{"id":459,"date":"2009-07-22T13:20:14","date_gmt":"2009-07-22T19:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asylumeclectica.com\/grim\/?p=459"},"modified":"2013-11-09T20:46:13","modified_gmt":"2013-11-09T20:46:13","slug":"morbid-fact-du-jour-for-july-22-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=459","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Fact Du Jour For July 22, 2009"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Today&#8217;s Hairy Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It may not be the most appetizing reading before a hearty holiday meal, but the New England Journal of Medicine devoted part of its Thanksgiving, 2007 issue to a giant hairball &#8212; and not the feline kind. Doctors say this hairball removed from a woman&#8217;s stomach weighed 10 pounds. The prestigious journal detailed the case of a previously healthy 18-year-old woman who consulted a team of gastrointestinal specialists. She complained of a five-month history of pain and swelling in her abdomen, vomiting after eating and a 40-pound weight loss. After a scan of the woman&#8217;s abdomen showed a large mass, doctors lowered a scope through her esophagus. It revealed &#8220;a large bezoar occluding nearly the entire stomach,&#8221; wrote Drs. Ronald M. Levy and Srinadh Komanduri, gastroenterologists at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois. For the uninitiated, a bezoar is a hairball. &#8220;On questioning, the patient stated that she had had a habit of eating her hair for many years &#8212; a condition called trichophagia,&#8221; they wrote. &#8220;It seemed like she&#8217;d been doing this for several years,&#8221; Levy told CNN. The woman underwent surgery to remove the mass of black, curly hair, which weighed 10 pounds and measured 15 inches by 7 inches by 7 inches. Five days later, she was eating normally and was sent home. A year later, the pain and vomiting were gone, the patient had regained 20 pounds &#8220;and reports that she has stopped eating her hair.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Culled from: CNN<br \/>\nGenerously submitted by: Katchaya<\/p>\n<p>And here&#8217;s an image of the bezoar itself. Isn&#8217;t it lovely?<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/asylumeclectica.com\/morbid\/files\/bezoar.jpg\" alt=\"Beastly Bezoar!\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s Hairy Yet Truly Morbid Fact! It may not be the most appetizing reading before a hearty holiday meal, but the New England Journal of Medicine devoted part of its Thanksgiving, 2007 issue to a giant hairball &#8212; and not the feline kind. Doctors say this hairball removed from a woman&#8217;s stomach weighed 10 pounds. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=459"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4073,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions\/4073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}