As children, running through the halls with a pair of scissors in
hand, we’ve all been warned against that simple act by our mom,
dad, teacher… Yet, have you ever taken their words seriously?
After all, nothing ever really happens… Right?
For one little girl, the nightmare that would haunt her for
life started with a mundane object – just an ordinary pencil.
Here's the story of how an innocent 4-year-old fell
and got a pencil stuck in her head for 55 years.
Let’s get into it.
1952.
4-year old Margret was walking around in the picturesque city of Dessau
in Germany, parents in tow, when she tripped, tumbling to the floor.
Normally, she would pick herself up and carry
on, but this time something felt terribly wrong.
An excruciating pain was concentrated on the right side of her face.
An 8 centimeter length pencil she was carrying had pierced
through her cheek, driving its tip right into her brain.
Her bright blue eyes widening in shock, she started crying.
In an interview with Bild, Margret recalled; "It bore right through
the skin and disappeared into my head, It was incredibly painful."
She was immediately rushed to the hospital, pencil still in cheek.
Her parents hoped it could be removed, but they were faced
with the reality—surgery would be next to impossible.
The medical technology that would allow the safe removal of
the pencil without damaging the brain tissue didn’t exist.
Luckily, the pencil had missed the aorta— a vital artery, and the
optical nerve by only millimeters, so she was able to survive.
Medical staff treated the wounds, however, they
had no choice but to decide the pencil had to stay.
No doctor at the time dared to operate,
fearing for the little girl’s life.
As time passed, the pencil, now invisible from the outside as
the wound in her cheek recovered, began to show its effects.
Margret was suffering from chronic pain, nosebleeds,
and eventually started losing her sense of smell.
She was beginning to think there was
no end in sight to her horror story.
Margret had to live for 55 long years with the pencil fully embedded
in her brain, along with all the side effects that came with it.
During the years, life went on.
She became a math teacher, and also found love
on a beautiful summer evening in 1985, where she
met Hans-Ullrich Wegner, a renowned boxing coach.
Their love story began when Ulli was on
vacation with friends at the Göhren seaside.
The group was at a disco when he saw “the woman who
had eyes that pierced”— none other than Margret.
He asked her for a dance, and when Margret obliged and got up from her
seat, was taken aback by her height, as she was a foot taller than him.
Laughing, he said, “young woman, please take off
your shoes” to which she was happy to oblige.
Dancing barefoot with Ulli in sneakers, Margret had found
blissful love, and in only a few months, they were married.
Margret isn’t the only person unfortunate enough to
have to live with something embedded into her brain.
But what’s more surprising is that doctors can decide
to leave even smaller objects just where they are.
Removal is the first thing that comes to mind when
it comes to foreign objects, just like in cases where
veterans can have a bullet dislodged in their body.
Most of the time, a medical professional will make the decision to
take the foreign object out to avoid infections, but it gets much more
complicated when the part where it’s dislodged is our delicate brains.
Depending on where in the brain the damage is, problems with
thinking and moving can occur, not to mention excruciating headaches.
But the longer the object is left in, the further it
can migrate further into the brain tissue and bring more
complications, such as impaired movement, nerve damage,
and brain swelling are only some issues that were reported.
It seems like the logical thing to do would be removing the items, so
why would a doctor choose to keep an item lodged in someone’s brain?
Health professionals have to make tough calls and decide if the
benefits outweigh the risks, like in a case study from 1999 published
in the International Journal of Legal Medicine, when a 28-year
old man was found with a bullet dislodged in the back of his head.
Shot at close range by a robber, in his workplace where he
was managing director of a large catering enterprise, he was
left for dead, locked in a boiler room by the perpetrator.
The body was discovered 2 days later propped against a wall, but
the victim was disoriented but responsive, and very much alive.
He had complete cortical blindness.
Neurosurgeons initially believed the damage
was a superficial soft tissue injury.
But a cranial scan showed the full extent of his trauma.
The bullet was lodged inside his brain, as well
as some metal fragments and bone splinters.
While some of these small parts were removed, the medical
team ultimately decided to leave the deformed projectile
in the periphery of the right temporal lobe, where it
wouldn’t be causing any direct problems, however, removing
it had the possibility of affecting his speech center.
Some fragments also remained in the left occipital lobe,
due to the proximity of the visual center of the brain.
Ultimately, they decided that the risk
of removal would outweigh any benefit.
The victim, after suffering from amnesia and going through
rehabilitation, slowly gained back his motor skills,
memory and vision, and eventually made a full recovery.
3 years after the incident, the man still had reduced concentration
and some loss of sensation in his left hand’s fingers, but
was able to go back to work with only minor complications.
So, what happened to Margret?
After 5 and a half decades, the childhood accident was still
affecting her life with chronic headaches and nosebleeds.
As she grew, the pencil had shifted from its original location, but
Dr Hans Behrbohm, an ENT specialist at a Berlin General Hospital, was
able to determine the exact location of the pencil through a CT scan.
The doctor found Margret’s case unique,
as the trauma had happened so long ago.
And while Margret was ready to end the pain she was suffering
from, and finally live a normal life, she was nervous.
She later said: “I couldn’t sleep the night before the operation.
I was afraid I hadn’t sorted out all my affairs.
I wrote letters to my relatives”.
The procedure also had the risk of her going blind,
as the pencil was so close to her optic nerve.
However, Dr Behrbohm’s expertise in brain surgery for gunshot
victims as well as pulling out glass shards from people
who had gone through traffic accidents proved successful.
It was a difficult procedure, but with perfect precision, Dr
Behrbohm removed a 6-centimeter long piece of the pencil, while
having to leave in the 2-centimeter tip that was embedded firmly
into the brain matter that had grown around it, making it too risky.
However, the section remaining lodged
into the brain did not pose a danger.
Margret, marveling at the brittle chunk of pencil piece during
her post-surgery, was finally free of her pain-filled life.
It’s important to mention that if you ever have
an incident where you find yourself dealing with a
foreign object, seeking professional help is crucial.
Taking matters into your own hands might seem tempting, but
doing so could lead to devastating complications, including
severe blood loss, nerve damage, and irreparable harm to tissues.
Thankfully, Margret’s future looks bright—and filled with wonderful
scents—according to Dr Behrbohm who gave her a clean bill of health.
At the end of the day, our bodies are resilient, and
can pull through even the write amount of stress.
Based on our last video, we put a poll on Twitter asking,
“Do you prefer wired or wireless earphones?” It was
really close with both sides having good arguments such as
“Wireless because I hate my wired earbuds constantly getting tangled”,
and “Wired because I can't be bothered to remember to charge them”.
But in the end wireless barely came in on top.
Which could be concerning, seeing as they’re
literally blowing up in people’s ears.
Click the video on your screen to find out more.