There are a plethora of diseases out there in the world that are extremely rare and sometimes
hard to diagnose.
Some diseases such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome can hit a person and often doctors really
don’t know how to treat it.
Sufferers can hardly move for days on end, and there’s not much the medical community
can do to help them.
Then there’s the mysterious Morgellons disease, described as people having small fibers or
tiny particles emerging from their skin sores.
It feels like things crawling on them.
It can be ruinous, yet it remains pretty much a controversial mystery.
And you certainly don’t want the condition known as Pica, which might drive a person
to eat rocks, sand, glass, and in one extreme case bicycles, TVs, shopping carts, and an
entire Cessna 150 airplane.
Today we have a case for you which astounded people this year.
The case of a Filipino man whose head swelled so much some media reported it to be three
times bigger than it was when he was in good health.
There are numerous photographs of this man out there as well as a sad-looking video of
him playing guitar and singing.
What the viewer sees is something that could be said to be very strange and sad, so much
so a person might wonder if these images have been doctored and it’s all a big hoax.
If it is a hoax, that hasn’t stopped news media from all over the world publishing the
photos and telling the story.
The man we are talking about is called Romulo Pilapil.
He was 56 when the news reports were circulating around the Internet in July this year.
You can see before and after photos of this carpenter from the Philippines and the after
photo is nothing short of extraordinary.
His head is indeed incredibly swollen, as if it has been pumped-up.
His lips looks like they’ve been inflated; his eyes swollen beyond recognition.
He also has quite a slight frame, which accentuates his oversized head.
(use photo https://vcdn-ngoisao.vnecdn.net/2019/07/19/mat-1725-1563528366.jpg)
Here’s the story of what happened to him, according to those reports.
Around three years ago he developed sinus problems as well as itchy eyes, something
anyone who's had allergic rhinitis, aka, hay fever, has to put up with at various times
in their life.
But Romulo’s condition got worse.
He was of course just diagnosed at the beginning with having sinus problems, but then things
started to swell.
It became unbearable for him and in time his eyes swelled so much that he couldn’t see.
Because of that he couldn’t work, and financial troubles ensued.
At the time doctors on the island of Leyte where he lives said they just didn’t know
what was happening to him and he needed to go to Manila to get treatment.
That was hard because he had no job and not enough funds to travel to the capital and
receive treatment.
In photos taken in what is presumably his home, an edifice built from wood and corrugated
iron, it’s clear that he is quite poor.
It’s reported that his kids had to drop out of school to work and his wife had to
take a job as a street sweeper.
He was put on a course of medicine to treat his swelling, but nothing seemed to work.
You can only imagine how alarmed this man would be looking in the mirror and seeing
his head expand like that.
His nephew, John Santos, told the media, “His eyes looked irritated that day, and his nose
was red.
He had colds so everybody thought it was sinusitis, then his face started to swell.”
John said no local doctors knew what to do with his uncle and they just said he needed
to see a specialist.
That wasn’t possible and Romulo lived with this swollen head, unable to work and no doubt
in some amount of pain.
The western media stopped there.
End of story.
This case was so bad some people have commented that it wasn’t real, that it was some kind
of hoax.
For that reason we tried to find the source of the information.
We don’t want to be telling you stories that aren’t true.
We tried to find Romulo’s story in the media of the Philippines and it seems it wasn’t
reported in the oldest English language newspaper, the Manila Times.
We also tried to find it in the Philippine Star newspaper and the Manila Bulletin and
a Google search didn’t provide us with a story.
Is this a case of one tabloid writing a story and every other tabloid repeating the same
story, what’s sometimes called “churnalism” or possibly a case of fake news churnalism?
From what we can see, the stories from each news media organization or blog or website
posting “viral” content use the same photos, same quotes, and tell the same story.
The news also appears on various video news media, but again the source doesn’t look
like it did much investigating and instead repeated the story everyone else has told.
In the comments sections of various media and on YouTube clips people do seem to believe
the story, but we want to know for sure that this is not some kind of deep fake – some
people have made that accusation.
Surely scores of well-known media wouldn’t publish a deep fake hoax as a real story and
would have done their due diligence.
From what we can see, some sources tell the story and then say something like, “according
to the Daily Mail” or “according to the Daily Mirror” and that could be in numerous
languages from different countries.
We even tried to find a Romulo Pilapil on Facebook, and while we found lots of people
with that name we couldn’t find an account with a profile photo that matched our man,
before or after.
And as he can’t see and is oldish and poor, it’s very unlikely he’d have an account.
We doubt social media is high on his list of concerns.
Finally though we had a breakthrough.
We found the Facebook page of a man called John Kevin Delos Santos, the name of the nephew.
He posted the story of Romulo and asked for help, and then left phone numbers for people
to call.
Of the 28,000-plus people that commented on one post many of them left the hashtag #KMJS,
which stands for “Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho” and is a television news magazine show in
the Philippines.
Some people even asked Senator and renowned boxer Manny Pacquiao to come to Romulo’s
aid.
We went through John’s photos, which were public, and indeed found more photos of Romulo
from the past.
In some of these his head was bandaged and it’s a sad sight to see.
We also found more video footage of Romulo sitting on a chair while what looks like his
family standing around him.
A woman seems to be praying for him and while his eyes are swollen shut, tears seem to be
falling down his face.
At the end everyone sings happy birthday to him.
As we said, we just wanted to check this before we told you the story was real.
We can say that it looks real, so now we need to try and understand what happened to Romulo.
It’s certainly a horrific case of swelling that must be very, very rare and we hope this
man can get the money to find a specialist who can help him.
Thousands of people have seen this video, and at least in the Philippines, many people
wished him good luck and blessed him.
One such comment, translated into English, read, “Happy birthday.
Get well soon papa.
God knows everything for the good and you will get well soon.
Just hold on.
Don't give up.”
In fact, the majority of comments tell the sick man that God will look after him, and
while we don’t want to dispute this, we think what he also needs is some money to
travel and to see a medical professional who can reverse that extreme swelling.
What Romulo needs is to see clearly again; to have his singing mouth back like it was
in the past, to be able to blow out his birthday candles like he could do before he was visited
upon by this unusual condition.
But what could he have?
What happened to him?
Well, we’ve all heard of severe allergic reactions to certain foods, say peanuts or
shellfish or tree nuts, and we know that these reactions could cause swelling of the face.
This can be deadly as the swelling can make it hard to breathe.
But with this kind of reaction, called anaphylaxis, it tends to go down quite quickly.
As we know, Romulo has been this way for a long time and doctors would know very well
if it was anaphylaxis.
We found something called Angioedema, which can also cause swelling of the lips and eyes,
but in most cases this goes down, too.
This could be an allergic reaction to food or prescribed medicine, but it could also
be hereditary.
Britain’s NHS tells us that hereditary angioedema can't be cured, but with medication it can
be treated quickly.
There can be severe cases, and it could have simply happened because an insect bit him.
It might also have been caused by lupus or leukemia.
But again, it should be treatable even if severe.
Because Romulo has seen doctors and taken meds and his condition is still said to be
mysterious, perhaps it’s not that either.
On the Facebook page of the nephew numerous times it’s said that doctors just can’t
come up with a diagnosis.
We did find one story in the Atlantic, though, about a girl whose face swelled and she had
rashes and it wouldn’t go away.
She was quoted as saying, “I awoke one morning with a thick, swollen tongue, half-shut eyes,
and red welts the size of half-dollars across my body.”
She went to see many doctors for months and they couldn’t make it disappear.
She said she had angioedema, but hers just hung around and made her life hell.
She wrote, “Every morning there are new hives, different things swollen.
Perpetually tumescent, I've become a living blow-up doll.”
She’s says she’s just learned to live with it, and while this must be very hard
it’s likely her case of swelling isn’t anything near as extreme as Romulo’s.
We would also think that Romulo has been given antihistamines and the immune suppressing
steroid Prednisone, which is given to decrease inflammation in patients.
We also found one report from the National Institutes of Health that said one 27-year
American man suffering from Angioedema was treated with steroids and antihistamines.
He improved, but the moment he stopped taking them it came back.
That report tells us, “Consequently, we decided to try a course of inhaled cannabis
as modulators of immune cell functions.
The use of inhaled cannabis resulted in a complete response, and he has been free of
symptoms for 2 years.”
Is there a chance that if Romulo has an extreme case of Angioedema that this could work for
him?
We looked at other conditions which could cause the face to swell such as Cushing's
syndrome, but from the example photographs we saw people’s faces weren’t anywhere
near as swollen as Romulo’s.
In fact, it’s hard to find a case of facial swelling as bad as his.
We did find one instance in which a man’s face was terribly swollen, much like Romulo’s
face.
This was in 2015 when a Chinese factory worker was rushed to hospital after his face swelled
to enormous proportions.
Central European News reported that several hospitals turned the man away because they
didn’t know how to treat him, but one doctor diagnosed him as having something called neonatal
scleroderma.
This is an exceptionally rare skin disease that can be fatal.
The doctor who treated the Chinese patient said the culprit was likely a mosquito, adding
that if the critter gets a person in the lymph node it could cause this kind of intense swelling.
According to some sources, this condition might stick around.
Still, looking at photographs we can’t find a case that matches Romulo’s, and apparently
the Chinese man was fine soon after seeing a doctor.
Unfortunately, we at the Infographics Show are not medical experts and so can’t say
what happened to Romulo, but we hope his condition changes.
We have tried to contact the nephew to check on his uncle’s condition but so far haven’t
had a reply.
We’ll let you know if he gets in touch with us.
Until then, could any of you offer an opinion?
We saw how well crowdsourcing worked for the New York Times writer and doctor who turned
her stories of undiagnosable diseases into a Netflix show.
Maybe you can help out, if so, tell us in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other video The Only Man To Survive TWO Nuclear Bombs.
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.