These Out of the Ordinary Medical Reports Are Made of Nightmares

48. Hair in an unusual place can be a cause for concern.

A young man from Iran was aware that he had a benign tumor on his eye, located below his pupil. That is because the tumor has been there since he was born. Thus, the tumor had been a presence in his life since day one. By the time he was nineteen years old, however, the tumor on his eye had begun to take on very different characteristics: it had started to grow hair! No one would think that tumor would sprout hair on its own, but this isn’t that unusual for the kind of growth he had on his eye.

He had a limbal dermoid, and while not typically cancerous, it can develop cartilage, hair, and sweat glands. It’s a type of cyst that can start to create different cells of its own, replicated from the human body. There are even stories of women with cysts in their vaginal region that also grow hair and even human teeth. In this particular case, doctors removed the hairy tumor from the man’s eye, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.

47. Bad beverage habits can take a toll on your health.

A 31-year-old woman from Monaco was sent to the hospital after she fainted for apparently no reason. Baffled by her condition, her doctors ran tests, and they found that she had severely low potassium levels in her blood and an irregular heartbeat. There were no hormone problems or a family history of heart problems, so the doctors weren’t sure what to do. Even her own family was a little perplexed as to why she would suddenly faint since she didn’t have a history of fainting before.

It turns out that her daily intake of soda was the culprit for her collapse. She had been drinking two liters of cola and no other liquids every day since she was 15 years old. Not even water. The cola draws excess water into the bowels, resulting in diarrhea; this can cause massive dehydration of the body. It also leeches potassium from the body. The high amount of caffeine also interfered with the body’s ability to absorb potassium, which is essential for the heart’s health. The woman’s heartbeat and potassium levels returned to normal one week after she quit drinking soda.

46. Esophagus problems can be excruciating.

An 87-year-old Swiss woman went into her doctor’s office when she developed painful spasms each time she would try to swallow. She was sent for imaging and X-rays, which discovered that her esophagus was twisting like a corkscrew each time she ate. That’s not a normal condition and could lead to her death if it wasn’t taken care of immediately. But what would cause such a strange problem to occur in the first place?

What makes it worse is that this condition had caused her to lose eleven pounds over a few months. While the twisting esophagus is odd, it is not an unknown condition. The muscle spasms cause pain because instead of contracting and relaxing, the muscles are contracting simultaneously. That means that food is not being digested properly, forcing it to pass through her intestines instead of absorbing the essential nutrients that she needs. There is no cure for the condition.

45. Tattoos can have unexpected complications.

A young man in Iran had an idea for a tattoo one day that he now probably regrets. The 21-year-old wanted to put the letter M and the Persian phrase for “Good luck with your journeys” on his penis. It was an homage to his girlfriend. It’s a very intimate and strange place to put a tattoo, but the tattoo artist agreed to take on his request for the piece of body art. Afterward, however, the man started to regret his decision for the tattoo.

The man was in constant pain for eight days after it was completed, and his penis became permanently semi-erect. The man lived with the condition for three months before seeking treatment. Why he waited this long, nobody knows. More than likely, he was embarrassed about it. Doctors tried to shunt his penis to drain the excess blood in an attempt to relieve his erection, but the process did not work. The man decided that he was fine with the condition and declined any further treatment, according to the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

44. Toothpicks can create unanticipated trouble.

Toothpicks are usually used to clean food out of your teeth after a meal; in other circumstances, they’re used for arts and crafts projects. However, one woman incorrectly used a toothpick, and it could have almost resulted in her death. A 45-year-old woman began to grow weak for several months before being admitted into a hospital for vomiting and low blood pressure.

Doctors thought she had an infection, but tests showed that something else was causing her fatigue. A pus-filled cavity, about an inch long, was discovered on her liver. After the surgery, it was found that a toothpick she had swallowed had traveled through her digestive tract before lodging itself into the liver, according to BMJ Case Reports. She was not the only one. Doctors have said there had been at least 17 cases of similar migrating toothpicks in livers.

43. No one anticipates contracting a rare illness.

Becoming a Good Samaritan isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, more than just being in the limelight. A teenager living in the Netherlands rescued a drowning kitten from a ditch. Thankfully, the kitten came out of the event okay. However, after a large black open wound, the woman sought immediate medical attention. Painful red bumps had developed on her wrist and arm. When antibiotics failed to work, and nearly two weeks had passed, doctors ran several tests over several weeks before discovering the rare cause.

They discovered that the cowpox virus was responsible for her infection. The virus hasn’t been around for a very long time. Most people in the world have been vaccinated against it, but this is just one of those rare cases where it makes a resurgence. Cowpox is a self-limiting condition, meaning that medical attention is not needed if the patient has a healthy immune system. The injury eventually healed within two months and left a scar.

42. A more significant health issue can cause strange dreams.

Going to sleep at night should be a relaxing time, a chance to get away from the stress of the day. One sixty-seven-year-old woman from Kentucky wasn’t so relieved to go to bed each night. She reported to doctors that she was seeing strange visions each time she went to sleep. They involved seeing oblong faces with large teeth, eyes, and ears, hovering over her while trying to get some sleep. She knew the hallucinations were not there and reported that they did not speak to her. That was something of a relief, but that didn’t make her sleep any more relaxing.

Doctors confirmed that the woman’s macular degeneration triggered a strange condition known as Charles Bonnet syndrome. This diagnosis means that some people who suffer from eye disease can see animals, creepy faces, or other illusions. According to Age and Aging, the visions typically stop once the brain gets used to less visual input. Sadly, the woman had to continue dealing with the condition until this occurred.

41. This strange phenomenon created empathy.

In this particularly peculiar case, a woman had developed hyper-empathy after she had a part of her brain removed. That was because she had epilepsy, so to make her day-to-day life more comfortable, surgeons removed her amygdala. Unfortunately, the amygdala is also the control center for a person’s emotions. The doctors had informed her that its removal could make it more difficult for her to connect with people on an emotional level, but the exact opposite occurred.

In this case, this woman had heightened emotional arousal and other physical effects tied to emotions. She described the new feelings as a “spin at the heart” or “esophageal unpleasant feeling.” Experts think that once the amygdala was gone, other brain regions became responsible for the stronger empathy drive, increasing her brain’s emotional section.

40. A yearlong stuck spoon was lodged in a man’s chest.

A Chinese man found out that a dare can lead to an expensive bill. Dares shouldn’t be undertaken unless you know exactly what’s at stake. What seemed harmless ended up almost costing this man his life. He had swallowed a spoon on a dare, but the utensil became stuck in his esophagus. Because it did not cause him much discomfort, the man did not seek immediate attention. He allowed the spoon to remain there, while most other people would have gone to a hospital to have it removed.

A year later, however, the man was punched in the chest (for some strange reason), and he began to feel immediate chest pains. He also began to experience difficulty breathing, which forced him to go to a hospital. After a two-hour medical procedure, the spoon was removed, and the man was expected to make a full recovery. It’s more than likely that he won’t be taking any more dares in the future.

39. Be sure to use a neti pot as instructed.

Neti pots are supposed to help clear out sinuses, which can be very beneficial when you’re suffering from cold or painful sinus pressure. A woman in Seattle found out she had developed a rare infection after she improperly used a neti pot. The 69-year-old woman had used the container to rinse out her sinuses, but she filled it with non-sterile tap water instead of the recommended sterile water or saline solution. One would think that this would be fine, that nothing wrong could happen from straying from the instructions just a little bit. However, this ended up becoming extremely detrimental to her health.

The woman soon noticed a small rash on her nose that did not get any better with treatment. A year later, she had a seizure. Doctors had thought she had a brain tumor at first, but tests revealed that she had a rare infection caused by an amoeba called Balamuthia mandrillaris that got to the soft tissues of her brain. Only 70 cases have been reported in the US since 1993.

38. Some BB pellets can emit high lead levels.

Boys will always play with BB guns as long as their parents keep buying these “toys” for them. Proper safety should be taught to them to know how to use them properly, but since they’re regarded as toys, most children aren’t given those lessons. One child had to end up paying for those consequences. An 8-year-old Australian boy was sick with high lead levels in his blood for more than two years, and no one knew why.

Doctors could not figure out why until they found pellets in his body trapped in an unlikely place. After a stomachache, the boy was admitted to the hospital, and an X-ray revealed a large number of small round objects in the boy’s abdomen. The items were lodged in the boy’s appendix. A surgical procedure revealed 57 pellets trapped inside. The boy had consumed the firing pellets while he was playing with his siblings.

37. Armpit problems, like this one, are embarrassing.

A 40-year-old man learned that his body odor resulted from a bacterial infection located in his armpit hair. He had told his doctors that he had a pungent smell and “dirty” armpit hair for at least four years. There was also a creamy yellow substance located on the strands. Typical body odor is already a burden, with the amount of deodorant that is bought yearly, but this man was suffering from something more severe. The waxy substance on his armpits only made the condition more embarrassing.

Doctors diagnosed with trichomycosis axillaris, which is an infection of the hair shafts. Hence the secretion of the waxy substance on the hair in his armpits. It is caused by the bacteria Corynebacterium tenuis. Once, the man shaved his armpit hair and treated the area with aluminum chloride to treat sweating. The odor went away several weeks later. At least he smelled a little better after that day, but it’s something he’ll have to deal with for the rest of his life.

36. Surfer’s eye can be dangerous.

A surfer developed an eye condition while he was out on the water one day. Known as surfer’s eye, it is when the fibrous tissue grows over the eyeball’s surface, and the only way to treat it is to undergo surgery. However, the surfer didn’t want to undergo surgery and decided to try and take care of the condition all by himself.

The surfer had tried to let the force of water take care of his eye, so he dipped his head into the water while he was riding a 30-foot wave, hoping to rip it off on his own. He was successful, as the water’s blunt force ripped off the irritating tissue. However, doctors say that the man is lucky; he did not receive any harmful damage to his eye. It’s best to leave the removal of any tissue, especially if it’s around the eye, to the professionals who know what they’re doing.

35. A lost contact lens was found after 30 years.

Contact lenses are supposed to help you see better in the long run. They’re a good choice for people who don’t want to worry about wearing glasses every day and possibly losing them. However, one woman noticed that strange things were happening to her eye after she was prescribed contact lenses. A woman in the United Kingdom scheduled an eye doctor after her left eyelid became swollen and droopy. Doctors removed a cyst, but after the surgery, they also revealed a startling surprise inside.

It turned out to be a contact lens that the woman had lost after a game of badminton three decades prior. According to BMJ Case Reports, the trauma of losing that lens caused the contact to migrate into the eyelid. The small piece of silicone had been trapped in her eyelid for all that time. Why she hadn’t noticed it missing sooner is a mystery, but she likely thought it had been knocked out of her eye to be lost forever. Thankfully, doctors managed to remove it, so she made a steady recovery.

34. Brain stones can create a variety of health issues.

People talk about kidney stones and bladder stones all the time. They’re small pieces of calcium that can form in the organs that can be extremely difficult to pass out of the body. But what no one ever talks about is brain stones. It sounds like a piece of science fiction, but they are very much real. A young man who lives in Brazil was suffering from chronic headaches and vision problems for ten years before discovering the underlying cause. Doctors found that he had stone-like buildups of calcium in the brain.

The stones were from a rare complication of the man’s celiac digestive, a condition he did not even know he had. Celiac disease is an autoimmune condition that can damage the lining of the small intestine. It also prevents the body from absorbing nutrients. These unabsorbed nutrients are then passed through the bloodstream, and they started to collect around his brain. If he had chosen to ignore the problem, likely, he wouldn’t have survived the condition. Thankfully, celiac disease only requires an adjustment to one’s diet for the situation to improve.

33. Gluten disorder caused strong delusions.

A 37-year-old doctoral student was studying one night when she started having delusions. She had a strong sense that people were conspiring against her. After going to the doctor, she was diagnosed with a psychotic disorder and given medications to control her symptoms. That can be frightening and a little embarrassing for someone to admit to their family. The woman had other symptoms as well, including unexplained weight loss and vitamin and mineral deficiencies.

That’s when doctors discovered that she had celiac disease. Celiac disease is triggered mostly by gluten in the diet, so all she had to do was reduce her intake. Nevertheless, the odd thing about this case was that after the woman stopped eating gluten, she quit having the delusions. Thankfully, that meant that she didn’t have to take any antipsychotic medications any longer.

32. Consuming wild animals resulted in a rare brain disorder.

A 61-year-old New York man discovered he had a sporadic and potentially fatal brain disorder after consuming squirrel brains. Why he would choose to add these to his diet is beyond anyone’s comprehension, but questioning his diet wasn’t going to help him. As a general rule, it’s a good idea not to consume wild game organs, no matter how safe you think it is.

After he experienced a decline in his ability to think and keep in touch with reality, he was taken to the hospital. Eating squirrel brains put him at risk for variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), caused by the infectious proteins called prions. An MRI showed that the man’s head was similar to other scans of people who have had vCJD. The only way to confirm this is by an autopsy. Only a few hundred cases of the disorder have been reported. Furthermore, most were tied to contaminated beef in the United Kingdom in the 1980s and 1990s.

31. Eyelash mites can cause a variety of eye issues.

People like to think that they keep their bodies as clean as possible, with showers and excellent hair care. But not all sources of lousy hygiene are visible. A Chinese woman developed blepharitis and pink eye. Pink eye is usually a bacterial infection that’s highly contagious and, with continuous treatment, will clear up on its own. But this turned out to not be a typical case of pink eye.

Doctors discovered that she had 100 mites living in her eyelashes. The infestation resulted from poor sleeping habits because she slept on the same dirty pillowcase for five years. The bacteria and oil flakes came into contact with her eyes. Doctors removed the mites and prescribed medication for conjunctivitis. The bugs are called Demodex folliculitis, which is often found in the face’s hair follicles. Pets and people can spread them, and they thrive off the human body’s natural oils. Studies find that 50 percent of US people have the parasite because they sleep with eye makeup on.

30. The truth about her allergies was not one that she anticipated.

Doctors told Kendra Jackson that her runny nose was because of allergies. However, Jackson knew this was something more. In addition to the never-ending runny nose, Jackson also suffered from headaches and insomnia. Separately, these seem like common conditions to have. Unfortunately for Miss Jackson, the combination of them made her daily living unbearable. Furthermore, it was made worse because nothing she tried was helping to alleviate the conditions.

Finally, in May of 2018, Jackson was diagnosed with a cerebrospinal fluid leak. Her brain was basically “leaking” through her nose at around half a pint a day. Doctors determined a traumatic car accident back in 2013, where Jackson was hit from behind and hit her face on the dashboard, was the cause of the leak. If left untreated, brain leaks could lead to a severe infection or worse. Jackson’s doctors “plugged up” the source of the leak, and she is expected to make a full recovery.

29. The boy who wouldn’t eat had a mysterious condition.

Eating and drinking come naturally to most people, though there are particular foods that people crave more than others. However, it’s strange for someone to stop eating altogether. A 12-year-old boy refused to eat or drink because he did not feel hunger or thirst. The boy from Iowa began feeling the symptoms in October 2014 after being treated for a bacterial lung infection.

He lost more than 35 pounds because he would not eat. That is extremely dangerous for a boy because he requires the essential nutrients to grow before reaching his teenage years. A lack of such nutrients can lead to stunted growth and even affect his puberty negatively. Physicians were stumped after several tests, spinal taps, and brain scans. A neurologist at the Mayo Clinic said the case might have been the first of its kind, and the boy’s parents have contacted an undiagnosed disease program in hopes of finding the answer.

28. A woman woke up temporarily blind after an infection.

Blinking is something we do every single day and don’t have to think about. It’s the body’s natural reaction to keeping the eyes lubricated so that they don’t dry out. Some people, however, don’t have that luxury. An Australian woman woke up with swollen eyes one day when she was a teenager. It turned out she had both a sinus and a staph infection, and ever since then, she has had an extremely unusual disorder that causes her eyes to close for three days at a time involuntarily.

The involuntary eye-clamping occurred at random times, but then it became a consistent cycle. Imagine having to figure out what’s a good time to go to the store so that you don’t accidentally close your eyes while you’re in the middle of driving. Although the condition isn’t painful, it’s undoubtedly debilitating. She has seen hundreds of specialists, but no doctor has been able to come up with an answer or a cure. She continues to seek treatment.

27. A painful pepper created many problems.

One man entered a chili-pepper-eating contest, and afterward, he started having thunderclap headaches. Thunderclap headaches are exactly as the name suggests: headaches that strike suddenly and without warning. They can reach their peak in about sixty seconds and can be quite debilitating. Unfortunately for this man, thunderclap headaches are a symptom of bleeding in or around the brain, so he had to seek immediate medical attention.

The 34-year-old ate a Carolina Reaper, which is considered the hottest in the world. Moreover, he felt intense pain in his neck and the back of his head. The headaches started briefly but would streak suddenly and peak within a minute. The headaches were caused by a condition known as reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome (RCVS), where the brain arteries temporarily narrow. The case marked the first time that there was a link reported between eating chili peppers and RCVS. The man’s symptoms improved over time, and hopefully, he refrained from ingesting such spicy peppers in the future.

26. Repeated mysterious intoxication raised a lot of unexplained questions.

For six years, a 46-year-old man experienced episodes of mysterious drunkenness. Although he swore that he never consumed alcohol, his medical team refused to believe it. Not only did he appear drunk, but his blood alcohol level was too high. How is this even possible when he hasn’t been near or around any alcohol? The only way for alcohol to spike in the blood is through ingestion, so it was no wonder that no one believed him when he said he hadn’t had a drink.

During these episodes, he experienced mental changes such as brain fog as well as uncharacteristically aggressive behavior. After much testing, it turns out he was telling the truth. He had a rare condition in which his gut microbes brewed their own booze. The man had strains of yeast living in his gut that converts carbohydrates into alcohol. Nevertheless, he was treated with antibiotics that wiped out the boozy microbes and probiotics that reestablish a healthy gut microbiome.

25. Wasabi overload created a significant heart issue.

Wasabi and avocado are both prevalent foods, but you probably do not want to confuse one another, given their drastically different tastes and spiciness levels. It could be a huge shock to your system if you confused wasabi for avocado since the condiment is exceptionally spicy. For a woman in Israel, this mix-up led to a heart issue. The 60-year-old woman was attending a wedding when she believed she ate a large amount of avocado. Unfortunately, it was wasabi.

Almost immediately, she experienced a sudden pressure in her chest that radiated to her arms. Such a sensation means that something is drastic is happening with the body, something that requires immediate medical attention. The next day she was diagnosed with broken-heart syndrome. The heart’s main pumping chamber became enlarged and weakened, so it was not pumping correctly. That can lead to a backlog of blood within the heart, which means that it’s not being oxygenated properly or being pumped to the rest of the body, leading to some severe symptoms. The burning mouthful of wasabi likely triggered the woman’s syndrome. Thankfully, she recovered after a month of treatment.

24. A man’s chest caught fire during heart surgery.

When you’re in the surgery room, you expect to be in the safest hands in the world when it comes to your health. After all, you are unconscious, and you’re trusting that the surgeons will take their jobs seriously. However, it wasn’t the case for this one patient. A 60-year-old man needed surgery to fix a life-threatening tear in his chest artery. With a history of chronic lung disease, doctors needed to give him a high dose of supplemental oxygen during the surgery to prevent breathing problems.

Besides, doctors used an electrocautery device that heats tissue with electricity to stop blood vessels from bleeding. That is meant to keep the patient from losing too much blood to remain in a stable condition. Sparks from the electrocautery device ignited a fire on the surgical gauze. The combination of supplemental oxygen and the electrocautery device enhanced the likelihood of the surgical fire. Thankfully, doctors quickly extinguished the fire without injury to the patient and successfully repaired the tear.

23. Hair splinters are not as common as wood splinters.

A fallen strand of hair seems harmless enough. It’s just hair, after all, and you shed a few dozen strands every single day. So what could be the harm from a few hair strands? This patient found out the hard way. In rare cases, loose hair can become embedded in the skin, causing a hair splinter. For a 35-year-old man in Brazil, that was the case. He went to the emergency room with a mysterious pain in his right heel that got worse when he walked. Anyone would think that it was just a splinter of some kind under his skin.

Upon initial assessment, doctors could not see anything wrong. However, a closer look revealed a single strand of hair that was attached to his foot. The man was diagnosed with cutaneous pili migrans, a rare condition in which a hair shaft or fragment becomes embedded in the skin’s surface. While it can be excruciating, the man felt immediate relief once removed. Don’t take hair for granted; it could end up giving you severe pain if you’re not careful.

22. A collapsed iris is a rare condition.

The iris is the colored part of your eye and is not something one might think of as being able to collapse. It’s the part that people like to look at the most since it’s the most intriguing, and it’s what separates individuals from each other. It’s why it’s an essential aspect of your birth certificate and driver’s license. However, this is precisely what can occur with specific eye injuries. For a man in Taiwan, an injury caused his iris to detach from its usual place and droop downward.

He went into an eye clinic after being struck in his left eye with a bungee cord. Just the thought of that alone is excruciating and makes his situation easier to understand. Bungee cords are quite strong and very elastic. The man reported pain and double vision in his eye. He was diagnosed with traumatic iridodialysis, which occurs when a blunt trauma causes the iris to detach from the circular structure behind it. He required surgery to reposition his iris and restore his pupil shape. Thankfully after the surgery, his eyesight improved.

21. Your blood is not supposed to appear ‘milky.’

Diabetes is a condition that requires the blood to be checked regularly to determine blood sugar levels. People suffering from the disease are used to their fingers being pricked, but he didn’t get the results he was supposed to for one patient. For a 39-year-old man with diabetes, his blood was so thick with fat that it turned a milky color. He went to the emergency room with nausea, vomiting, headaches, and decreased alertness and communicated that he could not correctly take his medications.

Tests revealed he had extremely high levels of triglycerides, a type of fat, in his blood. Initially, doctors tried to filter the fat out of the man’s blood with a dialysis machine, but the engine became clogged due to the too-high blood fat levels. To save his life, his medical team had to withdraw his blood and filter it manually. Perhaps in the future, he’ll take better care of his health and eat less fatty foods, lest he ends up in the hospital again.

20. Acupuncture is a needling technique that is used for the treatment of a variety of health issues.

Many individuals utilize acupuncture as an alternative medicinal treatment. It’s often seen as a great alternative to relieving pain instead of taking over-the-counter medications. It’s non-habit forming, and there are no side effects to the acupuncture procedure. In rare instances, individuals who receive acupuncture may develop an infection. In Australia, a 67-year-old man developed a severe bacterial infection after completing a five-week acupuncture course to relieve his neck arthritis pain and stiffness.

After feeling feverish and ill for several days, doctors confirmed the man was infected with a bacteria that developed into septic arthritis. After being hospitalized for eight days and given antibiotics for six weeks, his infection cleared. The condition was not caused by something that the acupuncturist did wrong. Instead, it was likely caused by the non-sterilization of the needles between patients. It’s best to do your research and ensure that you’re entering a clean facility when you’re having devices of any kind inserted into your body.

19. Too much of the popular game, Candy Crush, can cause unexpected health issues.

While many people play puzzle games on their phones to relax or pass the time, many are unaware of potential, unexpected health impacts. One of the more common health impacts is poor sleep. As people become more addicted to these games, they stay up longer to beat the next level. Smartphones use blue light, which makes the brain more alert. Combine this with late-night gaming on the phone, and it’s a recipe for poor sleeping habits.

One California man tore a tendon in his thumb after playing the popular game Candy Crush too much. The 29-year-old went to the doctor because his left thumb was hurting, and he was experiencing difficulty moving it. He let his medical team know that he played the popular puzzle game on his smartphone all day for six to eight weeks with his left hand. While typically, these injuries are quite painful, he did not experience any pain while playing. It has been shown that video games may numb people’s pain and contribute to video game addiction. That’s why it’s best to take breaks from your phone during the day so that you don’t exhaust the fine muscles in your hands. Being at the computer all day has also caused people to get carpal tunnel syndrome.

18. Food allergies occur when your body overreacts to a particular food.

Most allergies are something people are born with. That’s why babies are put through certain scratch tests to determine what they’re allergic to from a young age. Unfortunately, these tests can’t predict everything and specific allergies can begin to develop over time. An eight-year-old boy in Canada mysteriously became allergic to fish and nuts after receiving a blood transfusion. He had no history of being allergic to any foods and was undergoing treatment for a type of brain cancer.

A few weeks after receiving a blood transfusion, he experienced a severe allergic reaction within ten minutes of eating salmon. He was treated and was released. However, four days later, he was back in the emergency department after eating a chocolate peanut butter cup. After a blood test and a skin prick test, it was uncovered that as a result of the blood transfusion, the boy was allergic, at least temporarily, to peanuts and salmon. That was due to his blood donor having these allergies prior, which passed the affliction on to the poor boy.

17. An ingested porcupine quill pokes a hole in a woman’s aorta.

Although porcupines are herbivores, they are hazardous animals to deal with. Their spines are equipped with barbs on the ends so that they continue to work their way deeper and deeper into the skin until it becomes nearly impossible to get them out. That’s why most predators shy away from these large rodents. After experiencing shortness of breath and chest pain that worsened whenever she laid down, a woman went to the emergency room. She had gone to a different emergency room with the same symptoms a week prior and was sent home after being told she was experiencing a panic attack.

Her second emergency room visit uncovered that she had fluid in the sac around her heart. Doctors also noticed a poorly defined defect on the wall of her aorta. The hospital providers drained the fluid around the woman’s heart, only for it to accumulate three days later. Left stunned, doctors decided to operate to explain the issue with her aorta. They noticed a black, sharp object. The woman later communicated that her dog had gotten tangled with a porcupine a few weeks prior, and she must have ingested a quill without realizing it.

16. Cat scratch disease can be transmitted from cats to their owners.

Cats are supposed to provide their owners with peace of mind and eliminate any stress that they have. Even their purring has been shown to work as a form of sound therapy to heal the body. But for one cat owner, her problems were only beginning. After a week-long fever, a 46-year-old woman in the Netherlands went to the hospital with tiredness, night sweats, and pain in her upper right abdomen. The woman underwent several tests, including an ultrasound and CT scan that revealed large nodules around her pancreas and near the top part of her small intestine. There were also lesions throughout her body.

Initially, doctors feared the worst – cancer. Cancer can be a death sentence for most people, as the treatment options are not only painful and debilitating; they can also be costly. However, a biopsy of one of the nodules did not show cancer but rather an infectious disease. Her blood work specified the particular species of bacteria that is found in cats. Typically, cats get the bacteria as kittens from fleas and transmit the bacteria if they bite or scratch a person.

15. Waking Up and Speaking in a Different Language

It’s an aspiration for most people to learn a second language. It can make them more versatile in the working world and travel to a foreign country that much easier. But there are some people afflicted with a syndrome that gives them an entirely different accent. The condition is most common after some kind of brain injury has occurred. It results in a speech impediment that sounds like you’re talking in a foreign accent.

Doctors have noticed that this syndrome occurs in particular cases: a Japanese person will suddenly have a Korean accent; a British person has a French accent; Spanish to Hungarian. What makes this syndrome even more confusing is that it is more likely to happen in women than men, usually between the ages of twenty-five and forty-nine. There are some instances where, in the absence of any brain injury, the cause of the sudden accent change is psychogenic, meaning that there is some psychological disturbance in the brain unrelated to neurological damage. It can be both intriguing and frightening to wake up with a different accent on your tongue suddenly.

14. Growing Disproportionately

As babies, the cells in our bodies dictate how we grow. Limbs, head, feet, fingers, and toes; it’s expected that everything will grow at the right rate so that it looks mostly symmetrical when we’re born. But there can be some complications in the womb, especially with the AKT1 gene that can cause problems. And that problem is called Proteus syndrome. The different kinds of tissues in the body, including bones and skin, are growing at different rates in various areas of the body. At birth, there are no signs that the syndrome is even present. But as the child gets older, the symptoms become quite clear.

One hand could end up being longer and larger than the other, for example. But there are more serious underlying conditions arising from this syndrome, such as poor eyesight, being more prone to seizures, growth of noncancerous tumors, increased formation of blood clots, and mental disabilities. The most famous Proteus syndrome case is Joseph Carey Merrick, more popularly known as “The Elephant Man.”

13. Bright Purple Urine Isn’t Normal

People go to the bathroom every single day and think nothing of it. They’re used to seeing yellow urine in the toilet before they flush, so you can imagine the horror on one woman’s face when she went to the bathroom and discovered that she had purple urine. Living in France, she was hospitalized for some condition, and after spending ten days in their care, she found that the urine in her catheter bag was purple.

It’s a very rare condition that only takes place when catheters are being used. It’s the result of a chemical reaction between urine and a specific bacteria. The bacteria react with indoxyl sulfate and convert into blue and red compounds passed in the urine. The condition itself is not something that causes harm, save for shock. With increased hydration, the purple pee gradually returned to normal, and the woman was fine once more. Don’t be shocked if you end up in the hospital and experience the same thing.

12. Not Really Royalty

Whether you’re donating blood or you need to have blood tests done for your doctor, you expect the fluid that’s coming out to be red. That is the result of the presence of hemoglobin, the compound that gives blood its red color. Having it be any other color means that there is something incredibly wrong. Pink blood is usually another color that blood can be, which is generally a sign of anemia. But what you don’t expect is to see blue blood.

It was a myth centuries ago that royalty members had blue blood because that meant they were more rich. But that’s not the case. For one patient, it was a sign of his poor health. The twenty-five-year-old man entered the hospital complaining of fatigue and shortness of breath and, after taking his blood, the hospital staff discovered that his blood was a dark blue. Medical tests determined that he had “methemoglobinemia,” which is where the hemoglobin in the blood wasn’t effectively releasing oxygen into the rest of the body’s organs.

11. A Literal Bone-r Isn’t What This Man Wanted

Ossification is the natural process of bone formation within the body. It is basically how our skeleton is formed. However, ossification also refers to normal tissues becoming bone, which isn’t so great. That is caused by calcium salts developing in the soft tissues, turning them into bone. Many cases of ossification, however, seem to be the body’s immune response to trauma. Depending on the type of tissue that’s being transformed, it can become incredibly painful and even debilitating.

For one sixty-three-year-old man, he was developing ossification in one of the strangest places. He took a fall and was admitted to the emergency room for X-Rays to ensure that he hadn’t broken anything. But what the doctors discovered was that the man was experiencing ossification along the shaft of his penis. That could be extremely painful since the penis is mostly made up of soft tissue that requires some flexibility. Having the tissues in his penis turns to bone reduces blood flow throughout the shaft.

10. Going Blind From Eating the Wrong Food

Taking care of one’s health is essential for the body to function. That means eating the right foods that are good for your body to continue to function correctly. Fresh vegetables, fruits, meat, and grains provide the vitamins and minerals needed to be fit and healthy daily. However, getting a teenager to eat healthily is one of the biggest problems any parent has to face. But the eating habits of a fussy teenager had to be taken seriously when he literally started to go blind.

The teenager in England would eat nothing but fried chips and junk food. The first sign of his poor health was around fourteen when he had deficient vitamin B12 in his blood. By the time he was fifteen, his hearing and sight started to diminish. By seventeen, he was legally blind. His poor diet led to the atrophy of his optic nerves, which could not be reversed. He was eventually prescribed nutritional supplements to prevent his vision from getting any worse, and he was referred to mental health services to deal with his eating disorder.

9. Bodily Fluids Are Not the Cure

It’s always best to trust medical professionals to help you with any maladies you may have. They would know better since they went to medical school for several years to commit the details of the body to their minds. So why one man decided to take his health into his hands in this manner is unbelievable: he believed that injecting himself with his sperm would cure his condition. The thirty-three-year-old man from Ireland was suffering from back pain and decided to purchase a syringe online. He would then inject his own sperm into his arm to alleviate the pain for the next eighteen months.

Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work, and the only thing he gave himself was an infection in his arm. As doctors treated him, they could find no source online that would inspire the man to consider this viable treatment option. However, they would never get their answers, as the man would discharge himself from the hospital as soon as his pain had subsided. Their questions would never be answered.

8. Hiccups With No End in Sight

Hiccups can be quite problematic and painful if they go on for too long. Many people try several tricks to get rid of them, such as drinking upside down or holding their breath. Hiccups are usually caused by the diaphragm’s involuntary contractions, a wall of tissue situated under the lungs that help with breathing. For one young man, none of these remedies helped him. In fact, his case of hiccups was so profound that he would hiccup for almost fourteen straight hours every single day. That would occur for many years, leaving doctors wholly baffled.

After many tests later, doctors eventually discovered that there was a tumor growing on his brainstem. That was causing involuntary muscle spasms in his diaphragm that just wouldn’t go away. Thankfully, once the tumor was removed, the hiccups went away entirely. A good thing too, because if the doctors had waited two more years, the tumor would have killed the young man.

7. When The Word No Longer Makes Sense

Many people believe that they have a book living within them, that when they’re older, they’ll write books about their lives for other people to read. This dream became a reality for one man, but it wasn’t because he wanted to write a beautiful memoir. No, Howard Engel was a trained author who forgot how to read. How could such a strange thing happen?

Engel went to sleep one day and woke up the next, unable to read the newspaper he held in his hands. It was likely a very frightening experience for him. It was discovered that he had developed something called “word blindness” due to a stroke he had suffered. He was still capable of writing in a strange twist of fate, but he was unable to read his own words. Through many months of therapy, he slowly regained the ability to read his own writing, but he could no longer read anything else.

6. My Hand is Not My Own

Daily, most people are aware of their limbs and where they are. It’s how they get around in daily life, maneuvering through their homes, driving their cars, and ensuring that they’re not in danger. But there is a small number of people who don’t get to experience this. They suffer from what is called alien hand syndrome. That is where a hand or a leg acts of its own free will, involuntarily. It is more than just twitches and jerks; a limb will perform tasks that are unintentional.

That is not a movement disorder by any means but is more neurological and is more closely connected to frontal lobe dysfunction. Other tests have shown that this could also be the result of network disruption in the brain. Furthermore, it can lead to a loss of inhibition by the muscles in that limb. People who suffer from this syndrome tend to consider their alien limbs as separate entities and even give them names. Although there is no cure for the condition, medications and various therapies can help keep the limb’s impulsiveness under control.

5. People Believe They’re Surrounded by Doppelgangers

There are two forms of imposter syndrome. The one that has become more common online is where people question their own accomplishments by convincing themselves that they are frauds, trying to be something they’re not. That can be debilitating for self-esteem, but it is the lesser of two evils than another kind of imposter syndrome. Sufferers believe that someone they love or know has been replaced by a double or an imposter.

Also known as Capgars syndrome, it is a serious neuropsychiatric condition that is marked by delusion. Studies showed that those who suffered from this condition had a neurodegenerative disease of some kind; most of them suffered from Lewy body disease (including symptoms of dementia, visual hallucinations, and a decrease in cognitive ability). There is no known cure for the condition, but it can be regulated with antipsychotic medication, therapy, and medications for memory and anxiety.

4. This Isn’t the Land of the Zombies

Zombie movies and television shows took consumers by storm. It was enticing to see who would survive by the end and what kind of grisly fates they would meet. It’s understandable that these are works of fiction and that zombies aren’t real. But for those who suffer from Cotard syndrome, their view of the world is hugely different.

The syndrome is also known as walking corpse syndrome. Sufferers believe that they are dying, they don’t exist, or there are pieces of their bodies that are missing, despite being able to seem attached to their bodies. Medical doctors also report that patients seem to have delusions of immortality and will become more reckless with their health, believing that they cannot die. This syndrome usually occurs due to some other neurological condition, such as Parkinson’s disease, a stroke, multiple sclerosis, or dementia, just to name a few. It’s also more likely to occur in women, and it’s rarely ever found in teenagers.

3. Being Unable to Go To Sleep

It can be pretty easy for children to tire themselves out after a long day of playing. They’re usually in their beds around 8 p.m., napping away and giving their parents some much-needed respite from taking care of them all day. For one four-year-old boy, this wasn’t the case. His mother discovered that he would be awake for as long as twenty-four hours. She noticed this when he was born, but after taking him to the doctor, they didn’t offer any kind of relief.

It took a long time before the boy was eventually diagnosed with a rare condition called Chiari malformation. That is where the brain is squeezing on the spinal column, leading to strangulation. The spinal column controls the basic functions of regulating sleep as well as breathing. To help the boy, surgery was required to alleviate this pressure on his spinal column. Surgeons made an incision at the base of his skull to remove the bone surrounding the brain stem and spinal column. However, they would wait at least a year to see if the surgery helped the boy’s condition or not.

2. Eye Worms Like You Won’t Believe

The thought of anything going into one’s eye is enough to send shivers down one spine. Even putting in eye drops can be an ordeal for some sensitive people about their eyes. For one medical anthropologist, she had more to bargain with than just eye drops. After taking a jog one day, she noticed that her eyes were frequently watering, and she didn’t know why.

What she hadn’t realized was that she’d jogged through a cloud of face flies. She reportedly had cattle and thought nothing of the flies that were buzzing around. Unfortunately, her path through them resulted in a few of the flies’ worms ending up in her eyeballs. She checked her eyes with a light and a magnifying mirror and discovered three “glittering” objects moving around in her eye. Thankfully, she was able to remove the worms on her own without any repercussions. A good thing too, because if left in, they could cause some severe damage to her sight.

1. Beauty Sleep Could End Up Being Too Much

It can feel like a vacation to just stay in bed all day and sleep the hours away. That is especially true after a very long and hard week at work. It’s a desire to get away from responsibilities and just let the world pass them by. But for some people, they have no control over when they wake up. Called Sleeping beauty syndrome – medically as Kleine-Levin Syndrome – people can sleep for up to twenty hours a day. How they get anything done is beyond our realms of understanding, but it becomes challenging for them to be involved in everyday life, such as holding jobs.

People suffering from this condition are hypersomnolence, sleeping for long periods, and only getting up to eat or go to the bathroom. There is no way for them to tell when it’s going to happen, as each episode takes place without notice. As a result of all of this sleeping, they can become quite depressed. Some spells can last for a few days, while some can extend for months on end. What’s strange is that between episodes, sufferers are actually in pretty good health. The only thing that seems to suffer is their memory of anything during the attack.

Sources:

Live Science – 27 Oddest Medical Cases

Live Science – 10 Strangest Medical Cases of 2018

The Healthy – 7 of the Craziest Medical Cases Doctors Have Seen on the Job

List Verse – 10 Cases Of Bizarre Medical Ailments

Medical News Today – 5 Strange, Rare, and Fascinating Medical Conditions

Live Science – 10 Strangest Medical Cases of 2019

Buzzfeed – 15 Bizarre Medical Cases That Will Straight-Up Baffle You

MD Link – 7 Real-Life Medical Conditions That Sound Too Bizarre To Be Real

Gizmodo – The Weirdest Medical Cases of 2019

ABC News – 12 Baffling Medical Conditions