12+ of the Weirdest Things Doctors Have Ever Found in Human Bodies

When you’re a doctor, you see a lot of strange sights. I mean, the human body is weird – and that’s before all the horrible things that can go wrong with it.

In this article, 15 doctors/medical examiners/morticians share the strangest things they ever found in bodies.

1. Horrifying

“A mummified foetus – I was working in Africa and the usually very stoic Congolese surgeons called me in to theatre, gagging – the patient was an elderly woman with a protruding abdominal mass. When they opened it, they found that it was a long, long dead mummified foetus which as a result of an ectopic pregnancy, had somehow managed to both wall off after it died and somehow avoid killing the mother. Her body had encapsulted the alien tissue and over the years, it had slowly eroded her anterior abdominal wall to the point where it finally caused her to have enough symptoms to get something done about it.

It was horrific and the smell was worse.

Happily, though, the patient survived the procedure and just left the surgical team with a .. memory.”

2. Black goo

“In my anatomy lab, my groups’s cadaver had died from systemic complications of stage 4 lung cancer and when we got to the lungs they were two rock hard, necrotic blackened masses that looked nothing like the other cadaver’s pink and spongy lungs.

My anatomy prof took one lung out and wrung it resulting in this putrid black goo flowing out of the lung.

As he was draining the lung, he mentioned…

“This. This is what happens when you smoke” “

3. How’d that get there?

“Weirdest thing was in a woman’s intestine- a dead mouse.

Tiny little thing…. obviously never got the chance to ask how the mouse got there as this was post mortem. Definitely unexpected though…”

4. A tough situation

“She isn’t dead, but this week i saw a patient with endometriosis in her lungs.

Somehow, womb-lining cells had travelled to her thorax and colonised on the lung. She previously had symptoms of coughing up blood while menstruating, but because the endometriosis was so severe, was on the pill to stop her periods entirely.

Then she came off it to have a baby, and after the birth, with her hormones all over the place, she developed two pulmonary embolisms (blood clots in the lung), and a few weeks after that, three successive pneumothorax (collapsed lung). The womb cells had tried to shed, and made a hole between the airways and the sac surrounding the lung, letting air escape.

She’s deciding now whether to let the surgeons cut out the part of her lung with the endometrial cells, to go back on the pill for life, or to have a full hysterectomy and remove her ovaries. Tough choice at 32.”

5. Very rare

“I was a combat medic in the Army.

Not super super uncommon (about 1 in 10,000 people have it), but I had a buddy with situs inversus. All of his major internal organs were reversed (heart on the rights side instead of the left, for example). As soon as he got to the unit, it was the first thing he told me. Wanted to make sure if he got hurt I wasnt curious as to why he had no heart, I guess.

Edit to say: Had to look up the name and how uncommon it is, because it’s been a few years since I got out and he’s literally the only person I’ve ever met like that. I was honestly surprised at how common it actually is, I figured it’d be more rare.”

6. That’s odd…

“My colleague was embalming an autopsied male and found two hairnets, numerous plastic tissue sample slides, a plastic urine container (with another person’s name on it) and over twenty seven latex gloves within his abdominal cavity…”

7. Sounds awful

“Doctor here, general prac and young, so not many experiences.

I had this kid (8) and his mother come to the ped triage about a cold.

As soon they came in they filled the room with stench, like a wound festering, that humid and rancid smell. Kid had a runny nose, but secretions were coming from a single nostril. Upon examination we found the sinusal cavities filled with cotton.

Apparently the kid had this funny idea of stuffing one nostril with cotton and shoving it up inside with a stick as far as he could. We had to call the specialist to remove a lot of VERY deep cotton that was of course a picnic field for bacteria.

Kid probably isn’t going college but he won’t be lacking new ideas.”

8. Don’t see that every day

“One of our cadavers had two spinal cords, aka split spinal cord malformation.

Edit: just a first year med student here folks. Unfortunately it’s against our school’s policy for me to even take photographs, yet alone share them. One of our groups during our laminectomy (removing the back of your vertebra to expose spinal cord) lab, once they cut into the dura mater (the tissue that wraps around the spinal cord) noticed a spit cord in the in the thoracolumbar region, side-by-side. Our lead anatomist was very excited to see this and had the whole class come see. Apparently it’s not the most incredibly rare thing, but it is the weirdest anomaly I’ve seen thus far.

Edit 2: So a lot of people are mentioning Spina Bifida. From what I understand in my studies, that would be the result of bones in the spine not forming correctly. This was not what we saw. There were no signs of prior surgery or herniation of the meninges.”

9. Fix me up

“Pretty memorable to me. I’m a doctor was working in OT (anesthesiology)

An emergency came in the afternoon. Apparently the patient is a fisherman and got into a fight with his fisherman friend.

Patient was impaled by a spear gun. The spear entered just lateral to his belly button and came out just above his right hip.

He actually held this 6 ft long spear going through his body and walked into the emergency room by himself. When it was time to put him under he wasn’t scared /anxious. He said “just fix me up so I can go find that guy”. “

10. Probably should’ve mentioned that

“Young man comes in complaining of headache. I work in radiology.

We ask for history. Nothing to report, he says.

We scan his head. CT shows a bullet rattling loose inside his sphenoid sinus (kind of between the nasal cavity and the brain).

I asked the guy: “Have you ever been shot in the face?”

“Oh, yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that.”

Edit: Okay this blew up. To clarify, the guy had been shot in the face a few years earlier, never sought treatment for it. The bullet had somehow missed all the vital structures.”

11. Yikes

“When my mom was a mortician, I would hang out in the mortuary watching TV. Her boss showed me a guy who had retained water and drowned. His balls were the size of a grapefruit. Not the most pleasant thing to see at age 15. When you poked him, he moved like a water bed.”

12. Whoops!

“In med school I had to do a pelvic on a woman during my EM rotation and found a meth pipe. She forgot she put it there during a traffic stop.

I also had to remove a nail from a guy’s head. He figured it must’ve went off while reloading. He had intractable tooth pain, so he got sent by his dentist for a CT and low and behold there was a nail in his cranium.”

13. No idea

“Father owns a crematory, we once cremated a man (with no clothes and not in any container) and along with his ashes came a massive belt buckle. I kid you not, we have no idea how it got in him but it was definitely there.”

14. Never noticed

“ER nurse; man comes in after a car accident, we do a brain scan for safety and find a 3 inch nail imbedded in his brain. Ask man about it, he says he has no idea. Admits he was once shot with a nail gun but HAD NO IDEA A NAIL HAD BEEN LODGED IN HIS HEAD. Had been there for well over 4 years. Edit: originally said 6inch, meant 3.”

15. He really loved the game

“Here’s another weird one… 3 golf balls in a mans stomach. His cause of death was lung cancer. Still trying to figure out how he ate golfballs/how long they were in there considering he was on life support for 2 weeks before he died.”

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IT Workers Dish on the Worst Mistakes They’ve Made While on the Job

Everyone has messed up at their job at one time or another. Most of the time, it’s not a huge deal…but sometimes? Well, let’s just say you hope your boss isn’t around to see it.

If you work in the IT field, you better have your head on straight. If you don’t, you could make some seriously huge mistakes that might lead to enormous headaches.

Here, AskReddit users share their own IT horror stories.

1. Ooops…

“I was trying to determine where some cables were going and had to open the cable management for that. I accidentally cut through the fiber connecting the two data centers of that company.

I was called Edward Scissorhands after that.”

2. Gone

“I deleted 50-70% of the photos on the site/project I’ve been working on. (Not mine, customer photos) =).”

3. Time to make amends

“I do test automation for an insurance company. Once, I accidentally pointed tests at the production environment and bound a bunch of policies. It took several people a couple hours to clean up the data before it got migrated to accounting. This was all after 4:00 on a Friday afternoon.

The next week, I spent $250 on a pizza party for the team to make amends.”

4. Don’t turn your back

“I was tasked with mounting a switch in a network closet alone. Those things are a bit heavy and difficult, even moreso that I was alone. So, I barely got two screws in and I released it and it stayed. I turned to get my other two screws and the switch fell 5 feet and broke the mounting bracket.

Not me but someone on site also delete an entire database and backed it up. So, basically, all data was lost.”

5. Sorry, Doc

“Lost a doctor’s spreadsheet she’d put ten years worth of work into.”

6. Panic

“Deleted my entire hard-drive just from moving too fast.

i was trying to delete some files, but i didnt realize i had the entire root directory highlighted instead of the one directory i needed. deleting took no time, and then i went to clear the recycling bin which happened to be in OSX – and i got curious as to why there was a progress bar that projected like 6 minutes to clear the bin. i was like oh well, just a system hiccup.

it was systematically scrubbing all thirty thousand files from my entire computer.

and i was the entire video editing wing of an advertising agency. i am not an emotional guy, but this had me running around in a panic, almost in tears in front of coworkers.”

7. Journals

“It wasn’t technically work but I was helping my sister with her computer and accidentally deleted her journal entries from like two years. Told her her hard drive had gotten corrupted and she may have lost files, but now that I defragged it it should be fine. She gave me a hug and surprised me with ice cream for helping her; I’ve never felt more guilty in my life. If you ever see this Cate…. sorry.”

8. Wrong word

“I once worked in IT support, biggest mistake I made was emailing whilst frustrated.

We needed everyone to turn their PCs off so we could roll out an update over the weekend, it saved us time to not have to go around turning them all off manually, not to mention if someone left a PC running with some work on it they’d lose it, which is never good. We also had lots of VMs running at any given time too and they can be a bit of a ball ache to turn off as I recall.

So. I sent an email out to the whole company asking people to turn off their PCs this time using a tone that was obviously slightly irritated, I signed off with my regards and sent it.

Only to be called in by the boss 5 minutes later so he could point out that I wrote ‘Retards’ instead of ‘Regards’, and the tone of my email made it look intentional.

Thankfully he was a good boss and just laughed it off.”

9. Rickrolled

“We were testing out our new phone system and it appeared to let you set different hold music per site. So we loaded up Rick Astley for our hold music. A day or so later we’re talking to several people on speaker phone at another site when they mute one of the phones they were using and suddenly…. never gonna give you up…

The MD in the room got all snide about the stupid 80’s hold music, the assistants are confused, and we are on mute laughing our a–es off.

So yeah, I rickrolled the hold music on our whole phone system. Might have to turn it into a yearly April tradition.”

10. That’s a lot of gift cards

“Oh man. This takes me back to my early days. Many years ago I did essentially the same thing to a database of currently active gift cards for a very large company. It’s our responsibility to load in new gift cards every now and then, and I did a batch but forgot to set the credit amount when loading. The update I wrote had a WHERE clause but the logic was bad and it updated every single gift card to essentially brand new.

Over 100 thousand currently active gift cards, all instantly refreshed to 100$. Fortunately it happened in the early morning and a peer and I were able to pull the right amounts out of the data warehouse and correct the issue within about 30 minutes without anyone being able to use any credit they weren’t entitled to, but man… What a harrowing learning experience. I was literally dripping sweat. I have taken the “write all deletes/updates as selects first” approach since.”

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These 5+ Random Facts Will Get You Through Your Next Dinner Party

Random and amazing facts are a great way to impress your family and friends at dinner parties. So, if you’ve got one coming up, or just want to have some neat facts in your back pocket, then this list is for you.

Here are 6 facts to bust out right after the appetizers come out. Trust me, the night will be YOURS.

1. Grand illusion

Photo Credit: did you know?

2. First photo

Photo Credit: did you know?

3. It’s good for the soul

Photo Credit: did you know?

4. You need this!

Photo Credit: did you know?

5. That’s a lot of years

Photo Credit: did you know?

6.

Photo Credit: did you know?

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You Won’t Believe These 10+ Wonders of Nature Really Exist

There are some pretty strange sights in this world, and with how far technology has advanced, sometimes it’s tough to tell what’s real and what’s fake. But we assure you everything on this list is untouched by photoshop.

So, enjoy the following 12 pictures of nature’s most remarkable wonders.

1. This looks like an iguana head, but it’s really a rock.

Photo Credit: Reddit: vapingbull

2. “My dog’s nose is healing from a cat scratch.”

Photo Credit: Reddit: xsited1

3. A chameleon shedding its skin.

Photo Credit: Reddit: ZuzusEars

4. Panda Picasso.

Photo Credit: Reddit: gaydotaer

5. Sequoias never cease to amaze us.

Photo Credit: Pikabu: OKOSGLAZA

6. Looks like a baby dragon.

Photo Credit: Reddit: KILLSTER121343

7. These two-faced animals.

8. This baby falcon weighs less than a bar of chocolate.

9. These mountains are totally hidden by smoke.

Photo Credit: Reddit: CHIP-SKYLARK518

10. This waterfall is shaped like a woman wearing a dress.

11. A rare black serval.

12. Hitching a ride on a friend.

Photo Credit: Reddit: Secksay

 

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The Number of Young Adults Living with Their Parents Has Hit a 130-Year High

For the first time in modern history, up to 30% of young adults ages 18-35 are still living at home with their parents.

Of course, it goes without saying that plenty of parents love their children. But after they survive the preteen and high school years, parents are often ready to enjoy some peace and quiet around the house – back to the way things were before they had kids. Not only that, but they want to see their kids blossom into wonderful adults. That’s what they train them for, after all — why they put in the late nights, and read the books, and grit their teeth when their 16-year-old daughter’s mood changes for the fifteenth time in an hour. But it’s all worth it in the end, parents hope, because their kids eventually become confident adults.

Image Credit: Pixabay

I imagine it’s harder to see your children as grown, autonomous adults when they’re still living under your roof. Not to mention the potential arguments and awkwardness that can ensue when adults co-habitate — bills, groceries, cleanliness, romance…everything might end up feeling out of whack.

All of this is obvious, of course, which can only mean that young adults probably wouldn’t choose to stay at home with their parents unless their other options were limited. And we’re talking 24 million people here — so what’s up?

There seem to be several factors involved. Firstly, fewer people are getting married in their twenties, and more and more people are choosing to remain single altogether.

Image Credit: Pixabay

Richard Fry of the Pew Center for Research elaborates, saying:

“Dating back to 1880, the most common living arrangement among young adults has been living with a romantic partner, whether a spouse or a significant other. This type of arrangement peaked around 1960, when 62% of the nation’s 18-34-year-olds were living with a spouse or partner in their own household, and only one-in-five were living with their parents.”

Back then, there was also a lot of shame (mostly for women) attached to remaining single after a certain age. Today, most Americans feel that education and professional achievement outweigh the need to marry or have kids. That said, they could still move out on their own…

Image Credit: Pixabay

Except, unfortunately, young men aren’t earning the same amount of money as they were decades ago. Wages have both been on a downward trend since the 1970s, so financial stress factors into kids deciding when and if they can strike out on their own.

With kids earning less, feeling less enthusiastic about their options after spending hundreds of thousands on a college education, and less inclined to put romance over financial stability, the trend doesn’t seem likely to reverse itself anytime soon.

What does that mean for society? Well, we’ll just have to wait and see.

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This New App Claims to Help Break Your Smartphone Habit

It’s a well-known fact that our smartphones were designed to be addictive, and phone companies’ success at achieving that has many people calling smartphone addiction a growing threat to public health. Even if you don’t want to admit it, you probably know this from your own usage. Perhaps you have even tried to limit how often you use your phone, but it’s always tougher than it sounds.

If so, you’re not alone. As a result, you, like so many others, likely experience the unpleasant side effects of too much phone time: distraction, depression, anxiety, and neck pain – just to name a few.

Image Credit: Pixabay

As someone who spends a lot of time in front of her laptop, I can attest to these side effects, which is why I’ve engaged an app that shuts down all my social media sites for allotted amounts of time when I need to focus on writing.

It was eye-opening to discover how hard it was for me at first. I often clicked out of my work and tried to scroll Facebook, only to find it blocked.

According to WIRED, a similar app is coming to your Apple or Android device, and it may be just what you need to get over the hump to a phone-free dinner. It’s called Flipd, and its aim is to reduce the amount of time you spend looking at your phone, which, hopefully, could help break the habit for good.

Image Credit: Flipd

For those of you who can’t fully commit, you can use the app’s “Light Lock” feature, which is displayed on your main screen and runs on a timer. It doesn’t shut off access to any of your apps — it just serves as a subtle reminder that you’re not supposed to be opening them.

If you want/need to turn the timer off, you can, but Flipd makes you click a button that shames you with a “Yup, I’m weak” admission.

If that’s not enough motivation to keep you on task (honestly, it wouldn’t be for me), then you can engage a “Full Lock” mode, which does prevent you from clicking on any downloaded apps for the duration of the set time. However, you can still text and make phone calls, if you’re worried about safety.

Image Credit: Flipd

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Can You Solve 5 Of History’s Best Riddles?

You know a riddle is good when it stands the test of time. People have been scratching their heads over these for years and years. Think you can solve them?

No matter what, just have fun with them, and wipe your brow when you come out the other side.

#5. Gollum’s Riddle.

“Voiceless it cries,
Wingless flutters,
Toothless bites,
Mouthless mutters.”

 

Continue reading for the answer!

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Why You Shouldn’t Let Your Baby Sleep in a Car Seat

Most parents are probably guilty of doing this, even though we know that car seat manufacturers and pediatricians warn against it. But when you’re sleep deprived and your little one is snoozing away, it’s hard to justify waking them up.

Well, as easy as it might be to let them keep snoozing, one mom’s story – and a reminder of the official party line on the subject – means we all need to suck it up and get your kid out of the car seat as soon as they’re in the house.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

The anecdotal (and heartbreaking) evidence comes from mother Lisa Smith, who lost her 1-year-old daughter, Mia, from positional asphyxia after napping in her car seat at daycare.

“I got a call while I was at work,” Smith told ScaryMommy. “Worst call I’ve ever had in my life. ‘Drop everything. Mia didn’t wake up from her nap.’”

Smith and her husband were aware of the dangers of allowing their daughter to sleep in the car seat, the childcare provider claimed she was not. That lack of awareness cost the Smiths their daughter, and Lisa has made it her mission to educate others.

A 2015 study published in the Journal of Pediatrics found that 47 children (2 and under) had died over a four-year span, all of them in car seats outside of a car, and experts remind us repeatedly of safe sleep recommendations and that car seats don’t meet any of them.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

“There’s nothing about the car seat that’s designed to sleep,” Sharon Evans, a trauma injury prevention coordinator at Cook’s Children Hospital, told WFAA News. “Of course, it the straps aren’t tight, the child can kind of slump down.”

In a safe sleep brochure created by the New York City Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), they explain that “because babies don’t lie flat in car seats, they can suffocate when their heads (which are very heavy compared to the rest of their bodies) tip forward, blocking their airway. These products are not made for babies to sleep in and are dangerous because babies are not sleeping flat on their backs.”

The official recommendation from the American Association of Pediatrics is that infants sleep on a tight, fitted sheet on their back, in an environment free of other items like blankets, pillows, or toys. They also recommend that infants room in with their parents for six months to a year.

As tempting as it can be to break the rules for our own comfort, parents like Lisa Smith hope we’ll remember their tragedy and think twice.

“She was our first born, our only child, and she didn’t deserve what happened to her. But other families don’t deserve this to happen to them, either.”

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Vet Explains Why It Bothers Him When Owners Aren’t There for Their Pet’s Final Moments

Owning a pet is a huge responsibilty. It starts with things like housebreaking, training, and bonding, and for a lot of people, being there to make sure they’re comfortable at the end is included in the list of things that must be done, no matter how hard.

My first dog died almost a year ago, and as he declined in age and health, one of my biggest fears was not being with him when he went. We were best friends for fifteen years; he didn’t trust or love or need anyone the way that he needed me. After everything, how could I leave him to face those final moments alone?

Photo Credit: Twitter,kinsey_brod

Photo Credit: Twitter,hallikat_007

Luckily (in that aspect, anyway) I was the one to recognize when he was ready to go and to take him to that final appointment. It was one of the hardest days of my life, but I am comforted to know that I didn’t let him down in the end.

Photo Credit: Twitter,spoondiggitty

So, it’s hard for me to believe that there are people who love their pets but opt to leave them alone to die with their vet and staff instead of being in the room. My personal feelings are backed up by not one, but two different vets who have had posts go viral on the very topic – this one on Facebook…

And this one on Twitter.

Photo Credit: Twitter,jessi_dietrich

I don’t want to believe that 90% of people leave their pet to face their final moments alone, but if it’s true, maybe these vets – and the sweet owners who posted in response – will change some hearts and minds.

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Boost Your Toddler’s IQ Simply by Talking to Them

Toddlers are a fount of endless questions. They want to know everything about the world around them and you’ve got the answers. So, if you’re one of those parents with plenty of patience who is willing to answer any question they throw your way, then you’re doing them a great service by engaging with them. In fact, a recent study showed that talking to your toddler can boost their IQ.

But head’s up: the study showed the benefits came from holding actual conversations with your toddler, not merely speaking to them.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

The study, published in the journal for the American Academy of Pediatrics, was run by Jill Gilkerson. She and her team studied kids between the ages of 18 months and 2 years for six months, then brought them back to test their IQs and language skills when they were between the ages of 9-14. Gilkerson spoke with the Evening Standard about the results, which showed that toddlers who took more turns speaking when having conversations with an adult scored an average of 14-27% higher on IQ tests, verbal comprehension, and receptive and expressive vocabulary.

“Parents need to be aware of the importance of interacting with children who are very young and not necessarily even talking. The more interaction, the better.”

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Researchers also wrote that their study showed “early talk and interaction, particularly during the relatively narrow developmental window of 18-24 months of age, can be used to predict school-age language and cognitive outcomes.”

Photo Credit: Pixabay

The time in a child’s life the research focuses on – from a year and a half to two years of age, can be a challenging one for parents for so many reasons.

New siblings are often added, sleep issues abound, and there will certainly be days when the last thing that appeals to you is having a mostly one-sided conversation with your toddler about blocks or dogs or bubbles or poop (all favorites in my house!), but hopefully this study will encourage parents to remember that every little chat could help your child have a more positive experience years down the road.

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