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BACKSIDE INSERTIONS
An Argentinean man was hospitalised complaining of abdominal pain before an X-ray revealed a bottle up his bottom – which he later confessed got there in a bizarre sex experiment. A group of doctors filmed themselves removing the bottle and asking: “Who is the father?” They joked that he was giving birth to an alien and posted the clip online. There were facing a reprimand from their superiors in San Juan, Argentina. Sun, 8 May 2010.

Medics in China’s eastern Hangzhou province cured Cha Hai’s agonising back pain when they found and removed a 7.5cm fish bone stuck up his bottom. He had collapsed in agony after a slap-up family meal but puzzled doctors until he told them that he had gobbled up a whole fish. “I must have eaten too quickly and the bone went straight through,” he said. Metro, 22 June 2009.


SNOW ESCAPE
A 21-year-old man was swept away by a 50m-wide snowslide while skiing off-piste in the Evolene region of the Swiss Alps on 6 February. He was buried in snow for 17 hours before being rescued, but escaped with only mild hypothermia. He appeared to have been trapped next to an air pocket. “It’s extraordinary,” said a police spokesman. “We occasionally have people surviving after several hours, but after that it is pretty much unheard of.” Irish Times, Shropshire Star, 8 Feb 2010.


SNEEZING MARATHON
Lauren Johnson, 12, from Virginia, baffled doctors after a sneezing fit lasting more than two weeks. She was sneezing up to 20 times a minute – around 12,000 times every day. She was unable to attend school, struggled to eat and only stopped sneezing when she was asleep. She had tried 11 different drugs with no respite. Sun, 12 Nov 2009.


DARK GREEN BLOOD
A 42-year-old man developed a dangerous condition in his legs, known as compartment syndrome, after falling asleep in a sitting position. When a team of Canadian surgeons performed fasciotomies – limb-saving procedures which involve making incisions to relieve pressure and swelling – they were shocked when the patient began shedd­ing dark greenish-black blood. He had been taking large does of sumatripan – 200 milligrams a day – for migraine. This had caused a rare condition called sulf­hæmo­globin­æmia, where sulphur is incorporated into the oxygen-carrying compound hæmoglobin in red blood cells. Describing the case in the Lancet, the doctors, led by Dr Alana Flexman from St Paul’s Hospital, Vancouver, wrote: “The patient recovered unevent­fully, and stopped taking sumatripan after discharge. When seen five weeks after his last dose, he was found to have no sulf­hæmo­globin in his blood” – which had returned to its normal colour. According to Star Trek, Mr Spock had green blood because the oxygen-carrying agent in Vulcan blood includes copper (as in hæmo­cyanin, found in many invertebrates), rather than iron, as is the case in humans. BBC News, 2 May 2010.


HUMAN WEATHER VANE
Shakira Robson, 29, a businesswoman from Newcastle, can tell when rain is on the way because she always suffers a migraine beforehand. Her strange divin­atory power began four years ago following the birth of her son. “I would have four or five [migraines] per week to begin with,” she said. “I started noticing that I could feel an aura descend on me just before it would rain. I did a chart for weeks and wrote down when I was getting a migraine and when it rained. I was spot on. Now I’m like a human barometer. I can tell when it’s going to rain and how long it will rain. If it’s torrent­ial rain or a storm, the pain is much more intense and the migraine can last for 12 hours.”

Then one day she suffered a hemiplegic migraine, a kind so strong that she was paralysed down her left side for three days. After an MRI scan, she was prescribed heavy pain relief in the form of a self-administered injection in her thigh every time she felt a migraine coming on. It stopped the headaches, but left her paralysed again for 40 minutes each time. After about five months, she became immune to the painkiller. Now she takes nine pills a day and avoids pro­cessed foods and alcohol. Presumably, the drugs interfere with her weather forecasting. D.Mail, 19 Jan 2010.


GREEN CURE
A man who claims to have eaten nothing but grass and weeds for the last two years claimed he felt healthier than ever. Li Sanju, 50, began the diet after watching a TV programme on organic food and said that since then his aches and pains (including a tumour on his foot) have vanished. He recently refused £100 to eat a cube of pork in Niuwei, China. “I just couldn’t do it,” he said. “The only downside is I smell strongly of grass.” Sun, 6 Mar 2010.