Humans are said to be the most intelligent species on this planet, and yet, there’s so much about our own bodies we haven’t understood or discovered. Combine that with our rare bouts of stupidity and/or bad luck, and you have the perfect recipes for the weirdest medical cases reported by doctors all over the world. We found one such interesting list on Livescience that we had to share with our readers.
Check it out.
1. Brain Stones
For 10 years a young man in Brazil had been suffering from throbbing headaches and vision problems. On close examination, it turned out there were small stone-like calcium deposits in his brain. This was apparently an extreme complication brought about by Celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder that over time affected the lining of the small reduced the body’s ability to absorb nutrients.
It is unclear how exactly celiac disease resulted in calcification in the brain, but researchers said it is possible that the patient’s lowered ability to absorb iron may have had a role.
2. Surfer’s Eye Extreme Remedy
Surfer’s eye is a condition where fibrous tissue grows over the surface of the eye. While usually doctors fix this by cutting off the tissue using scissors, one Brazilian surfer decided to use the force of a wave to fix it. He dunked his head into the wall of the 30-ft wave and astonishingly the blunt force of the wave tore the irritating fibrous tissue. Doctors however said that he was lucky as the force of the water could have seriously injured his eye.
3. Armpit Hair Infection
You think you have body odor issues? This guy had been suffering from weird body odor for four years. He also said there was a creamy yellow-ish substance on his armpits. Turns out, the odor was caused by the bacteria Corynebacterium tenuis, which affects hair shafts. He had to shave off his armpit hair and treat the area with aluminium chloride. The odor disappeared after several weeks.
4. Lead Pellets in Belly
This 8-year old kid took the expression ‘bite the bullet’ personally. After doctors found out that he had high levels of lead in his blood for the last two years, and after the kid had been complaining about severe stomachache, the doctors discovered lead formations in the X-ray. Turns out, he was from a hunting family who used to gather food using lead pellets. The kid had ingested 57 pellets during a game with his siblings. All of them were found when the doctors removed his appendix.
5. Hyper Empathy
A woman suffering from a particular kind of epilepsy, had to get her amygdala removed. That is a particular part of the brain which is responsible for generating emotions. While you would expect someone with their amygdala removed to be less empathetic towards others, this woman apparently suffered from ‘hyper empathy’. Doctors then tested her physiological reactions and asserted that despite the amygdala being removed, the other parts of the brain formed new connections which, in a way, boosted her empathy skills.
6. Pathological Generosity
A 49-year-old man in Brazil, who had recovered from a stroke, was said to be suffering from pathological generosity. He’d give away money to strangers, buy candles for children on the streets, leaving a huge dent in his finances. Doctors tested him but could not find any manic condition that would cause such a drastic personality change. They eventually said that the loss of blood to certain parts of the brain during the stroke might have altered his personality. Yep, go figure.
7. Necrotic Ulcer caused by Dying Kitten
A 17-year-old girl in Netherlands tried to rescue a kitten from a ditch. The kitten died the next day but it had apparently scratched the girl on her wrist which later turned into a huge, black wound that baffled several doctors. After the wound did not heal even with antibiotics, they suspected that the cause was the cowpox virus, which is apparently something that simply fades away if the host’s immune system is strong. Lucky for her, it did.
8. Eye Disease Hallucinations
A healthy person, who isn’t suffering from Schizophrenia or is not on LSD or some other drug, is highly unlikely to suffer from hallucinations. Unless, he or she has this condition called Charles Bonnet Syndrome, which is apparently an eye disease that causes the victim to see images of weird creatures and animals. Under this condition, the brain apparently expects sensory input from the eyes but receives nothing and hence creates its own inputs. A 67-year-old retired school teacher went through this and she was almost exorcised.
9. Toothpick in the Liver
A woman in US came to the hospital complaining of weakness and low blood pressure. The doctors believed she was suffering from some sort of infection. On testing, it was discovered that there was a 1-inch long toothpick lodged in her liver. She had swallowed it and it somehow found its way there through the digestive tract. Ouch!
10. Extreme Soda Addiction
A 31-year-old woman in Monaco got admitted to the hospital after her heartbeat showed abnormal rhythms. Turns out her body had very low levels of potassium which caused this abnormality. The reason this happened is that ever since she was 15, she only drank fizzy drinks and no other liquid. That caused regular bouts of diarrhea which depleted the body’s potassium levels and the caffeine in the drinks caused potassium re-absorption very difficult.
11. Penis Tattoo side-effects
Okay, this is an embarrassing one. A 21-year-old man in Iran decided to get the letter M (first letter of his girlfriend’s last name ) and the Persian phrase for “good luck with your journeys” tattooed on his penis. After getting the tattoo, he said he felt pain for eight straight days. And yeah, he also ended up with a perpetual semi-erect penis. While the doctors unsuccessfully tried shunting his penis, he later refused further treatment and claimed he was okay with the condition before heading home.
12. Hairy Eyeball
Of all the places in your body, your eyeball is the last place in which you’d expect hair growth. A young Iranian boy knew that he had a small tumor in his eye, but when he turned 19, he realized that the tumor had some hair on it. Typically, this type of tumor isn’t cancerous, but it call grow cartilage and even sprout hair and sweat glands. Lucky for the guy, doctors managed to remove it from his eye.
13. Star in the Eye
You know how cartoons often show a a person seeing stars after getting punched? Turns out it has actually happened in real life too. A 55-year-old man in Australia got punched so hard, that the shock-wave actually ruptured the lens and caused a cataract in his eye. However, that can happen. What’s really weird about his case is that the cataract took the shape of a star. Gives a whole to new meaning to starry-eyed, eh?
14. Twisted Esophagus
This looks really painful. An 87-year-old woman went to the doctor complaining of painful spasm every time she swallowed. When the doctors took a better look, they discovered that her esophagus, or food pipe, was unlike that of others. Instead of normally contracting and relaxing, hers was twisted like a corkscrew. Even though this is not unheard of, sadly there is no known cure for this condition yet.
15. Soy-Sauce Overdose
The stupid things people do as dares! A 19-year-man from Virginia drank half a quart of soy-sauce and ended up in the hospital, in coma for 3 days. Soy-sauce has high levels of sodium and the amount he drank, caused so much water to be seeped in from his brain, that it started bleeding. They had to pump in 5.7 litres of sugar water to get his sodium levels to normal. Luckily, he didn’t suffer from any long term neurological issue.
16. Pornography headaches
This is the most absurd one on this list. A frustrated Indian man went to the doctor. His problem was that he got splitting headaches every time he watched porn. The headaches started around the 5-minute mark and usually peaked around the 8-10 minute mark. The problem with this condition is that the headache increases the closer the victim is to orgasm. See the dilemma here? But this guy’s case was weird because he suffered from headaches only during watching porn, and not while masturbating or indulging in sexual activity with a partner. The cause still remains a mystery.
Better get that health insurance you’ve been mulling over, huh?
All images and case details found on Livescience .