Pencil Removed From Woman's Head.

[[mania]]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/08/07/international/i071424D66.DTL

 

 

(08-07) 09:30 PDT BERLIN, Germany (AP) --

After being plagued for 55 years with the torment of a pencil lodged in her head, a German woman has finally had it removed.

 

Margaret Wegner, now 59, was 4 years old when she fell while carrying the 3.15 inch-long pencil, which went through her cheek and into her brain.

 

"It bored right through the skin and disappeared into my head," Wegner told Germany's best-selling newspaper, Bild. "It hurt like crazy."

 

At the time the technology did not exist to safely remove the pencil, so Wegner had to live with it — and the chronic headaches and nosebleeds that it brought — for the next five-and-a-half decades.

 

But on Friday, Dr. Hans Behrbohm, an ear, nose and throat specialist at Berlin's Park-Klinik Weissensee, was able to use modern techniques to identify the exact location of the pencil so that he could accurately determine that the risks of removing it, and then take most of it out.

 

The operation was particularly difficult because of the way the pencil had shifted as Wegner grew, Behrbohm told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

 

"This was something unique because the trauma was so old," said Behrbohm, who has also operated to remove bullets from the brains of shooting victims, and glass from the brains of people involved in car accidents.

 

Though a 0.79-inch piece of the pencil could not be removed, Behrbohm said it does not present a danger.

 

And now Wegner, the wife of German boxing coach Ulli Wegner, will no longer have the headaches and nosebleeds, and her sense of smell should also return soon, Behrbohm said.

 

"She shouldn't suffer any longer," he said.

 

 

 

pics of the thing here:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?o=1&f=/n/a/2007/08/07/international/i071424D66.DTL

[CALIgula]

[Sleeping Pills]

are you fucking kidding me? 55 years and she didn't get it removed until now? jesus christ, fuck technology not being available, they should have found another way to take it out.

[^ . ^]

seriously.

 

can you imagine not being able to smell/taste for almost 50 something years? fuck that

[Bojangles]

Dude...If someone asked her to play pencil breaks, she could just headbutt it every time and kill it, one-hit-ultramove style!

[[mania]]

^^^^ ahahahahaha

 

 

 

so true.

[Seffiks]

old news

 

homer had that done years ago

 

[Mauler5150]

Why didn't you post the pics onhere?

Now I have to go check a link, dammit!

[CACashRefund]

What about this dude who got a knife stuck in his head without even knowing it

 

Hospital staff treating a retired school teacher for a headache found a five inch knife blade wedged in his head.

 

A headteacher from Poland went to the doctors suffering from a headache, following X-rays hospital staff found a knife embedded in his head /Freelance

 

The discovery was made after doctors X-rayed Leonard Woronowicz to see if he had cracked his skull in a fall while climbing over a stool in his kitchen four days earlier.

 

Instead they found a blade that had penetrated the 61-year-old's head just below his right ear. It had snapped off at the handle without touching any major blood vessels or nerves - or causing any lasting damage.

 

He said: "I thought they might give me an aspirin, instead they pulled a five inch knife blade out of my head."

 

Woronowicz, from the Polish town of Wojnowice, said he had tripped over the stool while doing work in his kitchen.

 

He said: "I had some tools and other gadgets scattered on the kitchen floor where I had been doing the work when I tripped. The blade from the kitchen knife must have pierced my head then. My head hurt a bit, but I was convinced that it was from the fall. There was a small gash on the side of my head near my ear, but I thought it would soon heal and did not make much of it. I put a plaster on it and left it."

 

He added: "I didn't even guess what had happened when the next day I wanted to cut a piece of bread but couldn't find the kitchen knife. Despite carefully searching the room I could only find the handle. But I forgot about it as my headaches got worse over the next few days, and I decided to go to a hospital."

 

Local doctors were bewildered at the sight of the X-ray pictures and immediately called for an ambulance to take the patient to the Bialystok regional centre hospital in Northern Poland.

 

Surgeons pulled the five inch blade out of his skull in an operation that took just a few minutes. The blade had gone into his head from the side near his right ear.

 

Dr Marek Rogowski from the Bialystok hospital said a surgeon could not have made a better job of placing the knife so that it missed all vital bones, nerves and blood vessels. He said: "We have found objects in patients' bodies before, but this is unprecedented."

 

 

 

[Mauler5150]

Damn that shit is hectic!!

Imagine just covering it with a plaster/band aid!!