary breast cancer. Doctors screened out from the woman’s embryos an inherited gene that would have left the baby with a greater than 50% chance of developing the cancer. The woman decided to have her embryos screened because her husband had tested positive for the gene and his sister, mother, grandmother and cousin have all had the cancer.
The 27-year-old British mother, who asked not to be named, says that after seeing all her husband’s female relatives suffer from breast cancer, she felt she had to take action to save their children from the same plight. Any daughter born with the gene would have had a 50% to 85% chance of developing breast cancer. The couple’s doctor, Paul Serhal, medical director of the Assisted Conception Unit at University College London hospital, said the breakthrough gives parents the option of avoiding passing a high risk of breast cancer on to their children.

This is very good news, letting people avoid the pain of not being able to prevent the chances of an enhanced risk of the disease passing onto their children.