Your body is a temple, but sometimes that temple can have nasty invaders.
At other times, people choose to put rather strange things inside their personal shrines.
Over the years, doctors around the world have pulled out some pretty horrible things from
people's bodies, or they discovered things growing inside of people that are the stuff
of nightmares.
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Infographics Show.
Today, we're taking a look at the most shocking things ever discovered inside people.
Before we start, we have to warn you that this episode is not for the squeamish, and
if you're currently eating, you may want to click away and come back when done.
Just don't say we didn't warn you.
First up, we have the story of a six-year-old British girl from just this year who went
to the hospital complaining about abdominal pain and continuous vomiting for three to
four days.
On physical inspection, her stomach was rigid to the touch, and she was clearly dehydrated.
When the doctors sent her off for an X-ray, they were shocked to discover a large, dark
mass in her bowels that wound up into her intestines.
Rushing her to surgery, the doctors pulled a giant hairball weighing 4 pounds (1.8 kg)
and measuring 3 feet (1 meter) long.
The hairball had settled in her bowels and caused a blockage, while its tail extended
all the way up into her intestines.
Doctors would go on to diagnose her with trichotillomania or Rapunzel syndrome, a condition where people
pull out their own hair and sometimes eat it.
The hair tends to accumulate over years and years until it finally causes a blockage that
can turn fatal, as was the case for a 16-year-old British girl who died after her hairball became
infected.
So next time you complain about a hair in your food, be glad it's not a 4-pound ball
of it.
And on the topic of food you're being served...
Back in 2008, American Rosemary Alvarez began to develop balance problems, difficulty swallowing,
and numbness in her left arm.
After being referred to a neurosurgeon, an MRI discovered a mass on the base of her brain
stem that looked like a brain tumor.
Notoriously difficult to operate on, cancers located along the brain stem are difficult
to remove, and the operation can be fatal.
Resigning herself to her potential fate, Rosemary said a tearful possible goodbye to her family
and was put under as doctors began her operation.
As her neurosurgeon delicately prodded around in her brain, however, he discovered something
far more shocking than a brain tumor -- a tapeworm had attached itself to her brain
stem and was actually eating it.
For weeks, Alvarez had had a tapeworm munching away at her brain, and it was completely oblivious.
Easily removed, Alvarez woke up to good news that she was cancer-free, and the worm had
been removed.
But just how did a worm end up on her brain stem?
Well, according to her doctors, Alvarez had been served food tainted with the feces of
another human being who was infected with the pork tapeworm parasite.
It kind of makes you think twice about eating out, doesn't it?
Doctors are often there to remove foreign objects from your body, yet every year hundreds
of doctors actually manage to leave stuff inside people after successful surgeries.
Earlier in 2018, a man returned to a hospital in England two weeks after his surgery, complaining
about severe abdominal pain.
A quick scan showed that a 10-inch (25.4 cm) retractor had been left inside him from his
previous operation.
Another man in the US suffered for two months after cancer surgeons left a 12-inch (30.5
cm) retractor in his chest.
Despite complaining to his doctors about the constant pain, his inability to bend over,
and the presence of an oddly-shaped lump in his chest, he was told it was all merely a
part of recovering from surgery.
The man would go on to get $100,000 in compensation from the hospital and free surgery to remove
the offending object.
But if one medical instrument left behind is a nightmare, how about two inside the same
patient and back to back?
In 2000, a 59-year-old patient discovered that a 6-inch (15.2 cm) surgical clamp had
been left inside his intestines for years.
After having a surgery to remove the offending clamp, the doctors left yet another clamp
inside him in its place!
Doctors often count their tools before and after a surgery to make sure nothing is left
behind, but it seems like these doctors made the mistake of counting the removed clamp
and not counting the clamp used to remove it.
If that makes your head spin, well, it did that for us too.
Sometimes it's not surgical tools that end up inside the human body, though.
In 2006, a 37-year -old Chinese man named Li Fu was involved in an armed robbery and
physically assaulted, resulting in several wounds that included a stab in the head.
When he was treated, the stab wound was largely overlooked, and for years, Li Fu complained
of constant migraines to his doctors.
Baffled as to the cause, it took his doctors four years to order an X-ray of Li Fu's skull,
which revealed the 4-inch (10.2 cm) blade of the knife used to stab him had broken off
and lodged deep in his brain.
Sometimes things don't need to come inside our body from the outside world; sometimes
some pretty horrific things can grow inside our bodies all on their own.
Indian man Sanju Bhagat had been teased his whole life for his big belly, and for his
entire life, he and his family had written it off as nothing more than a stubborn gut
that no diet could touch.
After 36 years, though, Bhagat suddenly woke up one night with difficulty breathing and
was rushed to the hospital.
There doctors theorized that Bhagat's big belly was actually a tumor and that it had
grown so large it was now pressing on his diaphragm.
Rushing him into surgery, the doctors began to cut into Bhagat's stomach only to be shocked
when gallons of fluid spilled out.
Digging deeper, Bhagat's surgeon stuck his hand into the mass of fluid and was horrified
to feel another fully formed human hand inside.
Bhagat's doctors would go on to remove a parasitic twin that had been living inside Bhagat for
36 years.
Known as fetus in fetu, it is an extremely rare condition where a fetus gets trapped
inside its twin as the two are developing.
Typically, the trapped fetus can survive as a parasite by forming an umbilical cordlike
structure that joins it to its twin's blood supply.
Typically, the parasitic twin is removed by doctors shortly after birth, or both twins
may die from the stress of sharing a single placenta.
However, in Bhagat's case, the twin that developed inside him had connected its own tissues directly
to Bhagat's blood supply, and it had even continued to grow and develop after birth
to become, as his doctor put it, a strange, half-formed creature that had feet and hands
that were very developed, with very long fingernails.
Was the twin actually alive and conscious?
Nobody knows, and Bhagat never asked as he was not interested in hearing the gruesome
details.
Ridiculed his entire life for looking pregnant, who could have guessed that the truth was
a lot closer than anyone could have guessed?
Pica is the strange fascination with eating non-food items, and people have been known
to eat some pretty strange things from light bulbs to car tires though typically not in
large quantities.
Back in 1979, however, a Dutch woman named Margaret Daalman was rushed to the hospital
complaining of stomach pains, and after a quick X-ray, the doctors were stunned to discover
what looked like a small squid inside her body.
However, a closer look revealed that the mass was actually a huge number of silverware,
all swallowed one by one!
The doctors immediately rushed Daalman into surgery and proceeded to pull out of her a
whopping 78 pieces of cutlery.
One medic said, “Every time she sat down for a meal she would ignore the food and eat
the cutlery.”
Mrs. Daalman admitted to a lifelong obsession with eating cutlery, and she had been treated
in the past for the problem.
When asked about it, she said that she never ate knives, though, and couldn't explain why.
We've covered animals, surgical implements, secret twins, and cutlery -- what about plants?
Well, if you thought there's no way you could get a flower to grow inside you, think again.
In 2013, a 16-month-old girl in China was brought to the hospital, scratching at her
left ear and crying.
When doctors took a look inside, they were shocked to discover a fully grown dandelion
in her ear canal.
Apparently, her parents had seen a seed fall into her ear months prior but didn't think
much of it until the little girl began to display extreme discomfort and pain.
Doctors said that if she hadn't been treated when she was, the growing dandelion could
have caused serious health problems for her.
Even stranger than a dandelion in the ear is the case of a man from Taiwan in 2011 complaining
of extreme pain in his molar.
A dentist discovered that the molar had decayed, and the molar directly underneath it was missing.
What shocked the attending dentist was the fact that a guava seed had managed to get
stuck in the rotted molar and begun to germinate and sprout.
After removing the tooth, the dentist did the next most logical thing.
He called in other staff members to marvel at the sprouting tooth, causing the patient
to flee in embarrassment.
Feel like brushing your teeth yet?
Maybe you're having second thoughts about eating out tonight.
Have you checked your ears lately to make sure nothing's managed to fall in there and
start sprouting?
The world is full of tiny wonders, and it seems like a large amount of them are just
dying to get inside you somehow.
Have you ever discovered something strange in your body?
What's the most shocking thing you've ever heard of being inside another person?
And be sure to check out our other video What Happened To Malaysia Airlines Flight 370?!
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe.
See you next time!